| With the appearance of Zadeh's"fuzzy sets"theory in 1965, various researches have been done on the ground of vagueness from different perspectives, i.e. philosophically, psychologically, semantically, pragmatically, etc. Vagueness as an important part of linguistic study has been extensively discussed in China. However, application of vagueness in business negotiation from pragmatic point of view is inadequate and calls for further research efforts.Business negotiation is a complex process. In order to avoid misunderstanding and inconvenience, language in business negotiation is believed to be precise. But actually, pragmatic application of vagueness is a common phenomenon in business negotiation. How to explain this kind of phenomenon? Based on the authentic examples, the paper manifests that the negotiators employ vague language to satisfy certain communicative purposes, i.e. being flexible, giving right amount of information, being persuasive, self-protection and being polite. By employing descriptive and qualitative methods, the author has a further exploration into the pragmatic vagueness in business negotiation based on the theoretical framework of Grice's cooperative principle and Brown and Levinson's face theory respectively. According to Channell, Grice's CP is relevant to the description and explanation of vagueness in two ways:"vague language may be used to enable speaker to follow the maxims of CP; and vague language is also used when one of the maxims is flouted."(2000:32) Vagueness is helpful to observe the maxims of CP and make the negotiation go smoothly. Sometimes, vagueness is also a useful way to convey some implied message by flouting the maxims of CP. Vagueness is also a kind of polite strategy, especially can satisfy both the speaker and hearer's face need.Thus, the existence of vague language in business negotiation is of great importance. It is hoped that the present study may enrich the research on vague language and provide some hints to negotiators that the appropriate use of vagueness can help negotiators to communicate smoothly and achieve their goals successfully. |
