A Pragmatic Analysis Of Vagueness In English Commercial Advertising Slogans

In language communication, Speakers generally aim for specificity and accuracy. However, vagueness is often necessary and even essential. Vague language can be seen everywhere in our daily life, such as in news reports, legal text and business report. There also exists vague phenomenon in advertising language, as a one-way communicative carrier between advertisers and consumers. The content of advertisement is expected to be true and accurate, but the way that content is delivered may be, and often is, as is shown in this thesis, vague. Using vague languages properly can lend the advertisement more persuasive power and at the same time strengthens the originality of the ads and the construction of the product image and identity of the advertising company.Many researchers home and abroad have carried out thorough and extensive studies on vague language from many angles, especially from the perspective of semantics. However, little research has been done from pragmatics. If any, they are done from the perspective of politeness principles. In the thesis, however, I argue that the notion of Expressiveness offers the best account for vagueness in advertising.To demonstrate the validity of my argument, I first review the relevant literature on vagueness, exploring where vagueness come from linguistically. I then apply Leech’s Politeness Principle to advertising to show that while this theory explains some cases of vagueness in advertising, it does not explain others. Lastly, I apply Chen’s Expressiveness to advertising, demonstrating that Expressiveness provides a more convincing account.The significance of this thesis resides in its ability to provide a motivation for vagueness in advertising. Vagueness is viewed as an unfavorable thing by both the layperson and some in linguistics and language teaching, as its opposite, clarity, is the value that gets promoted in the language classroom and in communication in general. However, by showing that advertisers benefit from vagueness, this thesis informs colleagues in linguistics that vagueness is yet another tool for communicators to achieve their goals in specific communicative situations and contexts.