Advertising language has already received widespread research in many aspects．However, cosmetic advertising language has not been paid enough attention to．There are only a few studies and researches which have done in cosmetic language．As cosmetic advertisements have become increasingly popular and common in daily life, it is essential to know the characteristics and purposes of cosmetic advertisement language. Moreover, cosmetic advertising is included in business English. Therefore the study of cosmetic language is helpful to business teaching and learning．

1.2 Research Significance

Advertising provide a link between the producers and consumers．A good advertisement becomes a way of promoting the sales of the products and attracting the customers’ attention．At the same time, a well-designed advertisement can establish a good image of the products and bring potential profits for the companies．Cosmetic advertisement is essential for cosmetic producers, which can enable the producers to win the opportunities in fierce competition．

With the rapid development of China’s economy, both the domestic and foreign trade grows simultaneously．The cosmetic products both at home and abroad catch the eyes of women and men. Meanwhile, various kinds of cosmetic advertisements emerge on TV, internet, newspapers, magazines and etc．These ads promote the cosmetic products and the effect of those products．In order to attract the consumers’ attention, advertisers and producers usually use vague words or expressions to achieve a rhetorical effect．Therefore, it is difficult for the customers to understand the advertisement clearly and roundly. Faced with a large number of cosmetic advertisements, the customers feel hard to make the right product for themselves. For the producers, how to use vague words or expressions properly is significant for them to enhance the sales of the cosmetic products and achieve eye-catching effect．

The research may offer a broader linguistic view and meanwhile gives a good insight to the further study of advertising language．It may also help people understand vagueness in another language variety and give some insight into English learning and teaching．文献综述

1.3 Research Questions

Few studies on the pragmatic vagueness in cosmetic advertisements have analyzed under the framework of Linguistic Adaptation Theory, therefore this paper is intended to study the pragmatic strategies especially vagueness in cosmetic advertisements from the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory. The present study will focus on the following research questions：

(1) In cosmetic advertisements, what are the linguistic choices that make the communicative strategy of pragmatic vagueness realized?

(2) How is cosmetic advertising language adapted to different nonlinguistic contextual correlates such as physical world, social world and mental world?

(3) What are the functions of pragmatic vagueness in cosmetic advertisements?

1.4 Research Methodology

This paper aims at conducting a systemic research on the English advertisements of cosmetic products. To address this topic, qualitative and descriptive methods are adopted in this study．The data in this thesis are mainly attained through the access to some important websites, magazines, newspapers, and so on．来~自^751论+文.网www.751com.cn/

Several cosmetic advertisements are selected as examples．These cosmetic advertisements are selected based on the following criteria．First, these cosmetic advertisements have no grammatical errors. Second, these cosmetic advertisements are chosen randomly．Most of these ads are from websites, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc. Based on abundant selected model advertisements, this thesis aims at analyzing pragmatic strategies especially pragmatic vagueness in cosmetics advertisements from the perspective of Linguistic Adaptation Theory. 语用模糊英语化妆品广告中的语用策略研究(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_75943.html