Study On Pragmatic Vagueness In International Business Negotiation

This thesis attempts to make a study of a common communicative strategy—pragmatic vagueness to help the negotiators carry out their business negotiation successfully. Pragmatic vagueness refers to a strategy of speech communication, which is carried out by the speakers’ deliberate employment of vague language to achieve certain communicative goals. Pragmatic vagueness pervades in many linguistic fields, such as daily communication, diplomacy, news, advertisements and the like. With the development of globalization, international business plays a significant role in the economic growth of a country, which inspires the author to make a study of pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation. Which theory can effectively analyze pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation? It is the top concern of this thesis.After analyzing the merits and demerits of the Relevance Theory, the Adaptation Theory and the Relevance-Adaptation Model, the thesis selects a more comprehensive theory—the Adaptation-Relevance Model as the theoretical foundation to make a study of pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation. This thesis intends to testify the feasibility of this model in explaining pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation. According to the Adaptation-Relevance Model, verbal communication is a continuous process of adapting to contextual correlates and seeking for optimal relevance. After analyzing pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation, the thesis finally discovers that the process of choosing and using pragmatic vagueness is a process of adapting to contextual correlates and seeking for optimal relevance. This thesis mainly uses the research methods of data-collection and example-analysis.The Adaptation-Relevance Model has been widely employed in various fields of verbal communication, but few people have applied this theory to the analysis of pragmatic vagueness in international business negotiation. Therefore, this study can not only enlarge the scope of the research on pragmatic vagueness, but also extend the application of this model to this field.