In China, the study of vague language began in late 1970s。 In 1979, professor Wu Tieping published an article inForeign Language titled Preliminary Study of Fuzzy Language which is the earliest research paper on the vagueness of language。 He Ziran (1985) began to pay attention to the classifications of hedges and introduced the pragmatic functions of vague language。 In 1998, a Chinese linguist Ms。 Zhang Qiao published the book Fuzzy Semantic。 She made the introduction of the academic trend of vague language from the semantic perspective。 In 2007, Li Qianju published the book An Introduction to Fuzzy Semantics, which represents the latest result of our current study on fuzzy semantics。 

Similar to the foreign linguists, Chinese scholars have also attached great importance to the vague language in business correspondences from the pragmatic perspective。 Liu (2003) indicates that conciseness and clarity are required when writing a business letter, whereas vagueness is still pervasive in the business correspondences。 Hu and Jiang (2012) make an analysis on the pragmatic effectiveness of vague language in business correspondences from the perspective of adaption theory。

Based on the previous studies of vague language and vague language in business letters, this study tries to conduct a research on the pragmatic functions of vague language in English business correspondences。

III。 Theoretical Basis

3。1 Cooperative Principle

The prototype of Cooperative Principle was proposed by two famous linguists H。 P。 Grice and J。L。Austin in late 1940s and 1950s。 In 1967, H。 P。 Grice summarized the conversational implicature theory and a brief edition of it was issued eight years later in the paper entitled Logic and Conversation。 The conversational maxims of this principle grew from the same convention of ordinary language philosophy。 来,自.优;尔:论[文|网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

From Grice’s perspective, Cooperative Principle (CP for short) is the general principle directing conversation。 In people’s daily communication, the participants must cooperate with each other; otherwise, it would be not possible for them to talk smoothly。 Grice suggests there are four maxims under the Cooperative Principle: