Application of Pragmatic Vagueness in Financial Discourses

This study analyzes pragmatic vagueness, a linguistic phenomenon frequently occurred in communication activities. Pragmatic vagueness is a diplomatic strategy used in speech acts, where the addresser employs different linguistic markers of pragmatic vagueness to transfer two or more different kinds of illocutionary forces, create discoursal implications or metaphoric effects and make it hard for the addressee to clearly decode the addresser's real intention from the vague expressions. The investigated data are some financial remarks delivered by Alan Greenspan, the incumbent Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) of the USA when this article is done. The analysis focuses on how Greenspan manipulated linguistic markers of hedging and modality to realize his communicative targets of revealing the FRB's official attitude to the public with a certain degree of transparency, at the same time keeping specific information of the FRB monetary policy with descretion. Pragmatic vagueness is employed as rhetorically proficient tactics with stylistic features in Alan Greenspan's financial remarks.However, it is still insufficient to validate the claim of an FRB language model.

Autorentext

Shang Ying YANG is now studying International Relations at the University of Sydney in Australia. Before that she has been working as a university teacher, English lecturer, education management consultant, business communication coordinator, translator and language service provider.She has translated and published a book entitled MEDITERATION.