基于顺应论的语用模糊语研究shy;——以中国外交部发言人答记者问为例A Study of Pragmatic Vagueness from the Perspective of Adaptation Theory开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

this paper focuses on the study of pragmatic vagueness from the perspective of adaption theory, taking the spokesmen’s remarks in the regular press conference as linguistic data, which are adopted from chinese foreign ministry (cfm) website. china as one of the most promising developing countries in the world has witnessed a great many achievement in its drive for modernization. it is significant to hold press conference through which chinese foreign ministry posts messages. this is an important bridge between chinese and foreign countries to communicate. there is a large amount of pragmatic vagueness in the press conference to answer sensitive questions. for a long time, the study of pragmatic vagueness in diplomatic language has been an important research subject. based on adaptation theory proposed by verschueren, this paper studies foreign ministry spokesmen’s pragmatic vagueness strategies which can further strengthen the understanding of diplomatic language and its operating mechanism.

pragmatic vagueness has always been the focus of attention in the academic world, both home and abroad. although linguists and scholars from abroad and home have done lots of studies on vagueness, there is little consensus about the definition of vagueness. scholars like thomas. j. a propose that pragmatic vagueness means that in the specific context, the speakers express several illocutionary acts or illocutionary forces to the hearers by means of using uncertain, vague or indirect utterances. this opinion was approved by he zhaoxiong and was also quoted by him in his works. however, professor he ziran, the leading figure in pragmatics holds different views by discussing all kinds of vagueness in semantics. according to li lijuan, pragmatics vagueness belongs to a kind of communicative strategy and means that hearers usually adopt to convey hidden information. at abroad, channell is probably the first linguist who ever tried to give a clear definition of language vagueness. he states that “a proposition is vague where there are possible states of things concerning which it is intrinsically uncertain whether, had they been contemplated by the speaker, he would have regarded them as excluded or allowed by the proposition.” in china, mr. he ziran might be the first linguistic to study pragmatic vagueness. according to him, differences should be made between vagueness and generality. vagueness is a pragmatic phenomenon rather than a semantic one. different context needs different languages forms and characteristics to show it, so does diplomatic language. sometimes it needs precision; while at other time, it must be vague as much as possible.

diplomatic language plays an important role in the success of diplomacy. wei zaijiang gives a comprehensive explanation of the functions of pragmatic vagueness in the diplomatic language within the framework of adaptation theory, face theory and cooperative principles. in diplomatic language, the diplomats could have used explicit expressions other than pragmatically vague utterances. the reason why they tend to choose the vague ones is that they take the press conference which is a formal context into consideration, aware that pragmatically vague utterances might be a better choice than the explicit ones when some challenges are in front of themselves.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

the paper is divided into five chapters:

chapter one introduction

1.1 background of the study

3. 研究计划与安排

before 20th january : settlement of the title

before20th march: submission of the outline

before 25th april : submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1]adrienne lehrer．a theory of meaning [j]．philosophical studies，2012, 161: 97-107．

[2]alisher faizullaev．diplomatic interactions and negotiations [j]．negotiation journal，2014, 30：237-246．

[3]austin, j.l．how to do things with words[m]．oxford：oxford university press，1962．

[4]channell, j．vague language [m]．oxford university press，2000．