A Pragmatic Analysis Of Vague Language In English Business Correspondence

As an important vehicle of communication, business correspondence is always guided by the "Seven Cs" principle, i.e. clarity, conciseness, concreteness, correctness, completeness, consideration, and courtesy, which forms a general view that vague language should be avoided as possible as we can lest a pragmatic vagueness appears. However, from our observation of the business letters, it’s not difficult to find out that vague language is pervasively employed in them, instead of confusing both sides of the business communication, vague language does play a role as making the expressions more flexible, polite, and proper.This seemingly "contradictory" linguistic phenomenon makes it significant to study vagueness in business correspondence from the pragmatic perspective. In this study, the author makes both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of vague language employed in six types of business correspondence on the basis of the Cooperative Principle and the Adaptation Theory. By quantitative research, an analysis of the statistical data of vague language employed and the frequency of its adoption in different types of business correspondence is conducted. The qualitative analysis explains why vague language in business correspondence is able to abide by the Cooperative Principle while flouting its four maxims, and how vague language works during the dynamic choose-adapt process on the basis of Adaptation Theory.The research shows that the hierarchical order of the frequency of vagueness adoption in six types of business letters goes as:letters of sales and establishing business relations> enquiry and offer letters> counter offer and counter-counter offer letters> complaint and settlement letters> order and payment letters> insurance and shipment letters. The difference of the distribution of vague language in different types of business correspondence attributes to the different communicative purposes of the letters. From the analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that vague language and its employment in business correspondence is the result of an observance of the CP, and also a result of choice-making and the pragmatic adaptation to the context, including psychological world--communicative purpose of the language users, the physical surrounding, and the social relations between the language users. Instead of getting in the way of communication, the proper usage of vague language facilitates an efficient, smooth and successful communication.The analysis is expected to help developing a correct and comprehensive understanding of the existence of vague language in business correspondence and its pragmatic functions, so as to help getting a better idea on the intention of the addresser’s employment of vague expressions in business correspondence, and the implication which the vague language conveys in the process of communication.