A Pragmatic Study On The Application Of Vague Language In News Report

This is a tentative study on the application of vague language in news reportwhich is viewed as an adaptation to the readers' mental states. It is intended to be aqualitative analysis based on the data collected mainly from corpus, FLOBA andFROWNA to be exact. The theoretical framework is constructed on the basis ofVerschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory.As a kind of mass media, news report plays an important role in people's dailylife. It requests the latest information in the shortest time possible. News reportemphasizes accuracy which is considered as an essential element. In spite of it, vaguelanguage still finds its way into such a formal register. In order to meet thecommunicative needs of informing and influencing, the reporter makes efforts tomanipulate language so as to better fulfill such needs. As to why vague language isemployed in a rather formal register-news, we summarize three reasons: inaccordance with the rules of news spread; in accordance with the readers' psychologyand thinking pattern; in accordance with news policy and news strategy. Havingestablished the reasons for the employment of vague language in news report, we thendiscuss its various linguistic forms, namely, lexical vagueness, syntactic vagueness,and cross-contextual vagueness.The adaptation in news report is analyzed with the guidance of the conceptualframework proposed in Chapter 3. The reporter makes linguistic choices so as toadapt to the readers' mental states. The readers' mental states can reflect theirpsychological needs. It has been established that the realization of news value isachieved through the fulfillment of the readers' psychological needs. The adaptationtakes place in the following aspects: adaptation to the readers' inquiring psychology;adaptation to the readers' cognition patterns; adaptation to the readers' intention toseek common ground; adaptation to the reader's knowing need.Through scrutiny of the data, we categorize the functions or significance of vaguelanguage in news report into the following four aspects: reduce the negative influence;provide protection to the journalists and the news source; handle the randomicity of newsbreak; strengthen the rationality of news forecast. After the summary of thesignificance of the application of vague language in news report, we have discussedits possible scope of utilization.In the last chapter, the author summarizes major findings, points out thelimitation of the present research and at the same time provides suggestions forfurther research.