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模糊语言的语用功能及其对英语教学的启示(1)(2)

2013-11-01 01:02 “In our daily verbal communication, some speech, in fact, threatens others’ faces, that is, the speech is a face-threatening act. In order to save the others’ faces, maintain harmonious interpersonal relations, ensure successful social interaction and achieve the communicative goal, one of the means is to use vague terms when the other person’s face is being threatened so as to alleviate the nervous atmosphere, which, in essence, adheres to the Politeness Principle.” [13] For example:
(13) Your coat is a little bit dirty.
The speaker uses a little bit, which observes the Approbation Maxim.
From what we discussed above, using vague terms in some situations is a good strategy to observe the basic principles in communication: being cooperative or polite.

4. The communicative functions of vague language
From the last section of the study of the relations with the two main pragmatic principles, we can conclude the pragmatic functions of vague terms.
4.1 Giving the right amount of information
According to the maxim of Quantity, there are two principles: (i) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). (ii) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Vague expressions are just the device which speakers use to tailor their contributions so that they give the right amount of information for the purpose of the conversation. For example:
(14) We had a procession of 10,000 people.
The “10,000 people” in the sentence is not necessary to be the exact number.
4.2 Deliberately withholding information
“Under some circumstances, the speaker does not want to offer the precise information. So they use vague terms deliberately to solve this problem.” [14] For example:
(15) She is about 29 years old.
This appears to be withholding the exact age, since when questioned, the speaker claimed she had used this form because women do not like to be said to be thirty.
4.3 Lexical gaps
“Speakers sometimes make use of vagueness to convey meaning in situations where they do not have at their disposal the necessary words or phrases for the concepts they wish to express. In this way, people can and often do think about concepts which they cannot really talk about.” [15] For example: （科教范文网http://fw.nseac.com）
(16) A: What does your friend do for a living?
B: She is one of those persons who look after people in a hospital.
A: You mean she is a nurse.
B: Yes, that is the word I was looking for.
Related to this is the temporary lexical gap, which occurs when a speaker cannot remember a word or a name. For example:
(17) “Susan has gone out with what’s-his-name---you know, the boy with the curly hair.” [16]
4.4 Lacking specific information
If a speaker lacks specific information, an observable ploy is to use vague terms. For example:
(18) [percentage of university students coming from working class backgrounds]
I can’t remember what the figures are but it’s something around the twenty percent mark and it’s never changed.
The speaker provides clear evidence (I can’t remember) that this vagueness is obligatory since he does not remember the exact number, which also abides by the maxim of Quality (Do not say that for which you lack sufficient evidence).
4.5 Self-protection
Sometimes speaker uses vague terms as a safeguard against later what he said proves to be wrong. For example:
(19) A: What will be the weather like tomorrow?
B: I think maybe it will rain.
4.6 Being polite
When the use of vagueness is the speaker expressing deference to the tutor at the same time as disagreeing with her, the vagueness is used as one way of adhering to the politeness rules for a particular culture, and not threatening face. For example:
(20) “Could we, when you give us our essays back---and give us titles---could we sort of meet or something---because I mean---there might be things we want to ask.” [17]
We have already seen a possible example of deference between the student and the tutor. The student tends to use a lot of uncertainty markers, therefore, the request leaves the tutor some options and does not threaten the tutor’s face.

5. Its enlightenment in English teaching
There has long existed a misunderstanding that in the process of our leaning or teaching, we should always take great notice of the precision of language. But as we can see from the above, vague language plays an important role in daily communication. In this section, which is also the most practical and enlightening one, this paper will focus on its significant pragmatic functions in particular teaching environment and see how it benefits both students and the teacher to achieve effective teaching. Through our practice of teaching, we may be confronted with various unpredictable situations where vagueness may be the only solution to help us get out of a situation of awkwardness. And the use of vague language may sometimes bring about unexpected results. If the teacher can use some vague terms appropriately in the process of teaching, it will not only do good for the students but also for the teacher himself.

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5.1 Benefiting the students
Language teaching practice provides the teacher with a vast stage where he or she has every opportunity to reveal vagueness to the students. Exactness is only a relative idea. That is to say, in teaching of a foreign language the teacher should try to avoid over-exactness. The mastery of the language also includes its wonderful vagueness.
5.1.1 Appreciating the beauty from the vagueness
(i) In the literary works
To achieve the effect of subtleness and to leave room for the students to imagine, the use of vague language can get the goal. There is a well-known monologue in one of Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet:
(21) “To be, or not to be---that is the question.”
By such ellipsis, we can infer the perplexity in Hamlet’s deep heart when he was trapped by the condition that father had been murdered, mother remarried his uncle who had killed his father, and evil power was dominant at the court. “To be what or not to be what?” such vague sentence has left us endless ponder.
Different students have different experiences, characters and insights. In the process of teaching, the teacher should train their ability of imagination and improve their judgment of right or wrong, as well as improve their aesthetic judgment.
(ii) In rhetorics
The use of vague language can achieve some rhetoric effects.
The following sentences achieve the effect of exaggeration, for example:
(22) The enemy soldiers were scared like anything.
(23) Your elder sister looks for all the world like your mother.
The following sentences achieve the effects of emphasis, for example:
(24) He is ten times the man you are.
(25) He made a thousand and one excuses.
Of course, the rhetoric effects achieved by the use of vague language are not only the above I have mentioned. The teacher should be aware of the unexpected results from using vagueness and guide the students to master this skill to make their communication or writing more humorous.
5.1.2 Improving students’ writing skills

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As far as the students have appreciated the beauty from the proper use of vague language in the literary work and some sentences of rhetoric effects, their compositions will be improved a lot if they can have a good master of vague terms and use them in their compositions appropriately. If they can use them in their narrative compositions, the compositions would become more vivid, more interesting and more readable. If they can use them in their argumentative compositions, the compositions would be more reliable, and more believable.
5.1.3 A better understanding of the culture
“In the course of their learning, the students may pay great attention to the speech sounds, intonation, vocabulary, grammar, and so on. But they usually ignore the importance of the difference of culture. As we know, while communicating, the speech triggered by sounds or written words only takes up a part of the meaning, and the other part is expressed through conversational implicature or culture background. So the teacher should flexibly choose some vague terms according to the culture background and some communicative contexts to enable the students have a better understanding the culture.” [18]
5.1.4 Focusing attention
It is impossible for the students to acquire everything the teacher lectures in class. The students can only bring in valuable information from the teacher. So the teacher can use some vague language to neglect the less important points, thus helps the students to focus their attention on the important ones. In this way, the students can improve their study efficiency.
5.1.5 Saving face
When the students make mistakes, the teacher should avoid damaging their self-respect. Therefore, the teacher should use some vague terms to make his or her utterance more implicit and more enlightened. For example:
(26) “Recently, I found most of the students behave well in the composition assignment, only that some of you didn’t pay much attention to what I told you in class, and their compositions leave a lot to be desired.” [19] Here, the teacher uses recently, most, behave well, some, much, and a lot to present the existing problem and in this way, he saves the students’ faces, which is very enlightening and which is better than the way of calling out the students’ names directly.

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5.2 Benefiting the teacher
5.2.1 Enlivening the atmosphere
When the teacher asks questions, they would use a lot of demonstrative pronouns to ease the students and encourage their participation. For example: the teacher would say “Any volunteer”. The reason for the teacher to use the vague language is that our Chinese students act passively in class, and that they do not like to air their views in public, and that they would feel nervous if they are asked to answer the questions. By using the vague terms, the teacher entitles the right to the students to choose to participate or not, in this way, the teacher alleviates the atmosphere in class.
5.2.2 Easing the students
If the teacher assigns tasks in class, he usually uses vague terms to reduce the difficulty and quantity, which could, to some extent, alleviate the students’ rejecting mood to the assignment so that it could achieve effective teaching.
5.2.3 Dealing with uncertainty
The time for a lesson is fixed. Though the teacher has made a careful plan for each task before class, it is unavoidable to meet some unexpected changes in the process of teaching so that the planned time for each task has to be adjusted. In this case, the teacher could use some vague additives, such as about, approximately, or, at least, at most, or so, under, over, etc. For example: “Now class, I will give you about 5 minutes to discuss this topic. And then I will ask 2 or 3 of you to present their ideas. As there are 50 students or so in our class, I would divide you into 13 groups, about 4 in each.” With the vague additives, the teacher makes the organization more flexible.
5.2.4 Giving suggestions
The teacher can use “I am afraid, I think, I would, etc.”, in the assessment of the students activities in the class or in the assessment of their homework. For example: “I think you may sum up the main idea in this way…”, “I would suggest you practise more after class.” The suggestions made in this way would be more acceptable to the students. Thus, the teacher can achieve his or her goal.

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5.2.5 Avoiding awkwardness
(i) Unexpected situations
In the process of teaching, there would be many unexpected questions raised by some students due to their curiosity. For example: during a lesson talking about the family tree. The teacher has asked the students to bring a family photo to the class ahead of time. In the class the teacher asks some students to come up to the blackboard to talk about their families, and after that the rest of the class can ask questions about their families. Student A volunteers to talk about his family. After his description of his grand-father, grand-mother, his father and mother, he looks grieved when he describes his uncle. He says, “This young man in the photo is my uncle. He is very handsome and kind-hearted, but he is dead.” On hearing this, the whole class is very sad to hear that. Then, one of the students asks questions about A’s family, “Why is he dead?” A looks at a loss and does not know how to explain. The teacher says, “Something maybe happened to him.” The teacher wants to distract the student’s attention. But the student continues to say, “I am still wondering what happened to him.” The teacher says, “I think you’re very sorry to hear that, right? And we are all sorry to hear that.” Then the teacher asks A to go back to his seat, and continues the lesson. From the example, we can see that how the use of vague terms avoids awkwardness and makes the teaching process more fluent.
(ii) Lexical gap
In the process of teaching, the teacher may sometimes forget the exact word or he does not have at his disposal the necessary words or phrases for the concepts he wishes to express. In this situation, the use of vague terms is the only solution. For example: “When on fire, people usually use, umms…er…kind of tool which contains dry ice and is often seen on the wall in public areas to put out fire.” The teacher forgets the exact word for “fire extinguisher”, and he uses umms…er… to prolong the time for him to think about, and then he uses kind of tool instead of saying the exact word. Since he has described the “tool” exactly, the students could understand his meaning. Thus, the teacher saves his own face.

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Furthermore, if the teacher uses vague terms frequently, the students will see the indefiniteness of the teacher’s language, and they would feel the teacher is more sincere and more easy-going, thus, shortens the distance between the teacher and the students, which benefits both the students and the teacher.
In a word, as qualified teachers, we should make the students understand vagueness is the essential properties of language and let the students know more about the language phenomena. And we can also introduce some of the principles of Pragmatics so as to improve their communicative competence.

6. Conclusion
From what we have discussed above, we can see that vague language forms a considerable part of language use. They are part of the linguistic repertoire of a competent language user, who uses them to accomplish particular communicative goals. Vague language is neither all “bad” nor all “good”. It occurs frequently in both speech and writing, but we have seen that many of them occur more frequently in spoken English. The widespread use of vagueness for various purposes and in various situations shows what an important aspect it is of language users’ knowledge of their language.
Nowadays, more and more people in our country are learning English, and one of the most important purposes for them to learn it is to better communicate with the foreigners. Teachers of English surely put great emphasis on the clarity, precision, and care in the use of language. And Chinese learners and teachers devote too much to grammatical rules, so that numerous learners are trained to be experts on grammar but they are incompetent in the real communication. We can see from this thesis, the words used in successful communication are mostly far from precise. “Brown eloquently makes the point that one aspect of acquiring a second language is learning to be imprecise. He suggests that learners of English as a second language often sound bookish and pedantic because they do not know how to use vague expressions.”[20] If people have no access to vague expressions, the range of their communication would be severely restricted. People employ vague language when they fail to remember the correct or exact words, when they are unknowledgeable, when they want to show their politeness and cooperation, when they deliberately withhold information, and so on. And the use of vague language, to some extent, help people save their and the hearers’ faces.

To be qualified teachers, who teach English as a second language, we should first get some general ideas of the theories on vagueness and realize the significant role that vagueness plays in language use. Vagueness creates flexibility. When we are teaching English, we should guide the students to learn how to understand the vague characteristics of language, how to use vague terms appropriately, how to pay attention to the pragmatic functions of vague language so as to achieve successful and effective communication.

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