A Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness From Impression Management Approach

The present study aims to study the deliberate use of vagueness in Chinese verbal communication, which is thought as one of communicative strategies and is termed in this thesis as "Pragmatic Vagueness". The previous studies are not uncommon about this topic, from the original theoretical dimension to the present empirical research. The approaches cover philosophy, linguistics and cognitive science etc. This thesis will explore the topic from the perspective of social psychology, with the willing to broaden the present research scope and enrich its angles of view.In1990, Leary and Kowalski put forward a two-component model for the impression management, which offers a basic theoretical framework for the current research. Considering its interdisciplinarity, this study will employ a simplified model, which only focuses on the processes of impression motivation and impression construction while not considering those various determinant variables. The process impression motivation mainly studies the motivations that drive people to be vague in language, and the process impression construction aims to explore the kinds of impressions that people would like to construct and the strategies that they use to achieve their goals. The current research is a qualitative study with data mainly collected from various sources including literary works, films and television programs, websites and daily conversations etc.The results of the study show that pragmatic vagueness in Chinese language is indeed influenced by impression motivation. Three main motivations are:(1) obtaining desired social and material outcomes, and/or avoid the undesired outcomes;(2) constructing and maintaining self-esteem;(3) developing self-identity. Under these motivations, people usually will try to convey desired impressions by the way of using pragmatic vagueness. The desired impressions are mainly those that can convey individuals’ positive personalities, such as erudition, similarity and superiority etc. What’s more, the research focuses on the tactics imposed to repair or maintain established and desired impressions. According to the function of those strategies, the thesis classifies them into winning impression management and protecting impression management.This study exhibits a unique side of pragmatic vagueness and provides a new perspective to view it in Chinese context. And more significantly, what deserves to be noted is that pragmatic vagueness sometimes is a regulator of interpersonal relationship, and the effective use of it will greatly help us to realize our interpersonal goals.