A Pragmatic Analysis Of Vague Language In English Business Letters

Vagueness constitutes the essential features of language. The vagueness in different types of writings has aroused great attention of linguists. Many scholars have been exploring vague language from the philosophical, cognitive, semantic, pragmatic angles since last century; among them, the study on vague language from the pragmatic aspect has greater practical significance. English business letters are the basic and primary means of business communication. In principle, English business letters should be clear, concrete and concise; despite of that, the usage of vague language can also be found (Sun Xiangsheng, 1999, LiaoYing, 2004). Based on the 25 sample letters, the present study has centered its attention on the employment of vague language in English business letters from a pragmatic perspective with the attempts to explore the following three problems: (1) When is vague language employed in English business letters? (2) How is vague language employed in English business letters? (3) What are the specific functions of vague language in English business letters?Based on the data analysis, it is found that the employment of vague language in English business letters has its own specific characteristics. To some extent it can be said that vague language is one indicator of business letter types, i.e. the employment frequency of vague language can represent more or less the business letter types. In line with Lin Bo, Wang Haibin's opinion (2003), this paper divided vague language into active pragmatic vagueness and passive pragmatic vagueness. By using adaptation theory, it is found that vague language is used as adaptation to contextual influences and psychological motivation. And relevance theory can help to analyze that the addresser will not necessarily mislead the addressee in spite of the referential uncertainty of vague language. It can be said that the addresser's employment of vague language is not only to convey meaning but to imply the intention behind. Context of business letters is typical dynamic context. The business letters can be defined as the interaction between the addresser and addressee through discussing, questioning and disputing for the intention to get the benefits. The data analysis has proposed that vague language performs four functions in business letters: (1) making business letters more polite; (2) improving the flexibility of business letters; (3) enhancing the appropriateness of business letters; (4) establishing the self-protection of the writer.This is a preliminary study on vague language in English business letters. However, the author hopes that the study can help students to learn to write business letters in a tactful way.