A Study Of Vague Language In Open Interview And Semi-open Interview

In daily communication, people often use vague language, and vagueness has been regarded as a natural property of language. Scholars at home and aboard have done many researches on vague language from different angles. Based on reading relevant literature, the author finds that foreign linguists mainly do quantitative research, while the linguists at home mainly do qualitative research on the vague language which focuses on fixed corpus and can be divided into three categories: the first is the introduction to foreign fuzzy linguistics works; the second is the theoretical study on fuzzy linguistics; the third is the study on the application of fuzzy linguistics. Yet there is little quantitative research on the natural language corpus.This thesis uses the record method as data collection method and 30 postgraduate students from a university as objects. After grouping, give an open interview and a semi-open interview to each group, and then transcribe the recorded data; the transcribed corpus is about 45,000 words. Based on the current classification of vague words, this thesis makes both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the vague language in open interview and semi-open interview.Through counting the number of vague language in open interview and semi-open interview, the author finds that both of the interlocutors in these two kinds of interviews use vague language. In addition, this study finds that the existence of a fixed topic does not affect the overall using-frequency of vague language, but it affects the using-frequency of each kind of vague words through statistical chi-square test. The data shows that in these two kinds of interviews, the using-frequency of intensifier and subjectivizer is higher than that of other kinds of vague words. The author finds no matter what the using-frequency of each kind of vague words is, they all play an important role in open interview and semi-open interview. Under the guidance of Adaptation Theory, the author further analyzes the pragmatic functions of each kind of vague words and finds that people use vague language mainly to adapt to the interlocutors’ interior world and outside world. The interior world mainly includes the mental world and the outside world includes the social world and the physical world. The present study reveals people’s awareness and law of using vague language in verbal communication to help people to understand and use vague language better to achieve the ideal communicative purposes.