A Pragmatic Analysis Of Vague Language In English Business Letters

Vagueness has drawn more attention of scholars at home and aboard，who havemade a variety of researches on theory and practice. English business letter, as animportant communicative means, always complies with the7C principle (Clearness,Conciseness, Correctness, Concreteness, Courtesy, Consideration and Completeness)in order to avoid troubles and arguments. Then it seems that vague language shouldnot exist in English business letters; however, we find there are large quantities ofvague languages through the analysis and research of a number of English businessletters.This paper adopts the classification of vague language, which is proposed by HeZiran. It aims to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of vague language inEnglish business letters according to Verschueren’s adaptation theory, Leech’spoliteness principle and Grice’s cooperative principle so as to reveal the functions ofvague language in commonly-used types of English business letters.Three research questions are put forward:(1) What kinds of vague language aretaken on in English business letters?(2) What are the differences of vague language indifferent kinds of English business letters?(3) What pragmatic functions does vaguelanguage have in a variety of English business letters? Sixty business letters werecollected according to the procedure of international trading activities and theirfunctions, and divided into three classes (routine business letters, bad-news businessletters, persuasive business letters), including six groups (sales letters and letters forestablishing business relations, enquiries and offers, counter-offers andcounter-counter offers, orders and terms of payment, insurance and shipment terms,claims and letters of apologies). After a directive comparison analysis of the vaguelanguages in these letters, it is found that vague language doesn’t cause troubles inthose English business letters, but effectively enhances the flexibility and expressionof language, which makes the business communication more proper and polite.This paper draws some conclusions as follow:First, vague language has such functions as enhancing persuasiveness, increasingself-protection, strengthening politeness, and skillfully retaining information. Second,the existence of vague language in English business letters is the inevitable result oflanguage selection, is the appropriate adaptation to the mental world, the social worldand the physical world, and the product of adhering to the politeness principle and thecooperative principle. Therefore, vague language makes the business communicationmore fluent, more effective and more harmonious.Thus, the study of vague language in business English letters has much practicalsignificance. Because of the pragmatic analysis, this paper has certain practicaldirective significance. Through the study, the writer and the recipient of English business letters can have a further understanding about vague language in businessEnglish letters so as to master the application to business letter writing. This paperalso has a certain assistant function for business English teaching.