The Pragmatic Functions Of Fuzzy Rhetoric

Fuzzy rhetoric is a kind of artistic expression used by writers or speakers for a certain reason, which features with uncertainty, generality and non-quantity via the vagueness in language and the flexible understanding of the words’ receiver. It reflects subtly the way how we think about things as well as the way how we see ourselves; and the knowledge of fuzzy rhetoric is a crucial principle to guide our communicative behaviors and influences our ways of speaking. Therefore, the author of this thesis choose fuzzy rhetoric as the research object.Studies on fuzzy rhetoric has boomed since1980s, however, the achievements of fuzzy rhetoric studies mainly manifested in the establishment and development of its basic theories, few of them discussed its pragmatic functions or the applications in daily situations; therefore, a plenty of practical and theoretical problems have yet to be resolved; and the ultimate purpose and underlying reasons for the employment of fuzzy rhetoric have yet to be discussed with adequate results, which shows the significance of the study on this aspect.Since the positive use of fuzzy rhetoric can promote the daily communication, the author of the thesis want to know the effects of fuzzy rhetoric. Therefore, the research questions are:l.What is the systematic scope of fuzzy rhetoric?2. What are the pragmatic functions of fuzzy rhetoric?The study of fuzzy rhetoric by the author of this thesis is enlightened by the studies of fuzziness in language, which is elementary to the research of fuzzy rhetoric. In order to investigate the fuzzy rhetoric in all dimensions, it is of great importance to base on those basic fuzzy theories and pragmatic theories, therefore, the thesis mainly utilizes the trans-disciplinary methods of combining the fundamental knowledge of fuzzy linguistics, rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics comprehensively, first introduces the features of fuzzy rhetoric and its generative mechanism, and then via the qualitative analysis, discussing the classifications of fuzzy rhetoric from the perspectives of the overlaps with traditional rhetorical devices, phonetic, lexical and semantic. Then it illustrates the pragmatic functions of fuzzy rhetoric, namely the function on promoting interpersonal relations and on improving expressive effects. Each function has its own subdivisions. All the points are supporting by the examples finely chosen from the only published novel by Oscar Wilde——the Picture of Dorian Gray. The author of the thesis marks all examples of fuzzy rhetoric manually and selects equal number of examples from each chapter.Afterwards, by the combination of theoretical analysis and the descriptive work with examples, the author of the thesis comes to the conclusion that the scope of fuzzy rhetoric not only involves phonetic fuzziness, lexical fuzziness, semantic fuzziness, but also includes the utilization of punctuations and fillers; and the pragmatic functions of fuzzy rhetoric mainly manifests in two aspects, one is in maintaining interpersonal relationships (affaleness function, gratification function, accommodation function and persuasion function), the other is in improving expressive effects (implicit function, euphemism function, humor function, adaptability function, flexibility function and vitality function).The novelty of this thesis is that the points are all supported by the finely chosen examples from one novel, which is elaborately written by Oscar Wilde characterizing with continuity and coherence in form and are authentic and typical in content. What is more, all the examples, either dialogues or descriptions are from daily situations, which are highly credible and of great practical applicability.The detailed structure of the thesis falls into five chapters. Chapter1is a brief introduction, which introduces the definition of fuzzy rhetoric; then it comes to the significance of the study, especially the functions about fuzzy rhetoric in promoting interpersonal relations and in improving expressive effects. Chapter2is the literature review. The former part is the oversea research of fuzziness in language and fuzzy rhetoric by foreign scholars; the latter part is the domestic studies and gains by Chinese linguists. Chapter3is the theoretic framework of this thesis. First, it introduces the concept of rhetoric and fuzzy rhetoric. Second, it explains the generative mechanism of fuzzy rhetoric, analyzing the associative thought is the psychological reason of fuzzy rhetoric, and then it points out the language mechanism of fuzzy rhetoric. Third, it introduces the pragmatic theories involved in the pragmatic functions of fuzzy rhetoric, namely the Cooperative Principles and the Politeness Principles. Chapter4illustrate the scope of fuzzy rhetoric and its pragmatic functions. first, it introduces the categories of fuzzy rhetoric in details. Each of these parts is analyzed by some related examples finely chosen from the novel the Picture of Dorian Gray. Second, it illustrates the pragmatic functions of fuzzy rhetoric, which falls into the function in maintaining interpersonal relations and the function in improving expressive effects. Each aspect then falls into several detailed points and are supported by the detailed analysis of the examples chosen from Oscar Wilde’s novel. Chapter5is the conclusion of this thesis, first, it gives a summary about the major findings of the thesis. Second, it shows the significance of the study. Third, it discusses the limits and inadequacy of the study.