Fuzziness In Law English: A Semantic & Pragmatic Interpretation

The term "fuzzy" was first introduced by Zadeh (1965), an American professor of the University of California at Berkeley, in "Fuzzy Sets" of Information and Control .In that paper Zadeh pointed out that objects in the real world usually do not have sharply defined boundaries.The realization of fuzziness in actual utterance is known as fuzzy language, which, according to different approaches of realization, can be classified into three types. First, an utterance may appear fuzzy when fuzzy words are apparently involved. Here the fuzzy words can be identified through the analysis with the theory of semantic field. Second, the linguistic hedges may be added to turn a precise statement into a fuzzy one, or adjust the degree of fuzziness. The third type is fuzziness by implicature, that is, an apparently precise utterance can be used and understood to have a fuzzy interpretation. This thesis mainly deals with some linguistic aspects of fuzzy language in legal field by quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis methods from semantic and pragmatic perspective.It is made up of seven chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction. It sketches out the thesis and gives a brief introduction to fuzzy linguistics and legal linguistics, which is the study background of this dissertation. Chapter 2 deals with the definitions and features of semantic fuzziness and pragmatic fuzziness and focuses on the characteristics of law English. The reasons of the existence of fuzziness in language are also introduced in this chapter. Because the concept of fuzziness originates from the field of mathematics, Chapter 3 focuses on law English with the fuzzy set theory. In Chapter 4, the author takes the classic theory of semantic field as an efficient way in analyzing fuzziness in law English from the semantic point of view. Chapter 5 lists some legalstatements in which hedges are used from semantic and pragmatic angles. In this chapter the author also makes a quantitative analysis of hedges in law English. Chapter 6 tries to probe into some linguistic aspects of law English in terms of fuzziness, exemplifying legislative, judicial, spoken and written languages. In other words, this chapter embodies fuzziness in law English with Co-operative Principles and Politeness Principles from pragmatic perspective. Chapter 7 is a summary of the thesis and a discussion on the implication of my research in this field. The author concludes the whole dissertation and points out that the law English is a kind of customary language. One of the important characteristics is exactness. But in some situations, fuzzy expressions have an important role in the usage of law English. It is the aim of the dissertation to use fuzzy language properly in legal field from linguistic point of view.