When writing a business letter, people often hold the view that the language used in it should be clear, concise, concrete, considerate, courteous, complete, and correct。 This is known as the "seven Cs" Principle, which has been considered as a significant guideline in business letters writing。

    According to this principle, it seems that language should be used clearly and precisely, while vague language should be avoided in it。 However, in fact, vague expressions can be easily found in business letters。 

It is noticed vague language exits not only in written but also spoken English。 And as a matter of fact, vagueness pervades language。 Since Zadeh first put forward the fuzzy theory in 1965, many scholars have done much research on vague language。 Linguistics all hold that vague language plays an important part in human communication。“Whether one can correctly use vague language shows the performance of one's language, because vague language is an inseparable part of language communication, if there is no vague language in English business letters, which will bring great difficulties to language communication。”(Channel 194)。

In English business communication, vague expressions can be found in business letters as a communicative tool to create pragmatic effects。 That strategy can help addresser achieve certain communicative intention, and it can also offer the addressee a guideline to make out the addresser's intention。文献综述

    Despite the pervasiveness of vague language, people pay little attention in business letters, the present study is going to focus on the pragmatic analysis of vague language in English business letters。 Its ultimate goal is to account for how to use vague language so as to help the communicators achieve their communicative intentions。

The structure of this paper is as follows: Chapter one is the introduction of this paper。 Chapter two is overview of vague language and pragmatic theories, including cooperative principle, politeness principle and adaptation theory。 Chapter three is pragmatic analysis of vague language according to cooperative principle, politeness principle and adaptation theory。 Chapter four introduces five functions of Pragmatic Vagueness in English business letters。 Chapter five comes to the conclusion of this paper。

II。 Overview of Vague Language and Pragmatic Theories 

2。1 Overview of Vague Language 

Vague language refers to a kind of uncertainty, refers to the central meaning of words is clear but the boundary of them is uncertain。 In 1965, American cybernetics expert L。A。Zadeh put forward the famous Fuzzy Sets Theory in the fuzzy sets, which marked the birth of fuzzy theory。 Then subsequently, linguistics and philosophers used the theory to study vague language from fuzzy cognitive, semantic and pragmatic aspects etc, and had borne fruit gradually formed a new subject, which is known as fuzzy linguistics。

    The study of vague language in China was at the end of 1970s, which started late but developed the fastest and has been the most extensive among the brunch of linguistics in China。 Beijing Normal University professor Wu Tieping published fuzzy language which was the earliest use of fuzzy theory to study fuzzy language (25)。 Chinese scholars were interested in the study of vague language from 1979 to 1998, and published nearly 800 papers of fuzzy linguistics research, which not only facilitated the development of the language discipline in China, but also had a great influence on the Chinese literature of other areas。 Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 international trade has become more and more frequent。 Business letters, business negotiations, business contract and business applications, such practical writing of vague language have received the scholars’ attention because of its special pragmatic functions。 Therefore, fuzzy language has been an important field in the study of linguistics and has formed the scale in the academic circles at home and abroad。来-自~优+尔=论.文,网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-