A Pragmatic Study Of Vague Language In Cross-cultural Business Negotiation

Vagueness, as one of attributes of natural language, has attracted a lot of scholars’great attention. They contribute themselves to extensive studies on vagueness fromthe perspectives of philosophy, semantics, psychology and pragmatics. Thecross-cultural business negotiation is a complex process of communication; it isusually believed that language should be accurate and specific, not vague anduncertain. So the phenomenon in this business negotiating field has been neglected.But as a matter of fact, vague language widely lies in cross-cultural businessnegotiations.This paper attempts to conduct the study on vague language in cross-culturalbusiness negotiations from the perspective of pragmatics; and it makes aninvestigation on vague language by qualitative analysis and with the assistance ofGrice’s Cooperative Principle and Leech’s Politeness Principle. Based on someexemplifications, it is found that the maxims of the Cooperative Principle and thePoliteness Principle are either followed or flouted in the realization of vagueness inbusiness negotiation across boundaries. At the same time, the pragmatic functions ofvague language are also analyzed, it is concluded that the use of vague language inbusiness negotiations across boundaries can achieve certain communicative purposes,such as, increasing the appropriateness of negotiating language, strengthening thepoliteness in the filed of business communications, enhancing the flexibility ofbusiness language, making the language more persuasive and ensuring aself-protection for the speakers.To sum up, vague language is of significance in cross-cultural business negotiations.This thesis can be of great help for both negotiators and business English learners.