A Study On The Vagueness Of Netspeak From The Perspective Of Linguistic Adaptation Theory

The development of human civilization largely promotes the change of language. The popularity of computers has opened up a new media environment for human communication, and an increasing number of people choose to communicate with others in internet. Netspeak came into being, which has drawn general attention of academic circles and has become an important research field. In order to study netspeak, choosing what kind of starting point will be the key. The vagueness is an essential property of language, which exists objectively in the common language used by all members in a certain language community. Thus, it is also one of the research objects of linguistics. Netspeak has the property of vagueness as well. However, there are few researches on the vagueness of netspeak both aboard and at home. Therefore, taking the vagueness as the starting point for the netspeak research is necessary and possible.The present research adopts qualitative research to explore the vagueness of netspeak from the perspective of Verschueren's linguistic adaptation theory. The research aims to analyze the generation of the vagueness of netspeak. Meanwhile, the research tries to explore the pragmatic functions of this communicative strategy. The research questions are:(1) What factors can impact the generation of the vagueness of netspeak?(2) How is adaptation made in the process of using vague netspeak from the perspective of linguistic adaptation theory?(3)What pragmatic functions does vague netspeak perform in internet communication? Based on the observation and analysis of corpus, the research achieves the following findings. Firstly, the vagueness of netspeak is generated through hedges, vague words and language variation, and it generally exists in internet communication.Secondly, the use of vague netspeak is the result of language choices and adaptation. The adaptation is formed through contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes based on variability, negotiability and adaptability. Finally, vague netspeak perform the following pragmatic functions: creating humor, avoiding taboos, generating vividness and saving efforts.The thesis analyzes the vagueness of netspeak based on linguistic adaptation theory. It aims to enrich the research perspective on the studies of netspeak and language vagueness, provide the development of netspeak with the theoretical basis and promote the study on netspeak vertically.