A Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Diplomatic Language From Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Vagueness is an inherent property of language and it appears to be instantiated in all aspects of language use. Vagueness is a matter of linguistic indeterminacy, which can help communicators to achieve expected communicative goals in a specific context. Pragmatic vagueness is a communicative strategy which is fulfilled by means of linguistic manipulation for the purpose of realizing interactive goals.Diplomacy is involved in dealing with complicated international affairs, as a kind of communicative and linguistic art; diplomatic language plays an important role in coping with them. Formative, conservative, accurate, pervasive and strategic as diplomatic language is, it doesn’t spurn vagueness. On the contrary, when faced with international conflicts and sensitive topics, diplomats tend to considerably employ pragmatic vagueness in their words for the purpose of making what they say sound more flexible and euphemistic.Based on Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, this thesis attempts to do a research on the study of linguistic and contextual realization of pragmatic vagueness in diplomatic language, hoping to find what contextual factors diplomats have to take into consideration and how diplomats adapt their words to different situations for the purpose of realizing their diplomatic goals.According to the Adaptation Theory, language use is a process of linguistic choice-making and contextual adaptation. In diplomatic activities, linguistic realization of choice-making and adaptation is achieved mainly at lexical level, syntactic level and rhetorical level. For example, at lexical level, it is realized with the help of general words, hedge, and abstract words. At syntactic level, it is achieved by means of indirect answer, negative sentences and empty verbiage. At rhetorical level, it is embodied in metaphor, understatement, irony and hyperbole. As for contextual adaptation, the pragmatic vagueness mainly adapts to the mental world, social world and physical world. To put it specifically, the adaptation to mental world mainly reflects the motivation of a communication. For example, the diplomats have to maintain a good self-image before the international community and show politeness to the listeners. In social world, pragmatic vagueness helps diplomats to successfully deal with different kinds of complicated international affairs and social customs. In terms of physical world, diplomats mainly adapt to temporal reference and spatial reference. This thesis also proposes the pragmatic functions of pragmatic vagueness in diplomatic language, such as achieving politeness and harmonious atmosphere, shedding off responsibility, protecting interest and being flexible and tactful. In this way, the author hopes people to find some benefits and advantages of pragmatic vagueness in diplomatic language.In the end, this thesis provides some enlightenments of pragmatic vagueness in cross-cultural communication. It provides some conditions in which pragmatic vagueness can be applied during the process of cross-cultural communication and also summarizes some benefits of the application of pragmatic vagueness in cross-cultural communication.