An Analysis Of Dialogues In Teahouse From Pragmatic Functions Of Vague Language

As one of the important attributes of natural language, vagueness is a ubiquitous phenomenon in human verbal communication. The research of vague language contains many language phenomena that people are too accustomed to putting it in question. People will use this attribute in the daily communication consciously or unconsciously. According to Grice's Cooperative Principle, in order to ensure the conversation smoothly and effectively, the speakers and the hearers should abide by some basic principles. That is, the two sides should avoid the ambiguity and obscurity in verbal communication, the words they said should be concise and clear, and above all. they should not say what is false. Therefore, even the speakers have the ability to choose the clear ways, they will select the vague language to achieve the aim of communication according to their different needs. In general, this communicative strategy is called pragmatic vagueness. Especially in dramatic and literary works, the pragmatic vagueness is a very important method to express character features.Thus, this thesis is a descriptive and qualitative study in the framework of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle, through the analysis of pragmatic vagueness in drama work Teahouse written by Lao She, analyzing vague language from different perspective. This thesis analyzes its pragmatic functions, thus it can prove this linguistic phenomenon in depicting characters'personality which plays an important role, so it will finally achieve the purpose of expounding and applying the vague language.This thesis consists of six chapters in all.Chapter One is the introduction, which introduces vague language briefly, a very common language phenomenon widely used in human verbal communication and dramatic works. And pragmatic vagueness plays a subtle and significant role in interpersonal communication, now it is used in different fields. Next, the author introduces the background of this research, and explicitly states the research objectives, practical significance and concrete methods.Chapter Two is the literature review. This chapter reviews and analyzes some research contributions which many linguists from home and abroad have made on pragmatic functions of vague language, then states the limitations of previous researches. Meanwhile, the author emphasizes and illustrates the significance and the effects of this research.Chapter Three will mainly probe into vagueness and vague language, which play a crucial part in people's daily life and dramatic works. Firstly, this chapter introduces some famous foreign scholars'cognition and definitions of vagueness and vague language. Secondly, an explanation of some confusable concepts related to vagueness, such as fuzziness, ambiguity, generality, approximation and hedges, etc. Thirdly, it analyzes the interrelationship between vague language and the two communicative principles—Cooperative Principle (CP) and Politeness Principle (PP), so as to specify the research theory. Finally, ten types of pragmatic functions on vague language will be expounded.Based on the analysis of Chapter Three, Chapter Four emphatically analyses the vague language used in dialogues in Teahouse, and further expounds on pragmatic functions of vague language in this corpus. This chapter can be divided into four parts, i.e., the brief introduction of Teahouse, main character introduction of Teahouse, the classification of pragmatic vagueness, and the specific application of pragmatic vagueness used in dialogues of Teahouse.Chapter Five is the further comprehensive analysis of pragmatic functions related to factors in Teahouse.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis. It includes the major findings, implications of the present research, and then points out the limitations of this thesis and some suggestions for further research possibility.To sum up, this research aims at the vague phenomenon in dramatic works from pragmatic perspective. It is completely a new attempt, with theoretical and pragmatically significance. Better understanding and manipulating pramgmatic functions of vague language can help us use language more accurately in verbal communication and literary works. In many cases, it can make the linguistic expressions more natural and graceful, and convey human feelings more effectively.