A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Vagueness In English Automobile Advertising Language

Recent years, as the increasing development of the economy, automobile is no longer aluxury good but as an ordinary thing and gradually comes into ordinary family. As the mostimportant tool for sales, advertisement plays an important role in propagating products.Usually advertising language is likely in an oral style, easy to understand and easy toremember. Advertising language is a persuasive language and this character decides it hasanother character: vague. Vagueness has the character of uncertain boundary lines so it hasmore generality and more flexibility. This can give the customer much more rooms forimagination and easy to accept the products.Recent years, the study of vagueness was usually focused on the pragmatics, semanticsand syntax etc. But the study of vagueness in the advertising especially in the Englishautomobile advertising language has not been paying more attention to. As the three basicfunctions of systemic functional grammar, interpersonal function means people use differentmoods and modalities to express different ideas and feelings so as to exchange information.Depending on this purpose, we choose100classical automobile advertisements among over200advertising slogans as research samples. We focus on the interpersonal meanings playedby the vagueness in the selecting advertising samples.By the study of our selecting samples, we get a conclusion that the second person isused more than the first and the third person. The use of second person can make the customerfeels that the product is designed for specificity. As for modality, the use of modallization ismuch more than the use of modulation. As for the advertiser, the character of uncertainty ofprobability and usuality can avoid over promise of the products. Vague adjectives and vagueadverbs are largely used in the English advertising language so as to contain more information.With the use of these vagueness, the feelings of affect, judgement and appreciate are bestconveyed.In English automobile advertising language, the use of vague language can improve thereliability of the products; enhance the flexibility of the language; enlarge the information ofthe products; avoid absolute promise for the products so as not to take unnecessaryresponsibilities. By the use of vagueness, the advertisement provides suitable information andmakes an effect to get the language more precise, easy to understand and remember so as tolet the customer to be glad to accept the products. By the use of vagueness, the advertisementget the effect to make a harmonious interpersonal meaning with the customers so as to get the final destination: product selling.