A Pragmatie Study Of Evasive Answers At American Foreign Press Confernees From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

American Foreign Press Conferences (which are also abbreviated as FPC) play an irreplaceable role in American diplomatic activities. The Foreign Press Conference held by the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs is an important method for the United States to declare the political stance, maintain the national interests and enhance the international communication in world affairs. It is generally believed that the language used by spokespersons must be accurate and clear. However, when confronted with sharp questions, spokespersons would adopt a pragmatic strategy to evade them to maintain national interests or achieve communicative purposes. That pragmatic strategy is evasive answers.Evasive answers are common linguistic phenomena in the daily communication. Since the middle of20th century, this linguistic phenomenon has aroused wide attentions from linguists. Many overseas and domestic scholars have made researches on it and made great achievements. But the majority of these researches have only been done on the evasive answers in political interviews and TV interviews. Few scholars have analyzed evasive answers at American FPC. Besides, the current researches cannot provide a complete guidance for the communication.In1987, Verschueren firstly put forward Adaptation Theory. According to Adaptation Theory, language use is a continuous process of making choices among various possibilities. And it also states that there are three characteristics of making choices: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Language use is a dynamic process, which is concerned with cognition, culture and social world. Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory has provided a new perspective for the researches on the evasive answers.The current paper analyzes evasive answers at American FPC based on Adaptation Theory. It mainly focuses on three questions:(1) How are the evasive answers realized at American FPC?(2) What is the generative mechanism of evasive answers at American FPC? In other words, what is the adaptability of evasive answers?(3) What are the pragmatic functions of evasive answers at American FPC?To solve these three questions, the current paper carries out a large number of studies on evasive answers at American FPC. It concludes that the utterers could realize the evocative purpose by changing the context of the questions, manipulating the focus of the questions and violating the manner maxim. Based on this, the current research analyzes the adaptability and adaptation process of evasive answers and draws a conclusion that the evasive answers at American FPC are the result of adaptation to the social world, mental world and physical world. The research also shows that evasive answers can perform many pragmatic functions at American FPC, such as withholding the information, realizing the face-saving, avoiding the potential conflicts and maintaining the national core interests.