On Vagueness In Legal Language From Semantic & Pragmatic Perspectives

Law is the demonstration of national power and the guarantee of a stable society. Legal language has been always regarded as the most rigorous. Without rigorousness and preciseness, law will lose its compulsory power and authority. Therefore, for a long time, people have focused on its preciseness and rigorousness a bit too much, while the vagueness in legal language is somewhat overlooked. In 1956, L. A. Zadeh, a distinguished American professor of University of California introduced the famous Fuzzy Set Theory. He pointed out that objects in the real world usually do not have sharply defined boundaries, nor does language. Vagueness is an intrinsic characteristic of natural language, and legal language is inevitable vague to some extent because it is a branch of language.In recent years, this phenomenon has been noticed and discussed by many scholars both at home and abroad. To date, much progress has been achieved, which has provided precious materials for the study of vagueness. However, as a relatively new branch, there is still much to do. The vagueness in legal language still remains a little bit mysterious to most people. Moreover, quite a number of people still consider vagueness in law contra-scientific and they even suggest the removal of it. Concerning the current research situation, the author thinks that it is quite necessary to attempt a comprehensive and objective description of vagueness in legal language.In this thesis, with a large number of examples, the author gives a comprehensive analysis of the vagueness in legal language from both the semantic and pragmatic perspectives. The thesis classifies and analyzes the vagueness in legal language from the semantic angle; expounds its pragmatic functions on the basis of Grice's CP and Leech's PP; and later explores the causes of its existence.This thesis has shed some light on vagueness in legal language both theoretically and practically, illustrating that vagueness is a common phenomenon in legal language and justifying its existence. Law language is a normative one. Preciseness is its core; while in some cases, vague expressions also play an important role in the enforcement of law. The proper use of vague language can help the lawmakers adapt themselves to the changeable circumstances in legislation and leave much flexibility for judges, lawyers and other people related to legal activities to accomplish particular communicative goals.