1. Introduction 1.1 Research background As the economic globalization continues to deepen, communications and trades among different countries around the world have been intensified. During this process, business news plays a more and more significant role in people#8217;s daily life. Business news is a kind of objective report about economic events and business trends, which has always been regarded as one of the main platforms to for human to gain information about economic and trade developments. On the one hand, as a branch of English news, International business news is also an important research topic which pursues concision, efficiency, clarity and coherence. (Wang, 2010) It contains international business knowledge, conventions, practices, linguistic rhetoric phenomena and many other aspects. Besides, it not only provides people with latest global business news and information but also helps people make judgements and investment decisions in their favor according to the development of the age as soon as possible. Thus, journalists should especially pay attention to authenticity, objectivity and reliability of what they write and the information resources. On the other hand, as a new branch of linguistics, vague language intrigues a lot of scholars. In the practice of business journalism, vague language is inevitably used for both subjective and objective reasons and human factors, such as its own characteristics and advantages. And what is more important is that appropriate uses of vagueness and precision at the same time can make news reports closer to the truth of their events. 1.2 Research purpose This thesis will take the application of vague language in International business news as the research object, summarize its expressions in International business news, and analyze its pragmatic functions and so as to improve the application level of the vague language in business news and allow readers to understand why journalists need to use vague language. 1.3 Significance of the study There is no denying that vague language has both positive and negative effects in human#8217;s cognition and communication. However, we support the opinion that ”Vagueness in language is neither all ”bad#8217; nor ”good#8217;. What matters is that vague language is used appropriately.” (Channell, 2000) And it is true that avoiding the negative effects of vague language in its application has not only practical meanings but also theoretical meanings. Practically speaking, to begin with, it can conduct pressmen and mass media to understand and use vague language more felicitously in order that the quality of International business news can be improved. In addition, readers can figure out why the authors prefer to use vague language and can comprehend the information with vague words from a correct perspective. Theoretically speaking, the applications and embodiments of vague language are ubiquitous in language. We can find them in phonetics, semantics, grammar, lexicology and pragmatics. Nevertheless, linguists at home and abroad put their main efforts on semantics at the beginning. Only after Vershueren (2000) put forward the adaptation theory did they pay more attention to the pragmatic analysis. And few of their research text involved English business news. Hence, we hope this paper can improve the application of vague language from the pragmatic perspective and provide a theoretical reference for the research of vague language in International business news. 2. Literature review 2.1 Overview of vagueness 2.1.1 The definition of vagueness Israel Sheffler (1979) from Harvard University points out in Beyond the Letter that vagueness is a universal characteristic of descriptive terms. It has a fundamental conflict with the standard logic. Meanwhile, it is also closely related to various forms of indeterminacy. The definition proposed by Sheffler (1979) indicates that the vagueness of descriptive terms is caused by the unclear nature of the boundary. The definition given by the proposer of fuzzy theory is that a fuzzy class is one whose boundaries are not clearly defined. In other words, it is one in which the transition from a member to a non-member is gradual, not abrupt. This definition precisely demonstrates that the meaning of the extension of some words is a continuous process. And these meanings are not distinguished by explicit separation points. The linguist Ullmann (1962) ascribes the generation of vague language to four factors : a.The generic character of words. For example, ”flower” is a vague word. If we look at this word in more details, we have azaleas, roses, narcissuses and so on. However, ”flower” can't tell which kind of flower it is, it's just a general term used to summarize the various types of flowers. b. Meaning is never homogeneous.Only by context can we determine the true meaning of the words. Otherwise, the term has only a vague concept. For example, the word ”work” has different meanings. In the sentence ”This solution will work”, it means ”take effect”. It implies ”job” when it comes to ”I#8217;m satisfied with my work.” However, if it is used in ”The machine doesn#8217;t work well.” its meaning is equal to ”operate”. c. Things in the objective world often lack clear boundaries. This is due to the contradiction between the discreteness of verbal signs and the continuity of objective things. It is possible that the boundaries are ambiguous and vagueness generates when discrete verbal signs are used to describe continuous things. Therefore, people often encounter vague concepts when getting to know something. For instance, ”far” and ”close” are two vague concepts, because there is no clear boundary to stipulate that a short distance turns into a long one. Just like what the professor Wu Tieping (1999) said, the older or pedestrians may feel that it is very far from the Dongcheng District to the Xicheng District in Beijing, but in globetrotters#8217; eyes. Shanghai is very close to Tokyo. d. The expression of vocabulary is not explicit enough, which will also cause the concept to be blurred. This is the need of human communication, for using vague words makes it easy for the others to accept and create a harmonious atmosphere. One example is "The house costed a sum of my money". Here, people use "a sum" because they rarely say the exact amount of money they spend. Otherwise, it may be regarded as showing off in front of others. To sum up, vagueness refers to the uncertainty of the boundary of a word or concept. (Wu, 1999) 2.1.2 The applications of vague language The applications and researches of vague language in diplomacy are deep and valuable, and there are quite a few related studies. Nicholson (1950) once expressed his view that the most common implication of the diplomatic language is the ”guarded understatement” that makes the diplomat sharp with decency and cautiousness. Xie Xiaoxiao (2015) said in her thesis that pragmatic vagueness is an irreplaceable speech technique in diplomatic activities and an important means to ensure the success of diplomatic activities. In diplomacy, sensitive and confidential issues should not be accurately expressed in which vague language is more suitable. Hence, vague language has important application values in diplomacy. The application of vague language in literature is mainly in two aspects: literary appreciation and translation. In literature appreciation, Sun Dongmei has done relevant researches on the pragmatic effect of vague language in 2010. In literature translation, there exists Cai Yuhong's (2010) study on the interpretation of A Dream in Red Mansions. The vagueness of language is also widely used in media. For instance, Jia Xingwang (2010) wrote a thesis to investigate the vague numerals in news from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective. Furthermore, some scholars published relevant papers on catastrophic news as well. 2.2 Previous researches at home and abroad 2.2.1 Previous researches abroad The vagueness of language is one of the fundamental attributes of natural language. Nonetheless, humans pay much attention to precision, while neglecting the vagueness of language. Because most people may hold the view that the ultimate goal of communication is tantamount to the input and output of accurate information to some extent. It didn#8217;t stimulate much interest until a well-known American electrical engineering and computer scientist who called Zadeh (1965) first proposed relative theories in his thesis Fuzzy Sets on a magazine called Information and Control in 1965, after which fuzziness became a scientific term. Zadeh#8217;s fuzzy theory believed that in natural language, most of the words in a sentence are the names of fuzzy sets. The unclear boundaries of words#8217; meanings lead to the fuzzy phenomenon in the process of understanding. The language with fuzzy words is vague language. And the so-called vagueness is actually a kind of uncertainty, which means that the concept of the thing itself is indistinct or the classification is ambiguous. (Wang, 2015) For instance, ”blue” is a vague concept. We have celeste, teal blue, dark blue, baby blue and so on. When somebody just says that his T-shirt is blue, we don#8217;t know what kind of blue his cloth exactly is. Thus can be seen that vague language is an elastic language with greatly generality and leeway, which is different from precise language. Under the influence of Zadeh#8217;s article, various fields of natural science and social science began to work on this theory and put some a bit emphasis on vague language, including psychology, mathematics, and philosophy, Against this background, fuzzy linguistics came into being. Linguists have done a lot of research on vague language and obtained many valuable research results. There are two another important foreign researchers whose viewpoints have a great influence on the development of vague language in linguistics. One of them is Lakoff (1973), who is the first scholar to introduce the fuzzy theory into linguistic studies. After opening a new door for the study of vague language, he also considered hedges as the most distinctive and indispensable part of vague language. Under his influence, the studies on hedges attracted many people#8217;s interest and have achieved great improvements. Afterwards, another crucial scholar, Joanna Channell (2010), mainly focused his research direction on the semantic vagueness and pragmatic vagueness. His masterpiece Vague Language is considered as the first systematic and inspirational book about in this field around the globe. 2.2.2 Previous researches at home Domestically, Professor Wu Tieping and Zhang Qiao made utmost efforts to investigate vagueness from a semantic perspective. In 1998, Zhang Qiao published the book called Fuzzy Semantics to analyze the relations between semantics and fuzzy phenomena and clarify the four characteristics of fuzzy semantics. What#8217;s more, Wu Tieping, the Chinese pioneer in this area also published Fuzzy Linguistics in 1999, in which the definition and semantic functions of vague language were further explained and illuminated. Beyond this, Yu Fangfang (2010) analyzed vague language by the aid of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle and she found that people usually use vague language to show empathy, modest and politeness in order to realize their goals. But Xu Huarong (2014) attempted to analyze it in the syntactic level and came to a conclusion that syntactic vagueness can be caused by the employment of some sentence patterns, grammatical fuzziness and rhetorical vagueness. It can also help prevent writers from providing uncertain information in various ways. Beyond that, Wang Fang (2012) probed the use of vague language in advertising based on Speech Act Theory and found that vague language in ads embodies different kinds of illocutionary act that strengthen the efficiency and courtesy of vague advertising language and become a main method on ads propaganda. Wang Quan (2017) considered that there is no doubt that vague language in movie lines can be a serviceable way to make the conversation more easily to be accepted by audience. Sun Lulu (2015) draws the conclusion that applying vague language in a suitable way in political news can not only make the language more natural and decent but also can make the language express emotion effectively. Furthermore, Zhang Yugang and Jia Yongjuan (2018) deems that fuzzy sentences can convey people#8217;s feelings more vividly and exactly by analyzing the literary works at home and abroad, such as Sonnet written by Shakespeare and Argument written by Lu#8217;Xun. The literary value of vague language is as plain as the nose on your face. Lacking vague language cannot reflect the beauty of implicitness of literary works in some artistic conception, and the readers#8217; comprehension and re-creation to the original works would also be weaken. Contrary to the increasing significance of economy in our daily life, the studies on the use of vague language in English business news are not as many as that on other kinds of news. Therefore, this thesis will analyze the pragmatic functions of vague language in English business news to help readers have a better and clearer understanding of international business news. References Channell, J. (2000). Vague Language. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. Jia, X. W. (2010). A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach to Vague Numerals in News (Master Thesis). Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang. Sheffler, I. (1979). Beyond the Letter. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Ullmann, S. (1962). Semantics. 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Outline 1.Introduction 1.1 Research background 1.2 Research purpose 1.3 Significance of the research 2. Literature Review 2.1 Overview of vague language 2.1.1 The definition of vague language 2.1.2 The applications of vague language 2.2 Previous researches at home and abroad 2.2.1 Previous researches at home 2.2.2 Previous researched abroad 3.Theoretical Framework of the Study 3.1 Adaptation Theory 3.2 Cooperative Principle 3.3 Politeness Principle 4. The Analysis 4,1 The main forms of vague language in news 4.2 Vague language in international business news 4.3 A comparison between international business news and Chinese business news 5. Conclusion 5.1 Major findings 5.2 Limitations and suggestions