Pragmatic Functions Of Vague Language In Online Shopping Advertisements From The Contextual Adaptation Perspective

Recently, with the prevalent use of vague language, studies on it have been conducted deeply and systematically in various fields such as semantics, rhetorics, multidiscipline, culture, etc. In addition, the application of vague language to news report, literature and newspaper has gained ever-increasing studies. As a kind of new advertising form, online advertisements have appealed to academic interest. However, researches on vague language used in online advertisements, like online shopping advertisements (OSAs), prove to be scarce. With vague language in OSAs as the data and the contextual adaptation theory as the fundamental framework, this thesis aims to analyze pragmatic functions of vague language from three contextual adaptation elements:the mental, social and physical worlds.The present study first selects 240 pieces of online shopping advertisements from four Chinese online shopping websites with high popularity and credibility:Taobao, Amazon, Dangdang and Jingdong ranging from January to June of the year 2010. Secondly, based on the definitions of vague language proposed by Peirce (1902), He Ziran (1997) and Joanna Channell (2000), the author of the thesis redefines vague language and uses it as the sampling criteria from the contextual adaptation perspective. All the collected data are counted and the total number of vague expressions adds up to 1268 items. Thirdly, in accordance with the combination of Channell's (2000) and Li Qianju's (2006) classifications of pragmatic functions of vague expressions, the author examines how the 1268 items functions to adapt to the mental, social and physical worlds respectively and then generalizes pragmatic functions of the 1268 vague expressions into three groups in the light of contextual adaptation theory:effectiveness, persuasiveness and vividness.The thesis has the following findings:1) With the effectiveness of vague language, advertisers both adapt to themselves and satisfy consumers' needs to achieve promotion, economy and flexibility in OSAs; 2) For adapting to the social world, advertisers exploit persuasiveness of vague language to adapt to social settings and institutions as well as cultural norms and values, which contributes to reaching a consensus with consumers, showing politeness and esteem in OSAs; 3) Advertisers also employ vividness of vague language to adapt to physical diversities in terms of meeting the demands of fashion, the Internet, gender and age.As to the significance, the research is valuable in the following aspects:1) From a pragmatic perspective, it contributes to extending the application study of vague language to social, mental and physical factors comprehensively and provides a diversified evidence for the investigation of vague language under Adaptation Theory framework; 2) It provides research references for pragmatic functions study of vague language in online advertisements, which stimulates advertisers'interest in the application of vague language in online advertisements and helps them better use vague language; 3) It enhances consumers' further awareness of vague language in online advertisements and helps them better understand vague language so as to prevent them from unnecessary cheats.