| With the rapid development of the global economy, business English letter plays a very important role in exchanging information between business participants. In business communication, people often need to convey bad news through letters, such as claim, complaint, postponed shipment, refusal of application or L/C and so on. These kinds of business letters are called bad-news business letters. The writer has to fulfill two incompatible intentions in one message:to convey bad news and maintain a good relationship with the reader through bad-news business letters. Therefore, it is of great significance to master the skills of writing and understanding bad-news business letters.Since the theory of "fuzziness" was proposed by Zadeh in 1965, people have carried out some systematic and descriptive researches on vague language. Pragmatic vagueness, one of the striking features of linguistics, has been attached growing importance by researches within the whole linguistic sphere.Verschueren integrated cognitive, social and cultural factors into the study of pragmatics, and then he initiated and elaborated Adaptation Theory. Under the framework of this theory, this thesis aims to give a descriptive and explanatory account of the adaptive use of vague language in bad-news business English letters. Qualitative study has been adopted in the analysis of forty-five selected bad-news business English letters with an attempt to explore into the following three questions: firstly, how is vague language realized in bad-news business English letters? Secondly, what specific pragmatic functions may vague language generate in bad-news business English letters? Thirdly, how is vague language employed in bad-news business English letters to help the communicators achieve their communicative intentions?The major findings of the present study are as follows.In bad-news business English letters, vague language can be realized by means of the following levels:lexical vagueness, syntactic vagueness, hedges and vagueness by implicature.Vague language performs the following functions in bad-news business English letters:enhancing the flexibility and appropriateness of language, avoiding crisis and ensuring self-protection, deliberately withholding information, using language persuasively, and actualizing you-attitude.The conclusion can be drawn that the employment of vague language in bad-news business English letters is a process of dynamic adaptation to real contexts and mutual choice that has been made from both the contexts and the linguistic structures. Every intentional use of vague language involves the adaptation to the letter writer and the letter reader, adaptation to the psychological motivations, the social world and the physical world of the letter writer and the letter reader. The use of vague language helps the writer realize the communicative intention better and helps the reader comprehend the intended meaning better so as to complete communication smoothly.The study of vague language in bad-news business English letters from pragmatic perspective would help us with a better understanding of this linguistic phenomenon, and better adoption of vague language in business context as well. It is still hoped that the current study can offer some help for those who major in business activities and those who teach and learn business English to realize their communicative intentions in business activities. |
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