体育新闻报道中的模糊语

论文总字数：26176字

摘 要

体育新闻以其独特的魅力在人类交流与信息的传递中发挥着不可替代的作用。体育新闻中模糊语的使用是较为常见的一种语言形式，恰当的使用模糊语不仅不会影响报道，反而会使之更加生动，准确。本论文以顺应论为理论指导，从语音，词汇，句法三个层面研究模糊语在体育新闻报道中的使用特点，原因和效果。从而帮助读者更好的体会英语语言文字的魅力。

关键词：体育新闻报道；模糊语；顺应理论

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Development of the study on English sports news 1

2.2 Development of the study on ambiguity in language 2

3. Theoretical Foundation of Ambiguity 2

3.1 The Adaptation Theory 3

3.2 The definition and general characteristics of ambiguity 3

3.3 Differences among vagueness, generality and ambiguity 6

4. Ambiguity in Sports News Reports 6

4.1 Utilization of ambiguity in phonetic system 6

4.2 Utilization of ambiguity in lexical system 7

4.3 Utilization of ambiguity in syntactic system 7

5. Causes and Pragmatics effects of Applying Ambiguity in Sports News Reports 8

5.1 Causes of applying ambigutiy in sports news reports 8

5.2 Maintaining objectivity of sports news 9

5.3 Satisfying the new demands of readers 9

5.4 Mitigating the negative sides in sports 9

6. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

As we all know, ambiguity and precision are the two basic elements of language. But people always concentrate on precision. Until the middle of the 20^th century, L. A. Zadeh put forward the Fuzzy Sets theory firstly,ambiguity started to draw more attention. People began to realize and admitted the existence of ambiguity is important and necessary. Afterwards Verschueren came up with the Adaptation theory, which reasonably accounted for the motivation and effects of ambiguity in social communication. He considered that communication is the process of adaptation. During this process, people would make the choice of language intentionally or unintentionally. Under this theoretical guidance, this thesis try to analyze how ambiguity is used in sports news reports to adapt to mental world, material world and social world. In order to achieve a clear understanding of ambiguity, this thesis intends to study the definition of ambiguity and expounds the differences among fuzziness, vagueness, ambiguity and generality. With the sports news reports is becoming more and more popular in international communication, readers’ requirements for sports news reports are also rigorous. Thus the variability of ambiguity would appear in accordance with nationality and register. The fifth part of the thesis studies the ambiguity in sports news reports specifically. Based on the adaptation theory, it studies the utilization of ambiguity in phonetic, lexical and syntactic system. At the same time, this thesis also refers to the reasons and effects of using ambiguity in sports news reports.

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2. Literature Review

2.1 Development of the study on English sports news

Enormous amounts of sports matches are reported every year, however there are few publications analyze the development of sports news reports systematically and specifically. Traditional sports news are the collections of scores number or the records of win or loss, however recent sports news reports have their unique stylistic features gradually become the

language of journalism. Actually, most research mainly focus on sports news reports broadcasted on the radio, just like Ferguson analyzed the news of American basketball in 1983. In China, professors have intended to expound the stylistic features of news reports, but their studies did not concentrate on sports news. Most recently,only Zhang Jian (1994) and Wu Qianlong (2001) studied several small pieces of sports news respectively. Overall the emphasis of early research was put on the vocabulary or structure of the news reports rather than the use of ambiguity in those news.

2.2 Development of the study on ambiguity in language

The Chinese and foreign linguists’ research of ambiguity has been developing continuously in the summary. Actually the study of ambiguous language should be traced back to Aristotle period. During that time, a philosopher in Megarian School named Eublides was the first one to pay attention to ambiguous phenomenon and he raised the famous ‘Sorites Paradox’. In the early 1965s, the professor Zadeh of the United States University of California Berkeley have published thesis Fuzzy Sets and put forward fuzzy concept and theory in the Information and Control magazine. Then the first systematic research on ambiguity appeared and the fuzzy set theory is an important basic theory for the study of ambiguity.

The research of ambiguity in our country started from 1979s and mainly focused on theoretical study. Recently the content, visual angle and theory of the research have been extending and enriching. Chinese scholars like Chen Xinren, Dai Weidong, Yuan Xiaoning and so on have proposed complete construction of ambiguity. English Linguistics: A Practical Coursebook written by Chen Xinren mainly refers to the methods of linguistic research, which can be applied into studying the exact examples of ambiguity in sports news reports. Verschueren came up with the adaption theory in his book Understanding Pragmatics in 1999. This theory is a new pragmatics research and the principle of it concerns on linguistic form and strategy in communication.

1. Theoretical Foundation of Ambiguity

From the viewpoint of Verschueren, “adaptation is the property of language which enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable rang of

possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs.” ( Verschueren, 1991:61).

3.1 The Adaptation Theory

As we can see, adaptation is a dynamic process and communicative context and physical surroundings effect the adaptability. Firstly Verschueren thinks that temporal deixis and spatical deixis are connected with the physical world. That is to say, when some activities happened in the physical world, people will make some linguistic choice corresponding to the real time and locations of the events. like the phase “some places”, it is not necessary to mention the exact places, because the it will not affect the readers’ understanding of the news. Secondly, adaptation to the mental world. As Verschueren points out, it is no doubt that verbal interaction is the communication from mind to mind. Here the “mind” refers to “mind in society” ( Verschueren, 2000:87). Thus an expression should also adapt to writers’ or readers’ mental world. The news language could express the writers’ feelings, opinions and attitudes. Such as “so much”, “more chilling”, “could” and so on. At the same time, the choice of words should adapt to readers’ mental world, it should meet the readers’ the demand of entertainment, timeliness and vitality of the information. Thus the sports news reports can attract more potential readers. At last, adaptation to the social world. According a survey, the percentage of ambiguity used to adapt to politeness. Politeness as a communicative principle, plays a important role in the social world. According to Channel (2001), ambiguity can be used to avoid threatening face. For example “disadvantaged students”, which is a term means students get the low grade. It does not say “bad students” and avoids the embarrassment during the social communication.

3.2 The definition and general characteristics of ambiguity

Generally it is defined as expressions that have more than one meaning. That is to say, the same ambiguity in different sentences or contexts has the different meanings. Usually characteristics of ambiguity in sports news reports are divided into three major part: semantic uncertainty, conciseness in expression and variability in accordance with nationality. Knowing

how are those characteristics used in sports news helps readers understand the ambiguity better.

Two examples can be explained as follows:

① Flying plane can be dangerous

② Taking the right turn and you can find my home

As we can see from the sentence ①, it is ambiguous. Because the expression “flying planes” can have the two distinct meanings. One means the plane is flying and it is dangerous, while another means the people is flying the plane and this behavior is dangerous. As for sentence ②, this sentence is ambiguous because of the word “right”. It can mean the direction, which is the antonym of left. However “right” can also mean “correct”. In this case, this sentence can be interpreted into that if you turn correctly, you can find my home.

In some situation, idiom can also be considered into ambiguity. There is an example:

Hospital contract is a D.C. Council hot potato. (from Washington Post, January 31, 2013 )

Usually, “hot” means the high temperature and potato represents a food. However,“Hot potato” in this context means a situation or problem that is very difficult and nobody wants to deal with it.

3.2.1 Semantic uncertainty

In fact, semantic uncertainty is the basic characteristics of ambiguity. It means that the meaning of utterance is blurred to same degree. For example, the ambiguous words “very” and “old” make the meaning of the sentence “he is very old” uncertain. In this case, we understand he is sixty, seventy even eighty. All of it is true, because we can not know his exact age from that expression. Usually, three sources that contribute to this type of ambiguity: pronunciation of the word, meaning of the word, and the structure of the sentence.

3.2.2 Conciseness in expression

Accuracy is not the only requirement of communication, sometimes economy also pays an important role in social communication. Actually many linguistics hold that ambiguity is not always negative, it is useful in transferring more information at the lower cost. At the

same time, it improve the working efficiency. In summary, there are two reasons causing the conciseness ambiguity.

First of all, language system always holds the principle of economy. So some function words are omitted in the news. Actually Wang Hongqi (1993) puts forward that the principle of economy in language also refers to the formation and use of ambiguity. It used widely in news reports, which tries to use the fewest words to contain the most information.

③ Such as “FTC chairman is departing” (from technology section, Washington Post, February 1, 2013)

④ In the past few years, Twitter says hackers gain access to 250,000 user accounts (from Washington Post, February 2, 2013)

In the news ③, we can not know the chairman is going to leave where. Because that information is omitted, which leaves the readers space of imagination. While it seems that “in the past few years” in the news ④ gives the readers an ambiguous expression of time. However, it is enough for the readers to get the main ideal of the news and it is a common phase to describe the time.

Secondly, ambiguity enables people to use one ambiguous expression to convey multiply meanings. Like a sports news report in the Washington Post, “the end of Kobe’s story?”. Recently the retirement of Kobe can be seen from every newspaper or magazine. The literal meaning of the sentence is that Kobe is gong to end his professional career. However the writer uses the question mark to implicate that the legends, the achievements and the spirit of Kobe will be spread to the next generation and people will not forget him.

3.2.3 Variability in accordance with nationality

Ambiguous words have the various meanings in different countries. This section takes the ambiguity of color for example. Actually there is no specific standard to definite the color. For example, Welsh does not have the equivalent to English word “blue”. In Welsh, the English word “blue” can represent both “glas” and “gwyrdd”. Thus sometimes there is no exact word to express blue among different countries. In this case, “blue” means an ambiguous color world for other countries. Also Welsh word “llwyd” represents “grey” and “brown” in English, then “grey” and “brown” are ambiguous words to Welsh people.

Generally spectrum has six parts and there are six words can represent it in English. However in Shona, there are only four parts in a spectrum. Thus some English colors words can represent several colors in Shona. Then those the using of those words is what we say the application of ambiguity.

3.3 Differences among vagueness, generality and ambiguity

Speaking of the ambiguity, the most related concepts about ambiguity in linguistics are “vagueness” and “generality”. Although they are close to each other, they have different meanings and applied region. In fact, Zhang Qiao (1998) considered that the vagueness is a technical term and it does cover the negative part of its meaning. Also Crystal put forward that vagueness comes from mathematics, because linguistics often use it when they analyze the linguistic unit or pattern. Vagueness has a variable boundary and the definition of the boundary is difficult, such as the “cup” and “glass”. Also some adverbs of degree like “rather”, “quite” bring the vague phenomenon to language. Lakoff (1973) raised a range of animals l like dogs, chickens and cattle to expound how words are vague with the same natural language features. Actually those words all belong to animal essentially and they are hyponymy. Generality is an expression without certain or specific meanings and it is different from vagueness. For example, the word “man” is generality because it does not point to someone specifically. This word does not contain the details about whether the people is tall or short, fat or slim, girl or boy. Another example “my cloth” also express a general meaning, because we do not know the size, the color, the type of the cloth.

4. Ambiguity in Sports News Reports

Traditionally, linguistics studies ambiguity from the there angles, including the phonetic, the lexical and the syntactic system. This thesis specially analyzes the utilization of ambiguity in those three systems as follows:

4.1 Utilization of ambiguity in phonetic system

As well all know, pronunciation is an important aspect of language. People should pay more attention to phonetic phenomenon carefully, because phonetic problem like homophony as I mention before could easily contribute to ambiguity in social communication and news reports. Here is an example from the sports news：

⑤ “she once said it was gym that inspired her passion for life. However her father’s reaction for the remark expressed his confusion: who is Jim?”

Obviously, her father makes the confusion of the sports term “gym” and the human name “Jim”. Actually this utterance is a little humorous because of the phonetic ambiguity, so the utilization of ambiguity can make the dull sports news reports more interesting and attractive.

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