Abstract Sports news reports, with its unique charm, plays an irreplaceable role in human communication and information transmission. The use of ambiguity in sports news reports is a common linguistic form. Actually with the appropriate application of ambiguity in news, the reports will be vivid and exact rather than being worse. This thesis is built on the theoretical reflections of adaptation theory and studies the using characteristics, reasons and effects of ambiguity in sports news reports from phonetic, lexical and syntactic aspects, in order to help the readers understand the charm of English language better. 69694

Keywords: Sports news reports; Ambiguity; Adaptation theory

摘要体育新闻以其独特的魅力在人类交流与信息的传递中发挥着不可替代的作用。体育新闻中模糊语的使用是较为常见的一种语言形式，恰当的使用模糊语不仅不会影响报道，反而会使之更加生动，准确。本论文以顺应论为理论指导，从语音，词汇，句法三个层面研究模糊语在体育新闻报道中的使用特点，原因和效果。从而帮助读者更好的体会英语语言文字的魅力。

毕业论文关键词：体育新闻报道；模糊语；顺应理论

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Development of the study on English sports news 1

2.2 Development of the study on ambiguity in language 2

3. Theoretical Foundation of Ambiguity 2

3.1 The Adaptation Theory 3

3.2 The definition and general characteristics of ambiguity 3

3.3 Differences among vagueness, generality and ambiguity 6

4. Ambiguity in Sports News Reports 6

4.1 Utilization of ambiguity in phonetic system 6

4.2 Utilization of ambiguity in lexical system 7

4.3 Utilization of ambiguity in syntactic system 7

5. Causes and Pragmatics effects of Applying Ambiguity in Sports News Reports 8

5.1 Causes of applying ambigutiy in sports news reports 8

5.2 Maintaining objectivity of sports news 9

5.3 Satisfying the new demands of readers 9

5.4 Mitigating the negative sides in sports 9

6. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction 

As we all know, ambiguity and precision are the two basic elements of language. But people always concentrate on precision. Until the middle of the 20th century, L. A. Zadeh put forward the Fuzzy Sets theory firstly,ambiguity started to draw more attention. People began to realize and admitted the existence of ambiguity is important and necessary. Afterwards Verschueren came up with the Adaptation theory, which reasonably accounted for the motivation and effects of ambiguity in social communication. He considered that communication is the process of adaptation. During this process, people would make the choice of language intentionally or unintentionally. Under this theoretical guidance, this thesis try to analyze how ambiguity is used in sports news reports to adapt to mental world, material world and social world. In order to achieve a clear understanding of ambiguity, this thesis intends to study the definition of ambiguity and expounds the differences among fuzziness, vagueness, ambiguity and generality. With the sports news reports is becoming more and more popular in international communication, readers’ requirements for sports news reports are also rigorous. Thus the variability of ambiguity would appear in accordance with nationality and register. The fifth part of the thesis studies the ambiguity in sports news reports specifically. Based on the adaptation theory, it studies the utilization of ambiguity in phonetic, lexical and syntactic system. At the same time, this thesis also refers to the reasons and effects of using ambiguity in sports news reports.