Vague language is an integral part of language and has an essential role in effective communication. Even though this language feature has been under researched to date - especially in the area of sociolinguistics - vague language has been observed to occur widely in language use both in spoken and written. Most speakers and writers of English are not aware of the occurrence of vague language use as vagueness in communication is part of our taken-forgranted world, and is normally unnoticed unless it appears inappropriate. This research attempts to investigate the use of vague language in the planned spoken English persuasive texts written by elementary native and non-native students and to explain the functions of using it. The source of data was from the planned spoken English persuasive texts written by 40 fifth graders; 20 of them are native students whose first language is English and the other 20 are the nonnative students whose first language is Indonesian. The findings reveal that the native students use vague language more than the non-native students and they consistently outnumbered the non-native students in the use of three types of vague language, namely expression of fuzziness, vague by choice of words, and collective nouns. The functions of these three categories of vague language are to provide the right amount of information by avoiding telling exact figures as a strategy to safe face if later on the statement is proven to
be wrong. Another main function is lack of specific information. The writers do not know exactly the appropriate words for certain terms, then he or she uses vague language. Lack information in this case is lack of linguistic terms or what is called as lexical gap. It does not refer to lack of knowledge but the underuse of
vague language by the non-native students represent the lack of vocabulary that causes the speakers or the writers resort to using vague language. |