A Pragmatic Study Of Vagueness In Teacher Talk In Senior English Classroom

Vagueness, as one of human being’s intrinsic features, has aroused more and more attention from academic circles. Domestic and overseas scholars studied the vagueness from the aspect of semantics. Then, with the development of pragmatics, studies on vagueness have extended to the pragmatic field. In recent years, some scholars and specialists associated the vagueness with the education and explored the relation between these two factors. However, there are relatively few researches on vagueness of high school English teachers and the researches are destitute of analysis on vagueness of high school English teachers based on pragmatic function of vague language. In light of the present condition, this paper attempts to do a systematic survey on vagueness of senior high school English teachers according to 10 pragmatic functions of vague language put forward by Joanna Channel(2000) and aims to present the situation of vagueness employed by senior high school English teachers in their teaching process. By doing this, studies on vagueness of English teaching can be explored further, which may provide more alternatives and options for high school teachers to improve the efficiency of English teaching.Four senior high school teachers and students in four classes which are in the charge of the teachers from one of Zhangzhou High Schools are chosen as objects of the survey. With the methods of audio recording, interview, observation journals and questionnaire, the paper tries to survey the current situation of the usage of vagueness and explore the difference caused by different teachers’ titles and the influence of vagueness on senior English teaching.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the survey shows that vagueness is ubiquitous in senior English teaching activities, which means high school teachers use vague language a lot in the process of teaching. Among the ten pragmatic functions of vagueness, the vagueness delivering power and politeness is more frequently used than the others. Secondly, the teachers with senior titles tend to use more vague language in teachers’ talk. By combing the results of audio records, observation journals and questionnaire, the factor of teacher stands out to be a most influential factor resulting in the different application of vagueness and type of lesson also contributes to the difference. In addition, vagueness plays a positive effect on senior English teaching. Vague language modifies the teachers talk, shortens the distance between teachers and students and creates more intimate and harmonious atmosphere for teaching. On the other hand, the use of vagueness actually guarantees the preciseness of the language. Therefore, vagueness not only improves the teaching authority of teachers, but also smoothes the teaching activities.At the end of the paper, main findings of the survey are presented and concluded. After pointing out limitations of this paper, some suggestions for future research are provided.