1、On the Use of Vague Language in English Journalism浅谈英语新闻报道中的模糊语言的运用On the Use of Vague Language in English Journalism Abstract: Vagueness is an essential feature of human language, and it is also an important characteristic of human psychology. As a linguistic concept together with a linguistic phen
2、omenon, vague language embodies the uncertainty of the language at its extension, News is generally believed to be accurate, brief and clear, however, such uncertainty is often set against the authenticity and accuracy of the news. In fact, in spite of this particular feature, news reports are found
3、 to possess the nature of being vague as well, which seems to show that news reports are not exceptions of natural language. Applying descriptive and qualitative methods, the thesis being studied probes into the functions of vague language in news report on the basis of the theoretical framework of
4、Fairclough s Critical Discourse Analysis, The analysis is conducted by a number of news materials selected from the official and well-known newspaper and news websites, seeking to demonstrate the necessity and importance of vague language in English news and its pragmatic functions within the theore
5、tical framework. The aim of this paper is to illustrate that the usage of vague language in news is unavoidable and its appropriate and accurate use can help to improve the quality of news reporting.Key words: vague language; functions; news reporting 摘要：模糊性是人类语言和人类心理的一个重要特征，模糊语言是一种语言概念，同时又是一种语言现象，它
6、反映了客观事物在外延上的一种不确定性。根据新闻报道的特征，新闻报道应遵循三项原则，即：内容准确，语言简洁，句子清晰。在新闻报道中，很多人往往把这种不确定性与新闻的真实性和准确性对立起来。事实上，英语新闻语篇作为一种特殊文体虽有其自身特点，但作为自然语言，无疑要遵循自然语言的规律，不会与其相悖的。本文主要运用定性和描述分析的方法，借助批判性语篇分析对新闻报道中模糊语言的语用功能进行分析和研究。通过分析收集到的一些众所周知的官方报纸和新闻网站上的英语新闻报道，来说明模糊语言在英语新闻中的必要性和重要性，并阐述模糊语言在理论框架中所体现的语用功能，只有使用得恰当，准确，才有助于提高新闻报道的质量。
7、关键词：模糊语言；功能；新闻报道。IntroductionVagueness and precision are the two basic elements in language. However, many people attach much importance to precision, while ignoring the vagueness for a long time, for they believed that vagueness and imprecision are to be avoided in human language. It did not arouse
8、 much interest until the beginning of 20th century. The famous English scholar B. Russell pointed out the vagueness phenomenon in a paper entitled Vagueness, indicating that language is more or less vague. Later, it was the American well-known mathematician L.A.Zadeh, a professor of the Department o
9、f Electrical Engineering and Electronics Research Laboratory, University of California, who published the paper “Fuzzy sets” in 1965 on Information and Control that laid the fundamental ground of the fuzziness study. From then on, people began to lay much emphasis on the fuzziness study and therefor
10、e fuzzy linguistics develops very rapidly. It combines with many other disciplines, such as mathematics, linguistics, psychology, logic, etc, thus resulting in a number of new subjects about fuzziness.It appears to have two contradictory views about vagueness: one holds that language is a bad thing
11、due to the possibility of leading to misunderstanding; the other holds that it is a good thing because of its flexibility brought to communication. We agree with Channell that “Vagueness in language is neither all bad nor all good. What matter is that vague language is used appropriately.” ( Channel
12、, 2000:3)In fact, vagueness has become an interesting area of research for many scholars and researchers, who have explored it different perspectives, such as philosophy, semantics, psychology and pragmatics. However, little attention has been paid to the vagueness in news. Based on the theory of li
13、nguistic adaptation (Verschueren, 2000), the present study attempts to describe vague language in news from a pragmatic perspective.This research attempts to explore the employment of vague language in news and its pragmatic functions. To be specific, this present study seeks to answer the following
14、 questions:1) What are the main lexical linguistic realization devices of vagueness in news?2) Why do reporters use vague language in news?This thesis is enriched by the following methods to manifest the detailed analyzing of vague language, especially hedges, in English news. The present study uses
15、 qualitative methods to research the application and functions of vague language in English news, such as description, deduction, induction, enumerating and exemplifying.The data collected in the study are various news reports selected from some authorized newspapers and news websites both at home a
16、nd abroad. These newspapers and websites are chosen as representative ones, which are so widely read and influenced. With a view to these respects, the United States, the Great Britain and China news fields are respectively chosen, that is The New York Times, The Observer and China Daily. News in su
17、ch newspaper is believed internationally, authoritatively and mainstream. The data analyzed here are extracted mainly from the articles about politics, economics, society , technology, sports and entertainment.This thesis consists of three chapters, namely, Literature Review, the pragmatic analysis
18、and the advantages and disadvantages of fuzziness.Chapter One is the study of vague language. It explains vague language, its definition and the factors causing vague language; and hedges-the core of vague language.Chapter Two is the pragmatic analysis of vagueness in English news. In this part the
19、thesis comes to its focus that is the investigation of English news with vague language. Chapter Three is the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of fuzziness use in news. Then follows the conclusion which summarizes the main points as well as the results, and points out the limitations and
20、 some suggestions for further study.Chapter 1 An Overview of Vague Language It should be generally acknowledged that vagueness in language is a common phenomenon in communication. However, little attention was paid to it until philosopher Peirce (1902), the originator of the nation of vagueness in l
21、anguage, showed his interest in natural language. In this chapter, we will trace back to the previous studies related to the vagueness phenomenon. Firstly, a number of terms related to our research will be explained and clarified, such as vagueness, ambiguity, fuzziness and generality; secondly, the
22、 introduction to the hedges and hedging will be carried out; finally, approaches to the study of vague language both abroad and home will be introduced.1.1 The Definition of Vague LanguageThere is no generally agreed definition for the term of vague language and different researchers have different
23、ideas about what vague language is concerned. One reason is that vague language itself is vague. However, the present study needs to define the research object and has its own definition of vague language since it is not intending to be all-inclusive.H. P. Grice also offers a definition for vaguenes
24、s: to say that an expression in vague( in a broad sense of vagueness) is presumably, roughly speaking, to say that there are cases (actual or possible) in which one just dose not know whether to apply the expression or to withhold it and one s not knowing is not due to ignorance of the facts. (H .P
25、.Grice, 1975) Grice s definition is a broader one: it applies to what we call pragmatic vagueness as well as semantic vagueness. Not knowing whether to apply the expression can mean (a) not knowing whether applying a statement would be true, or(b) not knowing whether it would be appropriate in the c
26、ircumstances to make such a statement. Black (1937) brings forward a more concrete definition of fuzziness. In his view “fuzziness” is a label for the phenomenon of borderline cases. An expression or a concept is vague or fuzzy if and only if it has borderline cases. An expression or a concept is va
27、gue or fuzzy if and only if it has borderline cases, that is, actual or potential cases in which it neither clearly applies nor clearly fails to apply.It is widely acknowledged that vagueness of human languages shows itself most prominent in words and their meanings. Then how did these words, or so-
28、called vague items, come into being? In fact, there have been kinds of views on the origin of vagueness, and still no firm agreement on it has been reached. According to Chen Weizhen and Wu Shixiong (2002), these views can be summarized as follows; (1) The vagueness of language symbol is originated
29、from the vagueness of things and events; (2) Vagueness is caused by the cognitive limitation of human being; (3) Vagueness is a basic attribute of language symbol. Wu Shixiong (1996) assumes that “the fuzziness of language arises from the process of human s cognition”. (In other parts of this thesis
30、, “vagueness” and “fuzziness” have the same meaning and denotation.)The present study tries to put forward the definition of vague language as follows, based on the definition of Channell (2000) and Zhang Qiao (1998):An expression or a word is vague, if：(1) It has more than one possible interpretati
31、on and no definite meaning can be derived; (2) It is intentionally vague to be used to achieve certain communicative intention.It can be seen that there are no consistent opinions about the definition of vague language, however, such definitions put forward by the influential linguists actually have
32、 something in common and make great sense. Vagueness is typical of human language, and vague language diversifies human being s mind and language expressions.1.2 The Distinction between Vagueness and Some Similar TermsIn fact, there is no unified opinion on the differences between the four linguisti
33、c concepts of vagueness, fuzziness, generality and ambiguity. Though much effort and research has been done on the matter, it is still not clear how to distinguish these four similar concepts and there is a great diversity among linguists in defining them, which share the same characteristic of indeterminacy and convey
