1引言
1.1研究目的
国际商务交流在每一个国家的经济发展中一直扮演着重要的角色。在不同的国家之间，交易中的麻烦和冲突可能会频繁发生。在这种情况下，a request forsettlement is always put into the forms of letters of claim. According to the definition ofOxford Advanced English Dictionary, a "letter of claim" (LOC) is an official letterwritten to demand or to request something because it is one's right or one's property.LOC have always been required to be precise and clear. As a mawww.51lunwen.orgtter of fact, vaguenesscan be found in LOC frequently.
The aim of this thesis is to explore the employment of vague languages in LOCand to make a detailed analysis of pragmatic functions of vagueness in LOC based onPoliteness Principle (PP), Cowww.51lunwen.orgoperative Principle (CP) and Face Theory (FT). The mainstudy questions in this thesis to be addressed are as follows:
1) What is the frequency of vague language in LOC?
2) Why do people use vague language in LOC?
3) What are the pragmatic functions of vagueness in LOC?
1.2 Research Significance研究目标
For a very long time, vague language has been depreciated by people while theclear and precise language is always highly praised just because it was believed thatvagueness, imprecision, ambiguity should be avoided. In fact, language can not livewithout vague language. However, as the uncertainty of objective entity boundary, theinconsistency on using language is often shon wwww.51lunwen.org by people for the lack of comprehensiveunderstanding and diverse thinking perspectives. Therefore, the vague form of languageis an inevitable presence.Given former studies concerning vagueness home and abroad, it can be easilyfound that so far vagueness has been studied in various fields. Such widespreadattention paid on vagueness verifies its value for research.At the very beginning, scholars study vague language from semantic perspective,and then they find that vague language can make contexts vague. Thus pragmaticvagueness has been put forward. Since then, vague linguistics has been applied to many practical fields, including language of law, negotiations, advertisements etc. However,little attention has been paid to the vagueness in LOC. The fact is that the usage ofvague language in LOC plays a significant role in solving problems and maintaininggood business relationships. Proper usage of vagueness makes utterances more preciseand objective; proper usage of vagueness helps to protect self from being criticized andsafeguard other's face; proper usage of vagueness can easily express politeness anddraw others' attention.The way to conduct this research shows a new perspective to study vague language.The process of analyzing pragmatic functions will give some advice to business personsin LOC writing, and it will help the addressees understand the vague expressionsadopted by the addresser in LOC.
The present study is a qualitative analysis. Fifty sample letters have been collectedfor this study. The target data are collected from books and articles about business letterwriting as well as articles on internet. In order to obtain valuable materials for thepresent study, the data this thesis draws upon are taken from five books which are listedin References part. These books are written by authors with rich experiences in businesscommunication and published by reputable press. It is supposed that these letterscollected from various sources can be taken as the representative of LOC.The study is also a descriptive and interpretive one. The research makes a detaileddescription and analysis of vagueness in order to reclassify its functions into differenttypes. Then with the guidance of pragmatic theories, the functions of vagueness in LOCare scrutinized. With the alertness of avoiding being subjective, this whole process ofanalyzing is highly speculative and inductive.
2 Literature Review文献综述
2.1 Overview概述
Vagueness, an interdisciplinary subject, has been paid more and more attentionduring recent years and is applied in various fields. In this chapter, we
