A Study Of Vague Language In English TV Interview: A Pragmatic Perspective

It is believed that in our daily communication, speakers should use accurate language and avoid unclear and vague expression. However, in practice, because of the objective existence of vague phenomenon and certain communicative purposes, both parties of the communication will use vague language consciously. In the recent years, the wide employment of vague language in communication has evoked increasing interest at home and aboard. The relevant literatures reveal that many scholars have studied vague language in different contexts, but fewer have tried to carry through study on vagueness in English TV interview from the pragmatic perspective. Because of this fact, the author tries to be devoted to the systemic analysis of vagueness and its pragmatic functions in English TV interviews.The thesis aims at studying vague language from the perspective of pragmatics under the guidance of H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP) and Geoffrey Leech's Politeness Principle (PP). The English texts from the recent CCTV-9, VOA, BBC, CNN's TV interviews will be chosen as the reserach materials, and the key points to be investigated are as follows:1. Why do the interviewer and interviewee have to use vague language?2. How do the both parties in English TV Interviews maneuver the CP and PP through vagueness to realize their intended meaning? What are the major devices?3. What are the pragmatic functions of vague language in English TV interviews?The thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapter One is the introduction to the research background, research significance and objective, methodology and structure of thesis. Chapter Two is the literature review. It is composed of the previous pragmatic researches on vagueness, and the pragmatic research in English TV Interviews, especially on vagueness. Chapter Three sketches the theoretical framework, presenting a detailed introduction to Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. This chapter lays the theoretical foundation of the whole thesis. Chapter Four is the key of the thesis. Through the illustration of typical examples, the author attempts to analyze how two vague devices (hedges and vague words) achieve their appliance in English TV Interviews under the guidance of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. Chapter Five is the analysis of the pragmatic functions of vague language in TV English interviews. Through examples, five major pragmatic functions have been summarized, namely providing right amount of information, achieving politeness, self-protection, creating harmonious atmosphere and changing topics. It also points out that abusing vague language should be avoided. Chapter Six is the conclusion, which sums up the major findings and reaches the conclusion that the proper use of vague language in English TV interviews will help both parties of the interviews achieve their communicative purposes effectively.The analysis of vagueness in English TV Interviews attempts to improve our understanding of the language in English TV Interviews and the communicative purposes of participants, and help us to interpret English TV Interviews in a better way. In the meanwhile, it is hoped that the present study could offer some inspiration to language teaching, especially foreign language teaching, which advocates the clear and precise expression.