A Study On Pragmatic Function Of Vague Language In Political Speeches

Vague language is a common linguistic phenomenon in language use,and also an important communication strategy.As a word carrier of political speech,vague language acts as lubricant and regulator in all kinds of English speeches on the strength of its flexibility and uncertainty,making language expression more natural and smooth,polite and implicative,flexible and decent.Western presidents always convey their political policies through speeches.As a world power,American presidents know that how to use the speech which is a special propagandist way to achieve the purposes of establishing good international and domestic relations with the audience,propagandizing political views and propositions.As study corpus of vague language,their words of speeches have distinct political color and abundant polite speeches.At present,studies of vague language conducted by many scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on the study of vague semantics,which primarily do some researches about rhetoric and the translation effects.It is more difficult to see the studies of vague language in the speech of American Presidents which are a special group.The purpose of this study is to clarify origin,meaning,classification,function and its application in political speeches of vague language,to deeply and all-roundly analyses the application of vague language in American presidential speeches,it not only provides the materials for functional analysis of vague language in political speeches,but also provides a solid foundation for the application of vague language in political speeches in the future.Since this study background,the author starts from the ten pragmatic functions of Joanna Channell’s(2000)vague language,taking American presidential speeches of political theme as background to conduct the exploratory study,finding that pragmatic rules and reasons in its language,to get speaker’s real intention.To explore the function and influence of vague language used in political speech can provide references for the future study of vague language,and can help the professionals and amateurs to more deeply understand and grasp the pragmatic functions of vague language in the political speech.This paper selects 30 speeches of American presidential speeches as a corpus,and compiled corpora by myself,with the help of corpora analysis software AntConc3.2.4w to conduct the data statistical study,getting the vague language in the American presidential speech of political theme and the use frequency of ten vague pragmatics.It was expected that through the investigation and study of clearly shows the use frequency and application situation of ten pragmatic functions of vague language in the American presidential speeches.This study finds that:(1)Vague language is widely used in the American presidential speech of a political theme;(2)American president all uses vague language in different speeches.In the ten vague pragmatic functions the function of releasing information properly,the function of hiding information with purpose and the function of enhancing linguistic persuasion are more widely used,but the function of female language is used less in the presidential speech;(3)American presidential campaign speech contains richer vague language,through analyzing different types of American presidential speeches to find that the different purposes of speeches are the important influence factors that cause the large difference of vague pragmatics;(4)Although the content of each presidential speech is different,the expressive means of language that are used by most of the speeches are similar.They all try to achieve similar effects on the bodies of listeners so that they will use the similar pragmatic strategy.It used vague language to achieve their purposes of speeches.(5)The functions of Information hiding,information interpretation and information emphasis are more applicated in the pragmatic functions,when they need audiences to focus on the ideas or questions,they will make the best use of vague language to interpret and emphasize it,but for sensitive topics or vocabularies,they will use vague language to skip appropriately.At the end of the article,the author summarizes the findings of this study,at the same time specifying the limitations of this study,and providing constructive suggestions for future study.