Pragmatic Vagueness As Realization Of Linguistic Adaptation

In communication, precision and clearness is required, no vagueness, no ambiguity. Yet, vagueness is one property of natural language, and in interaction people always use vague language consciously or unconsciously. In verbal interaction, the addressor deliberately employs implicit, ambiguous or equivocal ways of expressing ideas under the condition that he has the ability to deliver them in an explicit, unambiguous or unequivocal manner in order to satisfy certain communicative needs. This communicative strategy as a whole is called pragmatic vagueness. Based on Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory, this paper studies the production of pragmatic vagueness from utterer's point of view. It aims to serve guidance for people to achieve the expected communicative effect with vagueness, thus make the communication go on smoothly.In Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory, language use is continuous making of linguistic choices, i.e. the choice of communicative strategy and linguistic forms. The choice is feasible because of the three properties of natural language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. As one language phenomenon, the choice of pragmatic vagueness is also based on these three properties.Under the guidance of Adaptation Theory, the paper analyses daily conversation in a qualitative way, and studies the production process of pragmatic vagueness. The production of pragmatic vagueness involves the choice among various linguistic forms, negotiation of the pragmatic principles and adaptation of language to context. The body of the study is from Chapter 3 to Chapter 5. Variability defines the range of possibilities from which choices can be made. In a certain context, the addressor may choose the strategy of pragmatic vagueness to realize his communicative need. With the direction of this strategy, the addressor will have to make choice among various linguistic forms: punning, hedge, fuzzy category identifier, commendatory evaluative adjective, euphemism, conversational implicature, indirect speech act and so on. Yet, how should the addressor choose among the variations? This is what negotiation concems. Pragmatically speaking, choices are not made mechanically or according tostrict rules, but on the basis of highly flexible principles. The pragmatic principles studied in this paper include cooperative principle, politeness principle and principle of economy. The utterer may choose to follow or violate (a) certain principle(s) to satisfy his desired effect. Negotiation indicates the dynamic process of choosing flexible principles and strategies, and embodying them in linguistic forms, thus cater for the communicative need. Adaptability enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs. So adaptability is the core of language use. And the adaptation is between language choices and circumstances. During the choice of communicative strategy, pragmatic principles and linguistic forms, context is indispensable. In this paper, the adaptation is mainly made to different voices of language users, the mental world including motivation, emotion and interpreter's stereotyped expectation, and also the social world such as social convention and communicators' social position. In order to achieve the expected communicative effect and realize the functions of pragmatic vagueness, language has to adapt to contextual correlates.Based on the analysis, we draw the conclusion: 1) Pragmatic vagueness is a process of linguistic choices, from the choice of communicative strategy then pragmatic principles and to the choice of concrete linguistic forms. 2) Pragmatic vagueness is the result of linguistic adaptation to the context. With consideration of the contextual correlates and language users' communicative intention, the language users are able to embody the communicating circumstances to exercise the selection of the final use of language. But during the production of language, adaptation and choice are inseparable. The adaptation is selective, and vice versa, the selection is adaptive. To sum up, the production of pragmatic vagueness is the selection activity of the language users' adaptation to the context. It is an alternate circulation process of communicators' adaptation to the context and choice of pragmatic strategy or linguistic structure.