【正文】 學科分類號 0502 本科學生畢業(yè)論文（設計） 題 目 （中文）： 模糊語在廣告中的應用及其功能 （英文） ： On the Application of Vague Language in Advertisement and Its Functions 姓 名 鄭 歡 學 號 202004001221 院 （系） 湖南科技學院 外國語言文學系 專業(yè) 、年級 英語專業(yè) 2020級 指導教師 劉臘梅 教授 2020年 5月 10 日 On the Application of Vague Language in Advertisement and Its Function by Zheng Huan supervised by Professor Liu Lamei submitted to The Foreign Languages Department In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the subject of English Linguistics Hunan University of Science and Engineering Yong Zhou, Hunan May, 2020 1 Introduction Nowadays advertising plays an important role in today?s business world and it has perated every corner of our life. Advertising promotion needs clear intention and precise information, however, vague language is widely used in ads. Actually, vagueness is an intrinsic feature of natural languages, it has been everywhere in our daily language use. It is the very vagueness that enriches our daily language and enables us to realize different pragmatic effects under different circumstances. And on many occasions, advertisers will choose vague language in ads in order to give consumers strong suggestion and achieve persuasiveness. This paper discusses vague language used in advertisement. It is posed of three parts. The first part serves as a brief introduction to vague language. Vague language refers to a special language with uncertain denotation and nonspecific connotation. Compared with precise language, vague language possesses greater generality and flexibility, which mainly reflect in the denotation of the language. Part two, posed of two sections, focuses on the use of vague language in ads with the help of examples. The first section analyses the reasons for the existence of vague language from three perspectives: language itself, advertisement and human?s thinking ability, and the second section 2 demonstrates the realization of vagueness in ads, by way of different parts of speech, like adjectives, numerals, verbs, etc.. Finally, this paper elaborates the positive and negative functions of vague language and concludes that in advertising language, we should make full use of the positive effect of vague language and avoid its negative effect. Hope this paper will help readers to have a better understanding of vague language in ads. 3 1 An Overview on Vague Language Vague language seems very difficult to define due to the vague nature of language itself. Though great efforts have been made by linguists to give a definition of the term“vague language”, there is still no consensus as there are one thousand hamlets in one thousand people39。s eyes. This part is to present some definitions proposed by several famous scholars. Definition of vague language Pierce is considered as the originator of the notion of vagueness in language. He defines it as follows: A proposition is vague where there are possible states of things concerning which it is intrinsically uncertain whether, had they been contemplated the speaker, he would have regarded them as excluded or allowed by the proposition. By intrinsically uncertain we mean not uncertain in consequence of any ignorance of the interpreter, but because the speaker39。s habits of language were indeterminate。 so that one day he would regard the proposition as excluding, another as admitting, those states of things. Yet this must be understood to have reference to what might be deduced from a perfect knowledge of his state of mind。 for it is 4 precisely because those questions never did, or did not frequently, present themselves that his habit remained indeterminate.(Channell 2020:7) Later H. P. Grice also offers a definition for vagueness: To say that an expression is vague(in a broad sense of vagueness)is presumably, roughly speaking, to say that there are cases(actual or possible)in which one just does not know whether to apply the expression or to withhold it and one39。s not knowing is not due to ignorance of the facts. (H. P. Grice, 1 975) Grice?s definition is a relatively broader one: it applies to what we call pragmatic vagueness as well as semantic vagueness. Not knowing ?whether to apply the expression? can mean not knowing whether applying a statement would be true, or not knowing whether it would be appropriate in the circumstances to make such a statement. After listing some historical views on the definition of vagueness, let?s see Channell?s definition: An expression or word is vague if a. it can be contrasted with another word or expression which appears to render the same proposition。 b. it is‘purposely and unabashedly vague’。 c. its meaning arises from the‘intrinsic uncertainty’referred to by Peirce. (Channell, 2020: 20) Channell?s definition is in fact in line with Grice?s and it applies to 5 pragmatic vagueness as well as semantic vagueness. That is to say, the language system permits speakers to produce utterances without having decided whether certain facts are “excluded or allowed by” them. In China, the first one studying vagueness is Wu Tieping. He says that, in fact, in human language, many expressions have no clearcut boundaries, that is, they are “vague concepts”. And he points out that those words denoting time, color and temperature do not have an