An Adaptability-theoretic Approach To Vagueness In American Political News Discourse

Precise language expression is often regarded as the foundation of good communication.However,vagueness is also one of the basic properties of human language.Sometimes vague language can express people's thoughts and ideas even more meaningfully and vividly.Thus,in our daily life and working language,there are vague language phenomenon.Fuzzy Sets(L.A.Zadeh,1965),published in the eighth issue of Information and Control,marked the formation of Fuzzy Theory and opened up a new field for linguistic research.Since then,scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of researches and discussion on vague language from different perspectives.However,most researches are mainly based on Grice's Cooperative Principle,Relevance Theory and Leech's Politeness Principle,while researches are still few from the prospective of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory.Generally speaking,news should pay attention to reflecting objective facts,and have the features of accuracy,objectivity,simplicity.And undoubtedly,accuracy is crucial.But in real life,we can find a large number of vague expressions in news discourse.Therefore,it will be a meaningful exploration to interpret vague language in news discourse from the perspective of Adaptation Theory,and to study the correlation between vagueness and accuracy.Verschueren believes that the process of language use is the process of making language choices constantly at different levels of consciousness of speakers and hearers,which is based on the internal and external factors of the language.The characteristics of the language itself: variability,negotiability and adaptability enable the language users to make the appropriate choices flexibly so as to adapt to the mental world,the physical world and the social world.Therefore,in English news,the use of vagueness is also the choice of language to adapt to the mental world,the physical world and the social world.Verschueren's Adaptation Theory consists of four aspects: contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability,salience of the adaptation processes.This thesis will analyze the vagueness in American political news discourse from the perspective of contextualcorrelation adaptation.Based on Verschueren's Adaptation Theory,this thesis takes more than 60 pieces of political news discourse collected from American mainstream media New York Times as the research data.The research adopts the qualitative research methods of theoretical description and case analysis,taking 40 pieces of news discourse for specific and detailed analysis.The thesis aims to explore vagueness in political news discourse,discuss how to choose vague language so as to effectively adapt to the mental world,the physical world and the social world.Further,the present study intends to summarize the pragmatic functions of vagueness in political news discourse.Through analysis and discussion,it is found that firstly,Verschueren's Adaptation Theory can explain the phenomenon of vagueness in political news;secondly,the use of vague language in news discourse is to comply with the mental world of the readers and reporters,which is an effective communication strategy to adapt to the basic needs of news and social conventions.Finally,this study suggests that vague language in news discourse has the following pragmatic functions: making news reports more vivid;avoiding negative effects on the society;having a high degree of generalization;increasing the acceptability of news;meeting the needs of news policies and strategies;leaving more space for readers to think.In a certain sense,this tentative exploration provides a brand-new perspective for vagueness interpretation.In addition,the discussion of vagueness in news discourse is helpful to enrich the research field of vagueness and deepen the study of vague language.Through the analysis of the phenomenon of vagueness in American political news discourse,it is expected that the research results can help reporters to balance the degree between accuracy and vagueness,so as to achieve the successful communication intention.Meanwhile,it is helpful for the readers to realize that the use of vagueness in English news is a result of adaptation to communicative contexts and then deepen the understanding of various factors behind English news.At last,it is sincerely hoped that the results of the present study can guide language learners to understand the styles and linguistic features of news discourse,and to understand the pragmaticfunctions of vague language in news discourse,as well as the way of multiple angle interpretation of news discourse.