| Vague language refers to the form of language whose concepts of linguistic expressions do not have sharply defined boundaries, or the natural language that has vagueness as its inherent property. In recent years, more and more scholars have come to realize that vague language, just like precise language, is also a useful means of exchanging ideas, and it plays a very important role in language communication. The earliest concern on vagueness is merely confined to the semantic category. Since the 1980s, the focus of vagueness research has shifted to genre-based contextual framework, with vagueness in LSP (Language for Specific Purpose, such as academic and scientific) texts being studied in an extensive, multi-dimensioned way. Following such a tradition and based on the Co-operative Principle and Relevance Theory, the present paper ventures to analyze vagueness that occurs within news reporting, and explores the corresponding pragmatic functions vagueness may perform through the theoretical presentation and specific corpus analysis.Based on first-hand examples from English newspapers and Chinese newspapers, this paper probes into the proper use of vague terms in news reporting. It adopts the view that the fuzzy terms, commonly seen in the press, play unique roles in backgrounding and highlighting news events. Fuzzy as they are, such terms are properly used in news reporting .To reach this end, the paper takes three main steps:First, the paper theoretically discusses vagueness and goes further to explore the inevitability of vagueness in this type of journalistic discourse.Then, it analyzes at great length the vague expressions in news reporting with ample authentic examples from pragmatic perspective and categorizes the concrete pragmatic functions of vagueness in news reporting.Last, the paper advocates a proper attitude towards vagueness in news reporting. While we make the appropriate use of vagueness, cautions must also be taken to prevent the abuse of vagueness in news reporting. |
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