Analyzing Pragmatic Vagueness In Travel Advertisements: An Adaptation-theoretic Approach

It is generally accepted that the distinct characteristics of modern business English are concise and clear.However,commercial advertisements,as an inseparable part of business English,more often employ vague words and structures on purpose;thereby vagueness becomes a common phenomenon of language use in advertisements.Of course it can not be neglected that vagueness generally exits in nature languages,yet vagueness is used in advertisements to enhance the promotional effect of advertisement.This thesis aims to explore the pragmatic vagueness commonly seen in English travel advertisement from the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,and analyzes how pragmatic vagueness in travel advertisement is realized through linguistic context and through structural objects of adaptation as well as how the adaptation to pragmatic vagueness will have effects on travel advertisements..This thesis adopts the definition of pragmatic vagueness of He Ziran(1990), mainly focuses on the adaptation of contextual variables to pragmatic vagueness in travel advertisements,and uses Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory to analyzes how the adaptation is achieved as well as the features of those adaptations through a qualitative and statistic research of 30 English travel advertisement samples, which are randomly collected from The Times in 2008.Since such elements as Attention,Interest,Desire,Memory and Action(AIDMA) constitute a hierarchical process of a successful advertisement,the variability,negotiability and adaptability of language are often used to achieve the goal of advertising,thereby pragmatic vagueness can be analyzed,better interpreted and understood with help of Adaptation Approach.Based on the analysis and discussion,this thesis draws three conclusions.First, the frequency of pragmatic vagueness in travel advertisement is as high as 48.3%and 46.9%of pragmatic vagueness is achieved through adjectives used in that advertisement,and nouns and verbs account for 13.7%and 10.6%respectively. Second,Linguistic Adaptation Theory helps analyze and explain how pragmatic vagueness in travel advertisement is mainly realized through linguistic context,and 18.3%of pragmatic vagueness is through the adaptation to physical world while 47.3%through the adaptation to the mental world.Third,the effect of the adaptation to pragmatic vagueness in travel advertisement can be positive in some cases but negative in other cases.Although the above discussion may not encompass all pragmatic vagueness used in travel advertisement,this research can bring insightful ideas to the pragmatic vagueness research as well as to common readers of travel advertisement in English.