Vague Language in Business Negotiation—From a Pragmatics Perspective

Abstract

Business negotiation is a complex process of communication. It is generally believed that, using precise language is encouraged for fear of causing misunderstanding and inconvenience in business negotiation. However, from this point of view, it ignores a fact that vagueness is an inherent property of human language. Since the fuzzy theory was put forward in the 1960s, scholars have made much systematic researches on vague language from various perspectives only to find that the initial study on semantics can not thoroughly explain the linguistic phenomenon. So they preferred to a comprehensive and profound analysis from the perspective of pragmatics. Gradually, the pragmatic value and significance has been reflected. As a matter of fact, in business negotiation, using vague language has been regarded as a kind of frequently-used and effective negotiation strategy to achieve certain communicative purpose. As one of the pragmatic strategies in business negotiation, vague language is of great importance which should be highly expected. Therefore, the author hopes that the present study may be of some significance in enriching the researches on vague language. Meanwhile, the study can draw some inspiration to negotiators and some reference to business English teaching. Because the appropriate use of vagueness can help negotiators to communicate smoothly and achieve their goals successfully.