A Study Of Vague Language In Horoscope Analysis

In the late 1970s,the concept of 'constellation' in Western astrology was introduced into China as a foreign culture.Nowadays,the communication of mass media in China has transferred the foreign culture into 'constellation' with Chinese native characteristics.In recent years,many researchers have studied the reasons for the popularity of constellation and its impact on people,especially on teenagers from the perspective of psychology,sociology,and communication.However,few researches focus on vague language in horoscope analysis to explore the popular culture.In the late 1990s,Wu Tieping has been the first to propose vague language in China.He has also done many researches on fuzziness from the perspective of semantics.Later,the application fields of vague language extended to pragmatics and cognitive linguistics.According to Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory,the process of using language is actually a series of choice-making,and it is affected by a series of psychological,cognitive and socio-cultural factors.The ultimate purpose of choice-making is to make adaptations to the speaker's and the listener's mental world,social world and physical world.With the aid of fuzzy linguistic theory and linguistic adaptation theory,this study tries to analyze the distribution and classification of vague language in horoscope analysis and the purposes and functions of using vague language in horoscope analysis.Based on the quantitative and qualitative study of 96 pieces of horoscope analysis collected from various magazines online,the author reaches the following conclusions.First,in the light of previous classifications of vague language and the language features of horoscope analysis,vague language in horoscope analysis has been classified into nine types.According to the statistics,descriptive adjectives and speculative adverbs are the most frequently used tactics.Second,taking advantage of the ambiguity and uncertainty of vague language,astrologers make adaptations to the readers' psychological,cognitive,and socio-cultural needs.Meanwhile,vagueness can be used as a safeguard against being later shown to be wrong for astrologers.Therefore,people can acquire a better understanding of constellation through the study of vague language in horoscope analysis and deal with the popular culture phenomenon rationally.