Vagueness Of Na Ge In Chinese Modern And Contemporary Novels

This thesis studies the vague meaning of na ge, and it especially focuses on the vague use of na ge in modern and contemporary Chinese novels. Na ge is a common word in Chinese, whose function is similar to "that" in English. Generally speaking, na ge, when it appears before a noun or a noun phrase, is widely used as a (distal) demonstrative pronoun, or a determiner, which has been widely studied by Chinese linguistic scholars. Recently, the predicate use of na ge, expressing derogatory sense, acquires more and more attentions. Nevertheless, except for the derogatory meaning, the predicate usage is also a manifestation of the vagueness of na ge. Moreover, the vague usage of na ge is far more than that. Therefore this thesis studies this aspect comprehensively.Materials studied in this thesis are mainly extracted from the prized pieces of Mao Dun Literature Award. In addition to these, some other examples searched from CCL (Center for Chinese Linguistics of PKU) corpus are also used. Theories applied in this thesis include the appraisal theory, the intersubjectivity and two other related theories-the politeness principle and the face theory. Through the above-mentioned theories, the materials are classified and analyzed so as to make a comparatively overall discussion on the vague usage of na ge.In this thesis, it is argued that the situation in which na ge is used as a predicate substituting negative adjectives is similar to the situations in which the word is used alone substituting a noun, a verb, or used together with words like "dong xi" (“东西”, thing), "shi" (“事”, thing) but conveying something people do not want to say out directly. In that case, na ge conveys something bad or private so as to evade embarrassment or impoliteness. Nevertheless, the addressee/reader still understands the real reference based on the whole context. Therefore, all of the vague uses of na ge can be studied together. According to the contexts in the novels studied, the vagueness of na ge is classified into two conditions:mutually understood vague reference and mutually understood vague modifier. The former refers to the situations in which na ge is used alone to express vague meaning, and the latter refers to the situations in which the word is used in the "na ge+NP" structure. In light of this classification, the distribution of na ge with vagueness has been analyzed from three aspects:statistical distribution, semantic distribution and functional distribution.As the use of na ge expressing vague meaning deliberately blurs the boundaries of meaning by the speaker/writer, it violates the "avoiding ambiguity" sub-maxim of the maxim of manner in Grice’s Cooperative Principle, but obeys the politeness principle and the face theory. Moreover, according to the theory of intersubjectivity, people do not express those culturally embarrassing things directly for the reason that they take the addressee/reader’s feeling into their consideration.