The Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Job Interview From Adaptation-Theoretical Perspective

In recent years,people seeking employment in China may be faced with greater pressure to find a job as the country's economy continues to go downward and the number of younger job-seekers especially college graduates continue to be on the rise.To stand out in many work force,one has to have a solid professional foundation.Besides,wording one chosen also plays a key role in the job interview.As a communicative strategy,pragmatic vagueness was usually employed in the job interview to avoid sensitive questions and create a harmonious atmosphere.The present thesis studies pragmatic vagueness in the job interview from the perspective of Verschueren's linguistic adaptation theory.According to this theory,the use of language is a continuous process of making linguistic choices.Besides,the notion of adaptability provides four angles of investigation for language use,that is,the structural objects of adaptability,the contextual correlates of adaptability,the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation process.Pragmatically vague utterances in the interview are a typical adaption process.This thesis,under the guidance of adaptation theory,explores the structural variability,the contextual adaptability and the functions of pragmatic vagueness in job interview through quantitative and qualitative analyses of some interview samples,which are collected from TV program You Are Hired.The research mainly includes the following three questions: 1)What are the linguistic choices in the interview that put pragmatic vagueness into action? 2)How is interview language adapted to different non-linguistic contextual correlates by virtue of pragmatic vagueness? 3)What functions does pragmatic vagueness have in the job interview ?The results show that pragmatic vagueness in the job interview can be put into action by polysemy,homophones,hedges,vague verbs,non-numerical vague quantifiers,numerical vague quantifiers,frequency words,descriptive adjectives,comparatives and superlatives,irregularities of reference,indefinite pronouns,ellipsis,and word order variations.The top three are hedges(21%),frequency words(19%),vague verbs(10%)and descriptive adjectives(10%).Besides,the adaptation process can be influenced by interviewers' psychological contexts,such as their emotions,likenesses etc.social contexts,such as social culture and conventions,and physical contexts,such as time and space.The strategy of pragmatic vagueness can make the interview language adapt to the above non-linguistic contextual correlates.Moreover,pragmatic vagueness in interview can make the utterances more euphemistic and polite,save the interpreter's face,improve the flexibility and avoid absolutization of interview,create the vividness and liveliness of interview.However,if pragmatic vagueness is misused,some negative effects may arise in the interview.