A Contrastive Study On Vague Language Use In Persuasive Business Letters From Adaptation Theory Perspective

Business English Correspondence(BEC)plays an indispensable role in the increasingly intense international communication and it is also an important part in business writing.When it comes to business letters,the first thing occurred in people's mind is the writing principles they should follow,like “7C principle” which contains concrete,concise,courtesy to avoid vagueness.However,in real business letter writing,appropriate use of vague language can enhance the flexibility in expression,improve the accuracy of language and promote successful business communication.Since Vagueness was first proposed by Zaden,a great many researches about Vague Language were carried out.However,the research subjects are relatively general and they usually aim at studying on all types of business letters.What's more,the research contents are not deep enough which primarily study the classification or the frequency of vague language in business letters.Based on the fact that previous vague language research is not systematic and comprehensive,this research put an emphasis on the application of vague language in persuasive business letters.In actual business communication,in order to achieve maximum self-profit,businessmen often exploit large quantity of vague language in persuasive business letters to persuade his business partners into thinking or acting according to his will.Compared with other types of business letters,vague language use in persuasive business letters is more apparent and extensive.Vague language use in persuasive business letters can make the tone implicit and mild and thus increase the elasticity in expression which demonstrates that research on the use of vague language in persuasive business letters bears great significance.This thesis starts from vague language use in persuasive business letters,using adaptation theory to analyze the application and contrast of vague language use in Native English Speakers'(NES)and Chinese English Learners'(CEL)persuasive letters.Adaptation theory has four research perspectives,structural objects of adaptability,salience of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and contextual correlates of adaptability.Vague language use in persuasive business letters is actually a process of using language in contexts.So this thesis will only focus on the contextual correlates of adaptability.This research has high innovative value: first,it is a contrastive study with high practicability which targets to find out the similarities and differences between these two kinds of business letters and the reasons behind them;second,the research perspective is from the adaptation theory which makes the research more scientific and reasonable;besides,this thesis only pinpoints the persuasive business letters which makes the research results more convincing.The research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative study.Quantitative study is mainly for statistics collecting procedure while qualitative study is employed in the process of using adaptation theory to explain the research results.The source of the research comes from textbooks in Chicago University and business English writing books edited by “Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press” in China.From the research,some conclusions can be drawn: 1,vague language is widely used in persuasive business letters;2,NES's and CEL's sales letters employ the most vague language,but NES's corpus is a little higher than CEL's corpus;3,in letters for establishing business relations,CEL uses more vague language than NES although vague language use all ranks two in these two corpuses;4,in reply to enquiries,NES is inclined to use more vague language;5,in letters for requesting payment,there is a big chance for CEL to use more vague language.The comparative study on vague language use in NES's and CEL's persuasive business letters facilitates us better understanding the adoption of vague language in different pragmatic contexts and sheds new light on how to write more authentic or genuine persuasive business letters in a more tactful way.