A Study Of Vagueness In The Scarlet Letter

Vagueness is one of the essential attributes of natural language,which occurs universally in human language.Since L.A.Zadeh put forward the concept of fuzzy set in 1965,vagueness in language has received an increasing interest and study from many linguists.The study of vagueness can be seen in various language styles like news report,advertising,business language,medical language,law language,aesthetics,translation and literary appreciation,etc.Related theories of vagueness provide a new approach for the analysis of literature works.The application of vague theory in literature works has a large potential for future development.The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's famous novel.It has received extensive attention and criticism from academic circles since its publication.However,Although The Scarlet Letter has been studied many times from the aspect of literature criticism such as its theme,characters,moral concept and social values,the study of vagueness in this novel is scarce.Analyzing this novel with vague theories presents a new perspective.The Scarlet Letter is a novel full of mystery,to which vagueness in this novel contributes a lot.As is well-known to all,due to his family history,social environment and special personal experience,Hawthorne's thought is very complicated and ambivalent.Therefore,vagueness is one of the most predominant characteristics of Hawthorne's works,especially in The Scarlet Letter.Actually,this novel is vague in its creation,language application,as well as appreciation.This thesis,equipped with vague theory,is a qualitative study of the vagueness in The Scarlet Letter.In this thesis,examples of vagueness from the The Scarlet Letter are analyzed from semantic level,pragmatic level and rhetorical level.The aesthetic function of vagueness in this novel is analyzed through many examples based on vague aesthetics.Besides,factors leading to the vagueness in The Scarlet Letter are also explored.This study finds that the vagueness in this novel is manifested on semantic level,pragmatic level and rhetorical level.Vagueness at semantic level is mainly manifested through those language expression forms like double negative,modal expressions,oxymoron and evaluation language.Pragmatic vagueness displays mainly in the conversations of the main characters which deliberately violate the cooperative principle.Vagueness at rhetorical level is realized through rhetorical devices like personification,transferred epithet,metaphor,symbolism and so on.Vagueness in this novel can achieve the effects of aesthetic function.In addition,there are four factors which lead to the vagueness in this novel: Hawthorne's psychological contradiction,different understanding from different schools about the theme of The Scarlet Letter,subjective differences of readers' appreciation and vague nature of literature works.