A Pragmatic Study Of Vague Language In Export Trade Business Correspondence

This thesis aims to study the vague language in export trade business correspondence from the pragmatic perspective. It is based on the adaptation theory of Verschueren, who offers a comprehensive and scientific perspective of study. The explanation of the adaption theory is of great importance to this study.The employment of vague language in business correspondence could be classified into two types:deliberate and non-deliberate employment of vague language. People use vague language in regular basis. Deliberate employment of vague language refers to the use of vague language when people do not want to make an accurate description whereas non-deliberate employment of vague language is the use of vague language when people can not make a precise description. The present study focuses on the former, in other words, on how addressers employ vague language on purpose to realize their communicative intention as much as possible. The reasons for addressers to employ vague language is that they adapt their use of language to different contextual situation, especially when they adopt vague language to express certain meanings in different types of business correspondence, even in different phases of closing business dealings. From the analyses of the present study, it can be concluded that there are four pragmatic functions of vague language in export trade business correspondence, namely, increasing the flexibility of business language, promoting the suitableness of business language, enhancing special pragmatic effects like persuasive effect and polite effect, and enlarging the precise amount of information. Furthermore, it turns out that the employment of vague language is a result of linguistic choice and a result of linguistic adaptation.The present study has great implications for addressers to better realize their business intention and for addressees to better understand the implicit meaning of the written business language. Moreover, it has significant enlightenment for business English designers to design really helpful and authentic business English textbooks in the future.