A Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Diplomatic Language From The Perspective Of Metapragmatics

It is a common phenomenon that vague expression is widely used in communication. In view of the properties of vague expression, people employ it as a pragmatic strategy to get their special communicative purposes. The strategy of pragmatic vagueness can be found in many different kinds of styles, such as in daily conversation, advertisement, literature business, diplomatic language and so on. Diplomatic language, as the carrier of diplomacy, is different from other languages. It emphasizes strategies and politeness. Pragmatic vagueness can meet its requirement, so diplomats frequently adopt this strategy on some occasions, such as issuing the results of talks, answering the sensitive questions, smoothing the tense situation and so on.According to Verschueren's metapragmatics, before making the language choice, language users always consciously or unconsciously, according to the context and communication purpose, consider their language forms and make the related adaptation and negotiation. The reflexive awareness of language users in the process of language choosing is metapragamtic awareness, which is a kind of controlling awareness. It is typically reflected in pragmatic vagueness, by which the speaker can make his words more confused according to specific intentions. On the diplomatic occasion, diplomats frequently use pragmatic vagueness to express their points or attitudes. As to the research data in the present study, the author collects the dialogues respectively between the students of Tsinghua University and two famous persons:the former British Prime Minister Blair and the former US President Bush. From the perspective of metapragmatics, pragmatic vagueness in diplomatic language is studied at lexical, syntactical and discourse level to explore how metapragmatic awareness controls the speaker's utterances. The metapragmatic functions can guide the hearer's interpretation in vagueness, so it is very meaningful to study the functions in diplomatic language. Based on the analysis of linguistic realization and metapragmatic functions of pragmatic vagueness, the generation mechanism is dug out. To achieve his special purpose, the speaker has to be in the hearer's shoes to consider his language choice. Therefore, the speaker plays a double communicative role which makes it possible for him to adapt to various contexts and strategically design his utterance. The present research is made from a new perspective and the author hopes it will inspire the diplomats, diplomatic interpreters or translators and English teaching.