| Study of vagueness can be dated back to the ancient Greek time, during whichvagueness came into the sight of philosophers as a kind of linguistic phenomenon.With the publication of Fuzzy Sets by Zadeh (1965), the era of vagueness study beginsand marches into a more comprehensive stage.Linguists have tried to approach vagueness from different perspectives, coveringfrom the generation, interpretation, pragmatic functions to cognitive mechanism, thuscreating a colorful area of vagueness study.In the thesis, the author chooses news vagueness as the studying object andintends to illustrate the cognitive mechanism of vagueness generating and interpretingby relevance-adaptation theory. The theory is first put forward by Yang Ping (2000)and improved by Ran Yongping (2004), developing it into a comprehensive theorycovering the both parties of communication. The author intends to approachvagueness in news report from the cognitive perspective, so as to make up thevacancy of the cognitive study of news vagueness.It·s found that four steps are followed in the vagueness generating andinterpreting process: relevance presumptions made based on contexts under the guideof optimal relevance, adaptation of relevance presumptions according to the context,identifying relevance presumptions, and generating and interpreting vagueness. Thisis a dynamic process filled with adaptations and choices-makings based on thecontexts. To verify the process mentioned above, the author uses qualitative method toillustrate the generating process of news vagueness by giving some examples.Meanwhile, tests are made to verify the interpreting process. The subjects in test areinvited to give their understandings of a vague expression at different stages of news reading process. Based on the data analyzed, it is proved that the cognitive rules alsoapply to vagueness interpreting process, which is also a dynamic context-driven,relevance-guided, choices and adaptations making process. |
PDF Full Text Request