A Tentative Study On Pragmatic Functions Of Vague Language

Vagueness in language has been studied for many years by many researchers and scholars at home and broad. American scientist L. Zadeh is the first who has proposed the concept of the "fuzzy set". After him, many scholars began to apply this construct into many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, natural science, social science and linguistics. However, most of them have discussed it from a philosophical and fuzzy mathematics point of view. Peirce is often considered as the originator of the notion of vague language, and is perhaps the first to try to formulate the notion in a rigorous way, as follows:"A proposition is vague where there are possible states of things concerning which it is intrinsically uncertain whether had they been contemplated by the speaker, he would have regarded them as excluded or allowed by the proposition" (Peirce,1902:748). Language which "results from nature and human thinking" cannot and need not be clear and precise all the time, so it should be generally acknowledged that vague language is a common phenomenon in communication. Channell (2000) is the first person who analyzes vagueness from the angle of language teaching, but she only tries to analyze and describe vague expressions in the English language. Neither does she propose principles of how to utilize vagueness in second language teaching and learning.With the globalization of the world, intercultural communication has become a hot research topic, but little study on vague language in intercultural communication has been done until now. The present dissertation works on vague language from the perspective of pragmatics and intercultural communication. The characteristics, production, functions, cultural influence and pragmatic analysis of vague language in intercultural communication, as well as vague language & second language learning, will be explored.After a literature review on the study of vague language, the present dissertation aims to provide answers to some remaining problems in the study of vague language. Firstly, no general agreements have been reached upon what vague language actually is and what it is concerned with. It seems that the term "vague language" is itself still vague. In this dissertation, comparison will be made on the diversity of definitions.Secondly, much systematic descriptive study on vague language has been done, but little interpretive study can be found on the topic; there is even less study of vague language from the analysis of cultural influences. The study of vague language is largely focused on one culture. It is seldom connected with different cultures, and the research of vague language in intercultural communication is seldom touched upon.Thirdly, the application of the study of vague language in second language learning will be discussed in the last chapter of this dissertation.The present dissertation is organized according to the following framework.The first part---Chapter one is the general introduction to the whole research concerning its object, the purpose of the research, and some remaining problems of previous studies. The second part is the main body of the present dissertation, which is divided into six chapters. Chapter two gives a generalized exposition of what vague language is, including different understandings of vague language, various definitions, and the origin of the study of vague language. Chapter three studies the production of vague language---the psychological factors and motivation analysis of vague language production. Chapter Four focuses on the relationship between vague language, meaning and context. Chapter five studies the features and realizations of vague language in intercultural communication; the cultural influence on vague language will also be explored. Chapter six focuses on the pragmatic functions of vague language in intercultural communication; the positive and negative roles of vague language will be elaborated upon. Chapter seven deals with the application of the study of vague language on second language learning. The last part---Chapter eight provides a conclusion to the present dissertation.