A Study Of Vague Expressions In English Business Correspondence From Pragmatic Perspective

Vagueness is one of the primary properties of natural language. The famous scholar Ji Xianlin (1996) noted,"In the past, people commonly regarded vague language as something good. But nowadays, some of the world’s foresighters have realized that there is seldom anything in the world being absolutely clear; on the other hand, vagueness is the essence of many things. Since Zadeh (1965) proposed the Fuzzy Set Theory, many researchers have been aroused to conduct systematically descriptive researches on vague expressions, especially from the semantic perspective. English business correspondence (EBC), one significant communicating method during the process of business communication, is supposed to be clear and accurate. However, in order to realize the communicative intentions, the addresser frequently adopts vague expressions in his business correspondence when it’s necessary. In terms of this kind of language phenomena, the author makes an analysis on vague expressions in EBC from pragmatic perspective.In terms of the linguistic realization of vague expressions in EBC, this thesis classifies them into seven kinds from lexical aspect, including vague nouns, vague verbs, vague adjectives, vague adverbs, vague quantifiers, vague modal auxiliaries and vague phrases. At the same time, according to Leech’s classification about illocutionary function, the present paper divides EBC into four general types, which include collaborative letters, convivial letters, competitive letters and conflictive letters, and then the author analyzes the collected correspondences respectively.The author explores the general situations of employing vague expressions in EBC, which consist of two kinds:1) The addresser may use vague expressions when they are unable to be more precise because of the objective reasons;2) The addresser may use vague expressions when they are unwilling to be more precise out of communicative intentions.On the other hand, this thesis explores the interpretation of vague expressions in EBC on the part of both the addresser and the addressee via Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory respectively. It is found that the addresser chooses to use vague expressions in adaptation to the social conventions and to his psychological motivations so as to achieve his communicative intentions, while taking the vague expressions as ostensive stimulus, the addressee seeks to infer the optimal relevance and derive the addresser’s communicative intentions.Based on the research, it proves that vague expressions in EBC have such pragmatic functions:1) providing right amount of information;2) being polite and lessening affront;3) being persuasive;4) enhancing the flexibility of expression.This research is expected to have some theoretical and practical significance. Firstly, it helps to deepen the understanding about the nature of vague expression, its linguistic features and pragmatic functions, communicative strategies and the relationship between language and psychology and cognition, etc; meanwhile, it has a theoretical significance in improving the further study on the combination of semantics and pragmatics. Secondly, it also raises professional businessmen’s awareness to use vague expressions properly when necessary and helps them conduct smooth and successful business communication. Finally, it casts some enlightenment on foreign language teaching, business English teaching in particular. Business English teachers may introduce vague expressions to the course and guide students how to use vague expressions appropriately to achieve their various communicative intentions.