2.1 Definition of Vagueness

With the further research on vagueness, scholars have different definitions of fuzzy language. Mainly has the following:

Deese (1974) thinks that vagueness is not a concept that applies to language, but compared to the ideas that language expresses. Obviously, it is difficult to separate out language from the ideas it expresses, but it is the ideas that vague rather than language is another way of attempting to make the analysis of language less complicated, by shifting the problem away from linguistics to psychology.

Pierce’s definition of vagueness is considered to be the most forceful and admirably clear definition. Without having decided whether certain facts are excluded or allowed by them, he holds that the language system permits speakers to produce utterances. The vagueness of this term is shown through producing borderline cases. Thus, when we say word’s vagueness is usually indicated, more or less to say it explicitly, by some statement that situations are conceivable, in which nobody would know how to use it, in which its application is doubtful or ill defined, or in which it is impossible either to deny or assert its application.

In human activities, vague concepts and vague phenomenon are the important approach to control the nature and law of things. Virtue Theory completely corrects the bias against fuzzy, and promotes the research of vagueness in many fields of science. Rakov (Lakoff), a famous language scholar in United States, was first put forward the theory of Linguistic Hedges in 1972, which defines vagueness as words making things look blurry. Linguistic hedges first study the Semantics and then turn to sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, intercultural communication, discourse analysis research and so on.