Anhui University

Hefei

April 30, 2004

Acknowledgements

Second, I want to thank Professor Zhu Yue, who gave me his time to clear up my misconceptions and his advice at many points has been invaluable.

In real life, vague language always exists. Vague language production is complicated, concerning not only context and hearers, but also the speaker’s psychological factors.

Generally speaking, psychological factors, in terms of individual psychology, involve motivation, cognition, affection, personality, etc.. Motivation is defined as an inferred internal process that activates, guides, and maintains behavior over time (Baron, 1992:362). It’s believed to be internal processes that can’t be directly observed, but can activate, guide, and maintain overt behaviors, and also can be inferred indirectly through the choice of tasks, level of exertion, insistence of activities, language production and more outer behaviors. Motivation can be categorized in many different ways, according to the level of consciousness, it can be divided into two aspects: conscious motivation and unconscious motivation. The author discusses the conscious motivations of vague language production, that is, the speaker’s or writer’s vague language production is intentional to some degree. The result of analysis shows that the speaker’s vague language production mainly involves the following motivations: supplying the right amount of information, hiding information purposely, protecting oneself, showing politeness, meeting the need for esteem, performing varied illocutionary or perlocutionary forces, following principle of economy, declaring one’s position, communicating affections, etc..

Hence the thesis comes to the conclusion that motivations are the basic premise of vague language production, the same motivation may lead to various vague language production; on the other hand, vague language production may come from different kinds of motivations, there are close relationships between motivation and vague language production.

It’s believed that the study, which explores the relationship between motivation and vague language production from the perspective of psycholinguistics, will be of some help to grasp the static characteristics of vague language, and to explore further the cause of language vagueness.

Key words: motivation vague language vague language production

Chapter One Introduction…………………………………………..1

1.1 The origin of the study of vague language…………………………1

1.2 The basic contents of the study of vague language………………..2

1.3 Problems in the study of vague language………………………...10

1.4 Raising of the topic………………………………………………...11

Chapter Two Psychological Factors of Vague Language Production……………………………………..13

2.1 An informal definition…………………………………………….13

2.2 The process of vague language production………………………14

2.3 Psychological factors of vague language production…………….17

Chapter Three Motivation Analysis of Vague Language Production…………………………………..20

3.1 The term “motivation”……………………………………………20

3.2 Conscious motivations of vague language production………….22

3.3 Summary…………………………………………………………..41

Chapter Four Conclusion…………………………………………….42

Bibliography…………………………………………………………..44

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 The origin of the study of vague language

Just like many other linguistic phenomena, vagueness in language remained unnoticed for quite a long time until the 1970’s, though it does exist in nature language and our daily speech. Up till now, many foreign and Chinese scholars have paid much attention to this research field and have done a great deal to the study of vague language, and representative works have appeared such as A Note on Linguistics and Natural Logic (Lakoff, 1972); 想象されるあいまいさ(Imaginary Vagueness)(菅野道夫, 1978); Vocabulary: Learning to Be Imprecise(Brown,1979) , On Linguistic Vagueness and Stylistic Vagueness (Qin Xiubai, 1984), English Hedges in Discourse (He Ziran, 1985);Vagueness and Ambiguity (Lakoff,1991), Vagueness: an Investigation into Natural Language and the Sorites Paradox (Burns,1991), Vague Language (Channell, 1994); Hedges in Communication (Chen Linhua, Li Fuyin, 1994), A Further Study on Pragmatic Vagueness (He Ziran, 2000), and many more. Among them, Vague Language by Dr. Joanna Channell of the University of Birmingham (in the U.K) in 1994 might be the most systematic book which discusses vague language. This book written from the perspective of pragmatics is a corpus-based work that treats vague words and phrases, vague expressions as research objects.

The art of being vague has been a great concern for the linguists and other scholars both at home and abroad, and vague language has been widely discussed and gratifying achievements have been gained in this research field. As far as their study of vague language is concerned, two major parts need to be discussed in this chapter: One deals with the basic contents of the study of vague language; the other is concerned with the problems that exist in the research field of vague language.

1.2 The basic contents of the study of vague language

1.2.1 Vagueness versus precision

It’s believed that great emphasis are put on such virtues as clarity, precision, and care in the use of language, such as the prices of goods, proper names, scientific terms, population census and many others things, which are usually made in precise language. However, in our daily life, we may notice that the use of vague language is also frequent. For example, when someone asks for our opinions about something, we Chinese may give a reply with “还好，还好” or “不太清楚”. Here, “还好，还好”and “不太清楚” are both typically vague expressions, since the reply can not be decoded quite clearly. With such vague replies, we response for some particular purposes, probably we don't want to declare our positions, or it's difficult for us to speak out our opinions, since the Chinese are not in favor of giving the negative opinions directly in “face to face”conversations. In this way, vague utterances appear.

Furthermore, vague language is widely used in newspapers, magazines, political statements, law documents, even advertisements. We may use vague language to mean different things or for different purposes, and vague language becomes an important tool in communicating thoughts and feelings to each other and it is also the important part of the language production of every speaker and writer, so in our lives we need not only precision but also vagueness. Vagueness and precision play the same important roles in our communications, just as Dr. Channell shows: ordinary language leaves room for people to be vague, to avoid precision and the commitment associated with it; in fact, if people did not have access to vague language, their range of communication would be severely restricted.

1.2.2 Vagueness versus fuzziness

Vagueness has broad meanings. According to Collins Dictionary of the English Language, it may refer to imprecision (of statements, meanings, etc.), or indistinction (of ideas, shapes, etc.), or demonstration of lack of precision or clear thinking, etc.. Actually, there are quite a lot of near synonyms of vagueness in dictionary and they are cited as follows: 1. impreciseness inexactness, inexactitude, unspecificity, nonspecificity; ambiguity, equivocality, equivocalness, equivocation; dubiousness, doubtfulness, questionableness; indefiniteness, abstractness, abstruseness, reconditeness; incomprehensibility, impenetrableness, confusion. 2. indistinctness indeterminateness, undistinguishableness, unintelligibility; faintness, dimness, paleness, weakness, feebleness, imperceptibleness, undecipherableness. 3. obscurity, nebulousness, unclearness, unclarity; haziness, fuzziness, fogginess, blurriness, blurredness, bleariness; cloudiness, opaqueness, filminess, mistiness, smokiness, obfuscation. 4. undecidedness, uncertainty, wishy-washiness, hesitance, hesitancy; vacillation, wavering, inconstance, inconstancy, fluctuating, fluctuation, shilly-shallying, fence-sitting (English Synonyms Dictionary).

The word “fuzzy’’ means “like fuzz; blurred, indistinct (in shape or outline), frayed or fluffy”, or “(of something) not clear in shape, esp. at the edges, misty ” in English dictionary (Oxford English Dictionary; Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). As a technical term, fuzzy was first employed by American scientist L.A. Zadeh in his Fuzzy Sets, which was published in Information and Control (Third issue) in 1965. Fuzzy or fuzziness in the sense of Zadeh means “the categories ’membership boundaries are not fixed, these sets are woolly-edged”. For example, there are no sharp boundaries among the four seasons in a year—spring, summer, autumn and winter; also, the orientations of east, south, west and north might have loose boundaries; similarly, we can not distinguish clearly the tastes of acid, sweet, bitter, and pepper. So the two words are focused on “ classes with unsharp boundaries in which the transition from membership to non-membership is gradual rather than abrupt.”(Zadeh, 975:ix). There are about twenty eight English words whose meanings involve fuzziness according to the study of Professor Wu Teiping (1999), and they are: blurred, blotted, foggy, misty, hazy, cloudy, nebulous, muddy, fuzzy, woolly, soft, dark, obscure, dull, dim, shadowy, intangible, remote, robust, stretchy, indefinite, indefinable, undefined, indeterminate, undecided, inexplicit, indistinct, and vague.

From the above, we can say fuzziness is one of the near synonyms of vagueness, the two words are equal in a broad sense , and both vagueness and fuzziness can be translated into Chinese “模糊”，but we believe that in a narrow sense they are different in that fuzziness is emphasized on unsharp boundaries of category identifiers，that is , their membership boundaries are not fixed, while vagueness is the most common neutral word which may refer to all kinds of uncertain, indefinite, unclear things，so its meaning is broader than fuzziness in a sense. Although before the suggestion of the word fuzzy and fuzziness by Zadeh，vague or vagueness is widely used to refer to fuzzy or fuzziness by philosophers and scholars such as Black，Russell，Fillmore，Binnick , Schaff and many others. Even nowadays, many scholars, including Zadeh himself, are still in favor of using vague or vagueness instead of fuzzy or fuzziness. Furthermore, in order to distinguish vagueness from fuzziness，Some Chinese scholars argue that fuzzy and fuzziness are translated into “弗晰, 勿晰, 乏晰”， it sounds reasonable since these words are consistent with the original meaning of fuzzy or fuzziness.

1.2.3 Distinguishing between vagueness and ambiguity

In order to determine the characteristics of vagueness in linguistics, some scholars are in favor of the distinguishing between vagueness and ambiguity (Schaff, 1962, Weinreich, 1966, Zwicky and Sadock, 1975, Zhang Qiao, 1998). The general approach to distinguishing vagueness from ambiguity may be summarized as follows: In both cases, hearers do not know exactly what they should understand; ambiguity has traditionally been identified where a sentence or word has two or more competing but distinct meanings attached to it, whereas vagueness is seen where distinct meanings cannot be identified. For example, the utterance of (1) is vague while the utterance of (2) is ambiguous.

(1) He arrived at around one o’clock.

(2) Flying planes can be dangerous.

Certainly, a sentence or an utterance may be both ambiguous and vague. An example is cited here by Zwicky and Sadock (Channell, 2000: 38):

(3) There are about a million people in San Antonio and there are about a million people in my introductory course.

　

Here, about a million is different in the two clauses, the first is literal while the second is hyperbole, and in both uses, it is vague.

Scholars who are in favor of this kind of viewpoint of the distinguishing between vagueness and ambiguity have written papers such as: Ambiguity in Natural Language (kooij, 1971), A Note on Vagueness and Ambiguity (Lakoff, 1997), Fuzziness-Vagueness-Generality-Ambiguity (Zhang Qiao, 1998), On Semantic and Pragmatic Ambiguity (Elin, 1998), etc.. Additionally, some scholars are not in favor of the distinguishing between vagueness and ambiguity, such as R.M.Kempson in her Semantic Theory (Chapter 8: Ambiguity and Vagueness). She classifies vagueness into four aspects:

Referential vagueness

Indeterminacy of meaning

Lack of specification

Disjunction

In fact, here, Kempson has regarded polysemants, generality and ambiguity as belonging to the category of vagueness. Actually, many lexicographers tend to identify vagueness as ambiguity (Weinreich, 1966).

1.2.4 Vague language, vague speech and hedges

Just like the distinguishing between language and speech, some scholars assert that vague language and vague speech should also be distinguished. Vague language refers to the vagueness of language and it can also refer to the language units: vague words or expressions or vague structures; while vague speech refers to the vague phenomenon and also vague utterances that speakers or hearers can perceive clearly. Vague speech is the product of individual communications; they are related in that vague language is the base of vague speech. However, not all vague language production can result in vague speech, some non-vague language, that is, precise language, can also result in vague speech.

Hedging is a popular research topic for many scholars. Its original designation came from Lakoff who defined it as “words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness” (Lakoff, 1972: 195), or as “ words whose job is to make things fuzzy or less fuzzy”(Lakoff, 1973: 471). Hedges can be used to introduce fuzziness with respect to the speakers or writers’ degree of commitment to the truth of the proposition being conveyed. Therefore, a closer definition of hedges is that it refers to the use of words or expressions that encode the speaker’s or writer’s degree of commitment to the truth of what follows (Schaffner, 2000:187). For example:

(4) John’s feet were blue.

(5) I think John’s feet were blue.

(From He Ziran, 1985)

　

Sentence (4) tells us that the speaker is committed to the truth of the propositions, sentence (5) tells us that the speaker was not sure whether John’s feet were blue or not. Similar hedging expressions are: I am afraid, I think, probably, it seemed that, I believe, presumably, according to one’s estimates, etc.. Such hedges explicitly encode the speaker’s commitment to the truth or precision of what they are saying, and they are called mitigating hedges by He Ziran( 1985). They are also called evidentiality-hedges by Sweester（1981）because they don’t change but just indicate the evidential status of the statement being made .

On the other hand, there are expressions that introduce fuzziness within the proposition that the speaker is expressing; it is called “vague additives” by Dr. Channell, which is defined as “ a word or phrase is added to what would otherwise be a precise statement, to result in a vague reading”(Channell, 2000:18). For example:

(6) Alex arrived at approximately seven p. m.

(7) A robin is sort of a bird.

　

Here, each speaker makes an unhedged statement about a phenomenon of which his or her knowledge is vague. The speaker’s uncertainty is not explicitly encoded. Expressions like these and other similar expressions (kind of, somewhat, more or less, about, around, roughly, and many more) are also called “approximators” by Prince et al.. These hedges are related to vagueness in terms of category membership in that they shift the scope of indeterminateness of a concept or an utterance. Works related to the study of hedges are: Hedges: A study in Meaning Criteria and the Logical of Fuzzy Concepts (Lakoff, 1972), Vagueness and Hedging (Glycan, 1986), Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges (Chen Zi’an, Ran Yongping, 1995), etc.

1.2.5 The study of vagueness in semantics

The study of vagueness in semantics focuses on some words whose meanings implicitly involve vagueness, aiming at explaining the vague phenomenon of nature language. Vague words and expressions are under considerations of both foreign and Chinese scholars. For example, in Chinese, vague words and expressions by Zhang Zhigong (1984) basically include the following:

Words referring vaguely to categories: 大体上, 单单，只是，惟独，一概;

Round numbers: 五十上下，三十左右，二十多，七八十，十来个;

Words of estimation: 有时，或许，一定，也许，恐怕，大概，可能，想必，往往.

In English, for example, Dr. Channell in her Vague Language (1994) fully and accurately makes study on vague words and expressions, which include:

Approximators: around, round, about, approximately, (six books) or so, at least, at most, (not, or no) less than, (not) more than, under, over, etc..

Non-numerical vague quantifiers: bags (of), loads (of), lots (of), masses (of), oodles (of), a bit of, a load of, a lot of, a mass of, a scrap of, a touch of, (a) few, some, several, many, umpteen, etc..

Referring vaguely to categories: or something of that sort, or stuff (like that), or some\anybody (like that), or some\anywhere (like that), or what you have, or what\who\wherever, or whatnot, and so on, etcetera, and all, and all that (sort of thing), and everything, and stuff (like that), and crap, and so forth, the whole bit, and junk like this, or a whole range of things, etc..

It should be mentioned that many scholars believe that vagueness in semantics is related to truth-conditions, for “semantics with no treatment of truth-conditions is not semantics” (Levis, 1972: 169), but some are against this. For example, Lakoff criticizes truth-conditional semantics for dividing sentences into true, false and lacking a truth value, but argues for studying fuzzy boundaries (schaffner, 2001: 185), and fuzziness can be related to vagueness, indeterminateness, which appear unsuited to treatment by truth-conditions.

1.2.6 Pragmatic functions of vague language

Polish philosopher Adam Schaff states in his Introduction to Semantics “Communication requires the vagueness of words”(Schaff, 1962). Although the occurrence of vague words and expressions is much lower than that of precise expressions (Kennedy, 1987) in nature language, yet, it is frequent in our daily life. The use of vague language is an important part of our communication behaviors, and it is a kind of verbal behavior.

The study of pragmatics deals with language use in context and situation, with particular reference to the assumptions and inferences which participants make and the purposes for which they use particular utterances. Several studies show vague language and speech can have pragmatic functions as the following:

To improve effectiveness of language expressing: for example, things like outlines, abstracts, bulletins, brief reports, etc., are often written in vague language to transmit much more information.

To be more precise: this function is seemingly in contradiction with characteristics of vagueness, yet it does function in some specific circumstances such as in law documents or political texts, so vague language is often used to express unequivocal positions or viewpoints.

To make speech vividly: vague language is used in many literary and art works for the descriptions of characters and sceneries, the expressions of feelings and emotions, and so on, so that the works read vividly and lively.

To be more polite: politeness concerns human communicative behavior, and in brief, the core of politeness is showing or appearing to show consideration of others. Sometimes, if speakers express their ideas in precise language, it may hurt hearers, so vague language can transmit politeness to others. We can say politeness is a feature of vague language in use.

1.3 Problems in the study of vague language

There are two major problems in the study of vague language that remain to be solved. For one thing, it is about the defining of vague language; for the other, it is about the object and category of the study of vague language, and they are as follows:

1.3.1 What is vague language?

Vagueness has been observed to occur widely in language use, but what is vague language? People have different beliefs about it. For example, Crystal and Day (1975) call vagueness as imprecision, and they state “ lack of precision is one of the most important features of the vocabulary of informal conversation”.

Ullmann notes that “ If one looks more closely at this vagueness one soon discovers that the term is itself rather vague and ambiguous: the condition it refers to is not a uniform feature but has many aspects and may result from a variety of causes. Some of these are inherent in the very nature of language, whereas others come into play only in special circumstance” (1962:118).

Zhao Yuanren points out: “In fact, vagueness itself is rather vague, since those borderland cases as whether borderland cases loom large loom large themselves” (Zhao Yuanren, 1959), here, actually, Zhao’s vagueness is Zadeh’s fuzziness.

Dr.Channell believes: “An expression or word is vague if: 1.it can be contrasted with another word or expressions which appears to render the same proposition; 2. it is “purposely and unabashedly vague”; 3.its meaning arises from the intrinsic uncertainty (Channell, 2000:20).

From above quoted viewpoints, we can see different scholars give different opinions about vague language, therefore, a clear and formal definition of vague language has not been determined up till now.

1.3.2 The study of object and category of vague language

Another problem is about the study of the object and category of vague language. Since the history of the study of vague language is not quite long, problems about the object and category of vague language still remain: some scholars argue that only vague language is the object of the study, some argue that the study of vague speech should also be included, some believe fuzziness in language should also belong to the research field of vagueness, and some even put forward the concept of vague grammar. And now, many new disciplines emerge in an endless stream, and the study of vague language may certainly involve language teaching, cognition science, human and machine intelligence, communication, knowledge engineering and many other disciplines. So far, obviously, it’s rather difficult to make sure of the object and category of the study of vague language, but it is of great importance and urgency to determine it, otherwise it would be disadvantageous to the study of vague language from multi-angles and multi-gradations.

1.4 Raising of the topic

From the contents of study of vague language that have been discussed above, we can see that the study of vague language mainly concerns the enumerating of vague phenomenon and the static descriptions and analysis of vague language, but with less attention to the dynamic process of vague language and less regard for the interdisciplinary research of vague language and other disciplines. For example, why do people choose the linguistic form of vague language instead of precise language sometimes or in some specific situations? And what motivations impel them to do so? Since language and psychology are closely related, perhaps from the perspective of psycholinguistics, which is an interdisciplinary field that concerns: what mental processes are involved in language use and what linguistic knowledge is involved in language use, we may explore the answers to these questions. So this paper just attempts to make explorations on the motivations of vague language production—why people use vague language and what they are motivated for. Anyway, we believe it deserves careful analysis.

Chapter Two Psychological Factors of Vague Language Production

2.1 An informal definition

Language is psychologically defined as “ it is a social phenomenon, it is a system of an extremely rich set of symbols, plus rules for combining them. At the same time, it’s a behavior of using these symbols and rules to communicate information（Peng Danling, 2001）. From the definition we can see there are two meanings in language: one is that language is a system of symbols, that is, a kind of language unit—this is the revealing of the nature of language from the angle of static state; the other is that it refers to the process of language use, that is, language expression or production—this is the defining of language from the angle of dynamic state. Therefore, it can be said that language not only refers to the system of language but also the process of language use.

Then, how to define vague language? Just as mentioned above, different people have different views, so vague language is defined from different angles. For example, from the angle of words, it is defined as“vague words are like blurred photographs and ads（Wittgenstein,1953）; from the angle of psychology, it is defined as “Vagueness of communication is inherent in the structure of our ideas, rather than in the language system”（Deese,1974）; from the angle of applied linguistics, it is defined as“Lack of precision is one of the most important features of the vocabulary of informal conversation ” （Crystal and Davy,1975）; from the angle of semantics, it is defined as “A symbol is vague in so far as its border cases of applicability loom large in comparison with its clear cases”（Zhao Yuanren,1959）; from the angle of rhetoric, it is defined as “ If there are more than two interpretations of an utterance or an article, it is vague speech”（Wang Xijie,1980）.

Hence up till now, there is no clear and precise definition of vague language. According to the connotation of language, we believe vague language can refer to the language symbols whose meanings involve vagueness, so it may be vague speech or vague structures, and thus, vagueness that will be discussed in this paper involves the following aspects:

First, hedges: including two kinds, one is altering hedges which revise the original utterance in some degree or shift the scope of indeterminateness of the utterance, such as sort of，kind of, about, some, properly, at least, etc.; the other is mitigating hedges which does not change the original meaning of the utterance, but moderate the tune of confirming, such as I believe, I think, probably, it seems that, I am afraid, etc.（ He Ziran，1985）.

Second, vague words or expressions such as, or something, whatsisname, 大体上,十来个,可能, etc..

Third, vagueness by implied meanings (including using precise words).

Forth, vagueness by omission.

2.2 The process of vague language production

It’s believed that language production is a kind of activity with some degree of purpose, and people intentionally send messages to others to achieve a particular communication intention. The production of language and speech is a complex process. It’s a speech encoding process of multi-angles and multi-gradations, and also the product of speakers’ special psychological activities, so it’s a more difficult subject to study language and speech production than language comprehension, since ideas leading to speech are far more elusive. Different linguists and psychologists distinguish different stages of language production. For example, Fromkin (1973) suggests an error-based model of six stages (See table 1).

Table 1 Fromkin’s Model of Speech Production

Another linguist Dell believes language production is identified in roughly four levels of nodes: semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological. These multiple levels of process take place simultaneously during the course of language production. The semantic level of processing refers to identification of the meaning to be expressed; the syntactic level of processing refers to choosing a syntactic structure; the morphological level of processing is the stage in which appropriate nouns, verbs and adjectives are determined; and phonological level of processing is the stage in which phonetic segments are retrieved and produced.

Psychologist Anderson (1980) suggests a much more simple model of three-stages, which includes:

Identification stage: determining the meaning to be conveyed in terms of the purpose.

Transformation stage: changing the thought into a linguistic form according to syntactic rules.

Performance stage: speaking or writing out the message in certain linguistic form.

Levelt (1989) believes there are three stages of language production:

Conception stage: preverbal message of the thought to be expressed is generated.

Formulation stage: preverbal message is mapped to the representation of linguistic form, and in this stage, appropriate words are chosen and syntactic features are determined.

Articulation stage: speech sounds are uttered through phonetic organs.

It can be said that the first two models are presented from the perspective of linguistics while the next two are presented from the perspective of psychology. Based on these four representative models, we may suggest an approximate model of vague language production (see figure 1).

At the construction stage, speakers determine the meaning or thought that they wish to express; that is, what they want to say or write.

At the transformation stage, speakers change the meaning or thought into a linguistic form: vague words, syntactic forms and phonetics, etc., to ensure that they are saying in the way they want to.

Construction stage

Phonetics coding Syntax coding Vague words coding

Articulation stage

Perceivable vague speech

Figue1. Stages of vague language production

Certainly, you are influenced by all the phonological, lexical and grammatical patterns of language, even politeness, appropriateness or something like these. This can be said you are at the second stage. At last, you give a reply: “it’s about right ”. Your answer is emphatic about your idea that the situation is not bad, and when you give the reply, we say you are producing vague speech.

2.3 Psychological factors of vague language production

The study of vague language production in psychology traces back to the 1930’s or 1940’s, and yet until now, progress is rather slow, and the research has been superficial and shallow, since vague language production is a very complicated process and the psychological factors to which it relates are complicated, too. Generally, in terms of individual psychology, people’s psychological factors involve motivation, cognition, affection, personality, etc., thus, we believe that these factors may play roles in the process of vague language production.

First, motivation is actually a cluster of factors that energize behavior and give it direction (Ailgard, Atkinson and Atkinson 1979:281). Sometimes speaking or writing is governed by certain motivation, such as walk, sleep, rest, opening or closing the door, etc.. Different motivations may result in different contents and ways of language production, and thus probably vague language production may involve different motivations; this is just the focus of the paper that will be discussed later.

Second, cognition can be defined as the intellectual processes through which information is obtained, transformed, stored, retrieved, and otherwise used (Reed, 1982). Language activity is also governed and adjusted directly by cognitive system—the mind and mental processes, such as perception, memory thinking, and language. Obviously, thinking and making decision play important roles in the speaker’s language production.

Third, generally psychologists believe that affections (feeling & emotion) are commonly responses to how one’s various needs and purposes are or are not met. It seems obvious that affections can be among the causes of actions. For example, if one person weeps, we say it is because she is sad; if she glares at someone, we say it is because she is angry, so affections can be treated as direct causes of action, something like drive states (Mook, 1987:417). Sometimes the speaker may use vague language to communicate his or her affections, and affections can be said to be a factor to influence the speaker’s vague language production.

And fourth, personality is an individual’s unique and relatively stable patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling (Burger, 1990; Boyrne & Schulte, 1990). Some psychologists believe that personality exists in human behavior, people possess specific traits and this knowledge can be very useful in understanding and predicting people’s reactions. But, some other psychologists argue that people actually show very little tendency to behave, or think in different contexts (Mischel, 1977, 1985). They believe that individuals’ reactions are largely determined by current situations and change markedly in response to varying external conditions (Baron, 1992:482). So we say that personality may be one of the mental factors of affecting vague language production.

Chapter Three Motivation Analysis of Vague Language Production

True, we know that a human can speak. Though we can’t observe the mental state itself, we can observe what the person says, and“the words of a language often reflect not so much the reality of the world, but the interests of the people who speak it”(Palmer, 1976:21).

According to Sperber and Wilson’s Principle of Relevance, verbal behavior is a kind of purposive activity; people intentionally send messages to someone to affect him or her for a particular communicative purpose. Also psychologists believe that most voluntary behavior appears to be purposive; it is forward-looking and directed toward a goal. We intentionally send messages to change or modify the behavior of other people, and therefore we select our words or actions with some degree of consciousness (Larry. A. Samovar, etc, 2000: 23). In other words, when we speak, we not only produce some units of language with certain meaning, but also make clear our purpose in producing them.

Thus, as a verbal behavior, we believe that people’s using vague language should be intentional to some degree. They are motivated to speak vaguely, that is to say, there may be various motivations behind the vague language production of speakers, and motivation can be used as a useful concept for understanding vague language. So the focus of this chapter is on motivations of vague language production. Then, first of all, we should be familiar with the concept of “motivation”.

3.1 The term “motivation”

Motivation deals with the causation of specific actions of a living creature; it is the direct drive of behavior. In the discipline of psychology, the study of motivation is quite important. The question, which it always concerns for, is “Why did he or she or it do that? Why did you spend your last little money on meals or movies? Why did you marry him? Why did you use vague expressions? ”, etc.. Any action involves his or her motivation. If someone didn’t have any motivation, he or she would not act, then certainly would die gradually, without linking with the environment in which he or she lives. So most of people are active, with their motivational behavior in their daily life.

Psychologically motivation is defined as an inferred internal process that activates, guides, and maintains behavior over time (Baron, 1992:362). It’s believed to be internal processes that can’t be directly observed, but can activate, guide, and maintain overt behaviors, and also can be inferred indirectly through the choice of tasks, level of exertion, insistence of activities, language utterance and more outer behaviors.

Motivation can be categorized in many different ways. According to the level of consciousness, it can be divided into two aspects: conscious motivation and unconscious motivation. Consciousness is a kind of inner world that consists of human’s cognition, emotion, feeling, and desire. One of the typical characteristics of consciousness is that any of human’s activities has definite purposes, and sometimes it is called awareness; the state of consciousness refers to varying degrees of awareness of ourselves and the external world (Baron, 1992:128), that is, parts of our motivations occur in the level of consciousness. Man can be aware of his motivation of performing, and also he can be aware of his own target by doing something, for example, employing vague language, etc.. However, on the other hand, very often people seem to operate on automatic plot, performing complex activities or tasks while their thoughts are far, far away. For example, they can drive a car, shower, get dressed, wash the dishes, or do thousands of other things without thinking about them consciously; that is, people can perform activities without awareness of their behaviors, and they are powerfully affected by thoughts, wishes, and memories of which they have no conscious awareness, or quite clearly, this is the unconscious motivation, which is much more complicated than conscious motivation.

3.2 Conscious motivations of vague language production

In this chapter, the motivations of the speaker’s or writer’s using vague language will be discussed, but the emphasis will be put on the conscious motivations of the speaker’s or the writer’s vague language production, that is, what purposes and goals they want to achieve by the use of vague language, and this is the focus of the following.

3.2.1 Supplying the right amount of information

American philosopher H.P. Grice (1975) notes that speakers or writers tend to use their language in particular ways. Hence he suggests a general Cooperative Principle (CP) that should be obeyed in the conversation:

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (Grice, 1975:45).

The CP is identified by Grice as guidelines of four basic maxims of conversation. These principles are expressed as follows:

The Maxim of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. More specifically:

Do not say what you believe to be false;

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

The Maxim of Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange and should not make your contribution more informative than is required.

The Maxim of Relevance: Make your contribution relevant to the current exchange.

The Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous specifically:

Avoid obscurity of expression

Avoid ambiguity

Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)

Be orderly and there may be others

Sometimes the speaker uses vague words or expressions as a communicative device to supply the hearer the right amount of information for the purpose of conversation, and very often, he or she may break or flout one or more maxims to follow the CP. For example, a lady gets up in the morning, seeing all her flowers are frozen dead; she may begin her chatting with her neighbor:

（8）It’s really cold last night and I lost some flowers with the frost. (Adapted from Channell, 2000)

　

Here, obviously the speaker knows how many flowers she lost, yet she uses “some flowers” instead of precise number, just for the purpose of chatting. Thus, the exact number of the dead flowers is not important, and it needn’t be told out, so it is obvious that it is a violation of the maxim of Quantity.

On the other hand, the motivation of the lady’s using vague language is rather clear from the very beginning of the conversation.

Similarly, suppose A and B are chatting about income (Both of them are male).

(9) A: How much did you earn at that time?

B: I earned (about) 1800 a mouth then.

In such casual conversation, if A’s salary was $1845.6 a month while he was working in the UN headquarters then. Now he does not tell out the exact number 1845.6, but says like I earned $1800 a month then. Maybe, he adds a vague additive (it is a term used by Channell) about (or around, or roughly, or approximately) which can be used instead of about to give out his salary. Although 1800 is an exact number, B can’t be understood earning exactly $1800 a month then by A, whether B uses the hedge about (or around or roughly or approximately) or not. Therefore, B just gives A the right amount of information, and certainly he can be understood by A, and A would not mind his vague utterance, either.

In the above conversations, we can see the motivation of the speaker’s using vague language aims at giving the right amount of information for the perceived purposes of the interaction and that vague expressions can be used where less precision is required. This may occur in some casual conversations, because in casual conversations, you don’t go into details sometimes (Crystal and Davy, 1975:111-114).

3.2.2 Hiding information purposely

(10) She is about 29 years old.

(From Channell, 2000)

This sentence doesn’t sound unusual to Chinese, but in the case of some people with the knowledge of western culture, this sentence may indicate the hidden information of the speaker. As we know, in the west, in general, the age of a lady’s is considered to be her individual privacy. Ladies always hope to be looking young, and do not like to be said thirty. Therefore, the motivation of the speaker’s vague expressions lies in withholding the true age so as to defend his or her individual privacy.

For another example, the following scene happens in the novel “Birthplace” by Lu Xun. Mother asked Runtu to sit down, Runtu hesitated, and then sat down, putting the long tobacco pipe against the table, brought out a pack and said:

(11) “冬天没有什么东西了，这一点干青豆倒是自家晒在那里的，请老爷……”

（From Lu Xun, Birthplace）

This is a scene when Runtu and “I” (the author) met once again. Obviously, here Runtu withholds some information. From his vague utterance we can perceive that Runtu is very shameful just because of the little shabby gift he has brought. Furthermore, it’s the poverty that makes Runtu persuasively withhold some information, so he can’t bring out the gift without any hesitation and can’t speak confidently. Here, a poor, shabby and chicken peasant appears vividly in front of the audience through Runtu’s vague speech by omission.

Similarly, another example is also from LuXun’s works.

(12) 有一回，他似乎是姓赵，但第二日便模糊了。

(From Lu Xun, Authorized Biography of A’Q)

Here, the author deliberately uses vague language not to tell out the full name of A’Q. His purpose is to show sympathy with A’Q and criticize bitterly the merciless, wicked society of old China, as we can learn from the previous contents of the novel that landlord Zhao has rebuked A’Q and doesn’t allow him to have the family name of Zhao, for he believes A’Q doesn’t deserve to be a relative of him.

Furthermore, the speaker deliberately hides the information he or she possesses, probably with a kind of attitude to someone or something, and very often this kind of attitude is not friendly, even flouting.

(13) I know John whatsisname, he is a whatnot scholar.

From this example we can perceive that the speaker doesn’t wish to mention the name of the man he or she is talking of, so he or she has a pejorative attitude towards the man who is named John or some other name.

To sum up, in these cases, speakers give less information than hearers’ need for clear understanding. Obviously, their withholding information is a violation of the maxim of Quantity, yet it would be appropriate in some situations. Particularly it seems that this use appears to be limited to informal situations of spoken language, with written uses mainly being limited to writing which attempts to reproduce informal speech (Channell, 2000:164).

3.2.3 Protecting oneself

Some speakers employ vague language as a safeguard, esp. some hedges to guarantee that they are not wrong at any time. For example:

(14) ながいあいだ会_つていないが,山田さんの子供さんもさで大きく

な_つたことだろう.

(From YU Yanuan, 2004)

(We haven’t seen each other for quite a long time, probably all of your children have grown up.)

Here the children whom the speaker is referring to is in a dynamic state of development, and also the speaker has not seen the children for quite a long time. So he uses the hedge こと (probably) to express his carefulness, formality and extreme caution. For another example：

(15) “……あ、股長、おはようございます。”

“おはよう。何だ、一体？”

“いえね……どうやらうちの会社、倒産したらしいですよ。”

(Good morning, sir.

Good morning, what’s wrong?

Well…it seems that the company has gone bankrupt.)

(From 山下秀雄，《女社長乾杯》)

The above is the dialogue between “股长” (section chief) and his colleague, the colleague wants to tell his section chief that the company has already gone bankrupt, but he doesn’t make sure of it, so he uses vague language “どうやら……らしい (it seems that)”，since the company’s bankrupt still needs to be confirmed. His vague answer gives the section chief some information about the company’s bankrupt, and at the same time, he protects himself from being wrong, and unnecessary trouble even if he is wrong.

Another similar example is a piece of radio news on March18, 2004 from VOA (Voice of America):

(16) In the Madrid bombing attacks, at least 201 people lost their lives, including women and children.

The background of the news is: Unidentified terrorists made a bombing attack in Spain’s capital—Madrid on March 11,2004, and many people died in the bombing explosion. This news is broadcasted a week later after the explosion. Actually it is already confirmed that 201 people dies in the bombing attack, yet the broadcaster still uses the hedging device at least to modify the number 201,so this utterance can be at least interpreted into two meanings. One interpretation is that at least 201 is not really an approximation, and the news is well understood by the audience that it is 201 people that dies in the Madrid bombing explosion. The other interpretation is that 201 is just an approximate number, maybe the number of the dead persons is 200 or 202，however, the VOA News Agency can not make sure. Anyway, in either case the broadcaster doesn’t want to be wrong and at the same time he can’t be criticized by the audience no matter how the news is understood. Thus, it is just the broadcaster’s broadcasting position that makes him extreme caution, so as not to make mistakes to mislead the audience, since news reporting requires virtues as truth, seriousness and fairness.

In special situations, such as diplomatic situations, the use of vague language can avoid the absolution uttered by precise words, and at the same time, it can also relieve speakers or writers of some responsibilities for their statements and avoid criticism of the audience. As we know I think, it seems that, to the best of my knowledge, for all I know and so on are the speech strategies that are often employed by diplomats. The following is a typical example about the briefing on the U.S. war against Iraq by the U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at Pentagon:

(17) As we know, there are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don’t know we don’t know.

(From “21^st century”, December11, 2003)

　

Here, what Rumsfeld said seems battling and vague, yet, after carefull analysis, we can perceive the messages that the defense secretary wants to send:

The fact is that the United States occupies Iraq (things we know).

When the United States will leave Iraq remains unknown (things we know we don’t know).

We are unaware of some unknowns’ nature (things we don’t know we don’t know).

But we know postwar Iraq is chaotic and dangerous (there are known knowns; there are also unknown unknowns).

Regardless of what Rumsfeld has known and when he knew it, his discourse on things “known and unknown” is made clear: there is more unknown than known I think, in fact, I know that an administration should know more about what it knows and doesn’t know before it thinks it knows enough to go to war. Here in some sense, the Defense Secretary criticizes the Bush’ administration unsharply. In this vague speech, Rumsfeld not only expresses his viewpoint on the war against Iraq, but also defends his own political position, and at the same time he is able to reduce the risk of being criticized by the audience for his battling statements.

3.2.4 Showing politeness

Politeness is a universal phenomenon, it’s the symbol of human civilization, and it can thus be seen as one of the basic social guidelines for human activities (interaction). One of the earliest scholars to describe and explain politeness in terms of principles and maxims is Robin Lakoff (1973), who put forward ‘politeness strategies’ (Lakoff, 1990:35) which includes three parts: ⑴Don’t impose,⑵Give options and ⑶Be friendly. The second major scholar of advocating maxim-and-principle approach to politeness is Geoffrey Leech (1983). Leech divides the politeness of principle into six different maxims: the Tact Maxim, the Generosity Maxim, the Approbation Maxim, the Agreement Maxim, the Modest Maxim, and the Sympathy Maxim. Among these six maxims, the most important one is the Tact Maxim (He Zhaoxiong, 2000)，which is applied most broadly and cannot be lacked. In fact, “Tact” can be said to be the essential part of politeness, and it can be said that employing language politely means employing language tactically, because abiding by the principle of politeness indicates “Minimizing the benefits to self and maximizing the benefits to others ”(Leech, 1983).

In social communications, the speakers use vague language tactically just for the purpose of abiding by the politeness of principle, so as to give their primary message and also the message that they intend to be polite, which is just due to the speaker’s consideration for the hearer. The speaker wants to be close mentally with the hearer so much that the hearer can feel comfortable, and thus accept the speaker’s utterance more easily. For example, the housewife asks the coming visitor at home:

(18) お茶でも飲みましうか.

(Lets’ have something, say a cup of tea?)

でも (something like this) in Japanese is a hedge. By adding でもhere, the housewife politely asks the visitor to drink tea or certainly some other soft drinks such as soda, coffee, orange juice, or something like that, and the speaker is also understood by the hearer as suggesting that the hearer may select within the category of non-alcoholic drinks, and tea included. As we know, Japanese are rather cautious and careful. Whenever or whatever they speak, they always put the feeling of the hearers into their first consideration, thus, hedges such as ほど,ぐらい，ごろ (something like this/ these)， and are often employed by Japanese in their daily face-to-face communications. Possibly, this is typically associated with the thinking mode of Japanese, and also this thinking habit of Japanese can make the hearers feel more free and comfortable. For another example, A is going to the shop, B asks A to buy him some bread just as A leaves:

(19) A: So you’d like some bread?

B: Or something. Anything edible will do.

(From Channell, 2000)

Here, B doesn’t want to request directly, but tries to show his gratitude, so he politely offers A options within the category of “anything edible will do, bread or something” in order that A may buy him some food willingly.

In sum, all these examples show politeness is a feature of language in use, and using vague language is one of the effective ways to show politeness to others, and at the same time, it also relates to the speaker’s motivations.

3.2.5 Meeting the need for esteem

According to Maslow’s motivation theory of hierarchy of needs, human needs exist in a hierarchy: they are physiological need, safety need, social need, esteem need and self-actualization need, among which, esteem need is much higher need to develop self-respect, gain the approval of others and achieve success, which is based on the needs for love and friendship (social need). This includes the esteem of others, and also the esteem for themselves (see Figure2):

Self-

For example, suppose B is an unexpected visitor at A’s house, now A is tired of chatting with B:

(20) A: What time is it now?

B: (looking at the watch) It’s eleven twenty.

A: Ouch. It’s time for lunch.

B: …

Although A is impatient with B, A doesn’t speak out directly, but says like this, so his utterances make B realize that he or she must leave now, and at the same time, it can meet B’s need of esteem, because it does not annoy B, so it also meets the need of A’s esteem.

Meeting the needs for esteem may accord with the face-saving theory (FST) suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987). In fact, the face is just public self-image or self-esteem, since precise language sometimes may bring about bad even awful stimulation to the hearers, speakers tend to employ vague language to protect the hearer’s public self-image, or self-esteem, that is, to save the hearer’s face in order to avoid “threatening face” in the sense of Brown and Levinson (1987). In general, hedges are most often used, among which probably, presumably, I’m afraid, I think, it seemed that, according to one’s estimates, something like that, and so on are included. For example:

(21) I am afraid I can’t be here tomorrow.

This sentence may indicate that I don’t want to be here tomorrow, yet I don’t refuse directly, just for the purpose of saving bilateral faces, and at the same time, the hearer can comprehend very quickly.

In some special situations, the speaker may use vague language to create the humorous atmosphere to save the face of the hearer. Look at the following example:

(22) 有一次，一位钢琴家到美国的一个城市演出。演奏会快要开始时，主持同这位钢琴家走到舞台上，发现剧场的上座率还不到50%，他们当然十分失望。主持人走向前对听众说：“我们这个城市一定十分富有。我看到你们每个人都买了两三个座位的票。”

(From Liu Neishi, Xiong Xue liang, 2003)

　

When the pianist comes to the stage and is ready to give a performance, he or she finds the audience is very few, and at that moment, the pianist falls into an awkward position, but the host or hostess uses vague language to shift the attention of the pianist from the few audience to the richness of the audience, which immediately creates an atmosphere of humor, and at the same time, relaxes the embarrassment and tension of the pianist so as to save his or her face. It is clear that once again vague language becomes an effective way to get to one’s purpose.

Additionally, some studies have found that women use more hedges than men; there may be several different explanations for this:

Prior research claims that vagueness in women’s speech represents a lack of confidence, uncertainty and low self-esteem (Lakoff, 1975), or it’s a reflection of women’s socialization into subordinate roles (Bate, 1991); more recent research indicates that vague speech may express women’s desire to keep conversation open and include others (Wood, 1994). Hedges like “I think, I believe, I feel, I guess, I mean and I wonder perhaps and possibly are tentative vague speech in women’s communications (Samovar & Porter & Stefan, 2000:143).

Anyway, women’s using vague language and speech is related to the needs for esteem, either for the esteem of others, or for the esteem of themselves.

3.2.6 Performing varied illocutionary or perlocutionary forces

According to British philosopher J. Austin, language is not only used for the functions of reference and descriptions, but also for the performance of social actions. In most circumstances, one is doing something when he or she is saying, and hence three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed:

Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference

Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it (or with its explicit performative paraphrase)

Perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance

In appropriate circumstances or contexts, speakers may employ indeterminated, vague or indirect utterances to have the illocutionary forces (at least two or more than two forces) of variously, ordering, urging, or advising, but the perlocutionary forces of persuading, forcing, or frightening the hearers. This kind of phenomenon is called pragmatic vagueness. (Thomas, 1995, Yu Dongming, 1993). Look at the same example that is cited above (Example19):

A’s utterance can be understood as a piece of advice (having lunch together), or a kind of complaint or reminding, or maybe both, or simply annoying B, so the illocutionary force of the utterance depends on the comprehension of B. Anyway, A is not in charge of the possible loss from his or her perlocutionary force to B.

Similarly, a restaurant customer says to a waiter:

(23) We ordered some wine.

(From He Zhaoxiong, 2000)

This utterance can be comprehended as complaint or reminding or maybe both. The illocutionary force expressed from the customer is between complaint and reminding. It’s a vague state of unclear boundaries.

In these two cases, the illocutionary or perlocutionary forces from the utterance of the speaker depend on the comprehension of the hearer. Anyway, the speaker is not in charge of the loss from his or her perlocutionary force to the hearer. For example, the utterance of (24) may have the illocutionary force of “admiration” or “irony”. Certainly, we know if the illocutionary force of the irony is perceived by the hearer, he or she is unhappy. So the speaker does not speak out directly, and in this way, he or she may not only achieve his or her goal, but also needn’t make commitment to himself or herself.

(24) From your mouth flowed speech sweeter than honey

(From He Ziran, 2000)

According to J. Thomas (1995) and Yu Dongming (1996,1997), pragmatic vagueness can function as:

Making the utterance more interesting or not so much interesting.

Strengthening the effect of the utterances

Harmonizing conflicting intercourse purpose of the hearer and the speaker

Showing politeness or saving the hearer’s face

　

3.2.7 Following principle of economy

The so-called principle of economy is also named as principle of parsimony in the discipline of psychology. That is, in the process of psychological judgment, the fewer conceptual numbers it requires, the better it is; in some sense, the least amount of the information, the best it is.

Information transmission needs not only precision, but also rapidness and simplicity to the utmost degree. Vagueness of language descriptions is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it is a good thing, and it can send enough amount of information with less cost and make people ju`dge efficiently and handle some complicated things. In daily conversations, people tend to employ vague language (including hedges) to achieve their communicative intentions or purposes. For example, if you want to drink a bowl of chicken soup on the table, and you are told the soup is very hot with the utterance “ boiling hot”, possibly, you will give up drinking, and thus, the communicative purpose is achieved. We know “ boiling hot” is not precise, yet the message transmitted by it can meet the need of the hearer’s psychological judgment. This is just one of the typical examples of the speaker’s following economic principle.

Furthermore, according to the statistics (Wan Dejin, 1987), the Chinese character’s content is much richer than that in an English word, that is, a Chinese character’s entropy is higher than that in an English word (entropy is a term borrowed from the branch of physics—heat. It is used to measure the information amount of words or characters), and actually, the information amount of Chinese is rather large, just like a kind of IC (Integrated Circuit). Of course, this feature also exists in vague language production. For example, suppose a mother has just arrived home from the supermarket nearby with quite a lot of shopping bags, the son asks the mother what she has bought, and then the mother answers with“好多好东西”. Actually, the mother has bought a bottle of orange juice, three tomatoes, four apples, two tins of beer, a tea-set and dinner-set, and so on, yet she just uses very simple but vague words to answer without telling out all the things she has purchased, which indicates that she is following economy principle, and moreover, it also shows Chinese language is rich in information amount, such as 十来个，二十多，三十 左右，或许，可能， 一定，大体上, etc.. These vague expressions provide speakers with rich language to speak briefly.

In sum, it should be mentioned that following economy principle involves common background knowledge of both the speaker and the hearer so that the messages can be interpreted, and the context in which language is used is also a factor, which affects the speaker’s making utterances economically.

3.2.8 Declaring one’s position

It’s known that politicians are always speaking as representatives of a political party or of a government, and they are engaging in policy-making, outlining or defending their own political decisions, directly or indirectly criticizing or commenting on ideas or actions of their political opponents. Thus, vague language, especially hedging devices are assumed to be decisive parts in a political speech, to declare and even strengthen their positions.

We can see the strategy in Tony Blair’s speech in the 1995 Labor Party Conference. His preferred hedge is proper, or properly, which is used to specify (future) labor policy in contrast to the current policy of the Tony government.

(25) Teachers would be properly rewarded.

(26) This nation needs a proper national integrated transport system…

(27) The privatized utilities will be properly regulated.

(From Hickey, 2000)

In daily life, speakers may use vague language to express their ideas or declare their positions. For example, suppose one of Xiao Li’s colleagues introduces a girl to him to be a partner in marriage, the following is the dialogue between the colleague and the girl after Xiao Li’s meeting with the girl:

（31）你对小李印象怎样？

The girl answers vaguely, but indicating she is under the impression that Xiao Li is not bad. She does not speak out directly just because of her shyness, yet her attitude towards Xiao Li is made clear to the colleague. Therefore, sometimes vague language and speech may become one of the effective ways of declaring one’s position and expressing one’s idea.

Equally, vague language is employed in commercial activities. Look at the following example:

(32) We are sorry to learn from your letter 12 February that a fault has appeared in one of the chairs that you have just bought, such a thing most unusual in good furniture File Smart-Line.

　

This is a reply to a purchaser’s complaint letter. The purchaser has just bought the company’s furniture—chairs. The clerk offers an apology first, then at the same time, he or she uses “most unusual in good furniture” to give the hint that the company’s products are all in good quality though it’s a bargain price, indicating the company won’t pay for the loss of the purchaser.

It’s perfectly obvious that what A has said is an irony of C and also showing A’s anger is also shown with C’s betray to their friendship. Here the irony interpretation is “ He is my bane”.

Similarly, very often we hear the utterance:

(34) Boys are always boys.

This sentence seems to be a kind of tautology, yet in some specific situation, it could implicate something like “that’s the kind and unruly behavior you would expect from boys”. Thus, there are at least two interpretations of this utterance. When it is uttered by a parent of the boy who loves his or her son very much, it may be understood as a kind of outpouring of love to the boy, or tolerance or appreciating, even if the boy has behaved unruly; And when it is expressed by some other people, the speaker may show his or her feelings of disliking, even abominating the boy he or she is talking about.

Here, person B doesn’t think the weather will be fine in their holiday; his vague reply is obviously a habitual utterance in the negative. Thus, speakers’ unconscious motivations, which can result in vague language production, still need analysis in our further research.

Vague language is above all a tool, whether it is English, Japanese, Chinese, or any other language; it is used to express certain ideas of the speaker or the writer. This paper has given a tentative analysis on the conscious motivations of the speaker or the writer of vague language production, aiming at exploring the relationship between motivations and vague language production. A conclusion can be drawn that various motivations of the speaker or the writer are the basic premise of the production of vague language, the same motivation may lead to various vague language production, and on the other hand, vague language production may come from different kinds of motivations of the speaker or the writer, so there are close relationships between motivation and vague language production.

Certainly it is believed that production of vague language is very complicated. It involves many other psychological factors besides the motivation, such as cognition, affection，personality, etc., and all these factors may possibly affect production of vague language. Equally, context, which is termed as the physical, social and psychological background in which language is used (Levinson, 1983:23), sometimes strongly influences the speaker’s vague language production. Different context may result in different vague language production; on the other hand, the hearer, as an important participator, also has an influence on vague language production, so vague language production also depends on the correct understanding of both the context analysis and the hearer. Undoubtedly all these factors need to be discussed and analyzed in the further research of vague language production. We may present a model below to show this (Figure 3).

Speaker

Motivation Hearer

Vague Language Production

Figure 3. Factors influencing vague language production

In conclusion, it is very important to study production of vague language from the perspective of psycholinguistics. It is hoped that it will be of some help to grasp the static features of vague language and to reveal the source of language vagueness based on the study of the motivation of vague language production.

Michael, Garman. (2002). Psycholinguistics. Beijing: Peking University Press.

伍铁平：《模糊语言学》。上海：上海外语教育出版社，1999，115-24 。

张志公：《现代汉语》。北京：人民教育出版社，1984，209-211。