| Like exactness, fuzziness is one of the intrinsic features that natural languages have, and it pervasively exists in the inner of the language system and on all levels of language use. Therefore, any integrated theory of linguistics should have fuzziness as an integral component that should be systematically studied and described. Although the phenomenon of linguistic fuzziness has long been noticed and studied, as a discipline specialized in the study of the fuzziness of language and fuzzy language, fuzzy linguistics has a history of not more than forty years, its theoretical basis being the "Fuzzy Sets" theory proposed by the American scientist L. A. Zadeh in 1965. At the beginning, the main study fields of fuzzy linguistics are restricted to semantics: the sources of semantic fuzziness and the quantitative analysis of fuzzy meaning, etc. However, in verbal communication there exists one type of "overt" fuzzy language, which Sadock (1977) calls "purposely and unabashedly vague", it is overtly fuzzy and is often used at a large quantity and with a high frequency. A mere study in semantics can hardly account for such a phenomenon, so it is necessary to study such a phenomenon from the perspective of verbal communication, namely from the perspective of the communicative functions and the relationship of these functions and the fulfillment of a given communicative goal. Only from this perspective can such a phenomenon be better explicated.The goal of this dissertation is to analyze in detail from the angle of communicativefunctions of such "overt" fuzzy language, mostly hedges, fuzzy category identifiers, placeholder words, round numbers and fuzzy suffixes, and reveal that: these fuzzy linguistic devices have a particular communicative function-economical and efficient. This particular function makes fuzzy language be usually used as a communicative strategy to overcome a communicative problem (such as a lexical gap) or achieve a communicative effect (such as being polite). Such strategic use of fuzzy language as an economical and efficient means to achieve a particular communicative goal or task is in fact a fuzzy communicative strategy. The ability to use strategies for being fuzzy is an important aspect of the communicative competence of a language user. Fuzzy strategies are very useful in real verbal communicative settings. The author sets forth these viewpoints in five chapters:Chapter One is the introduction, which sketches out the thesis and the plan of this dissertation. Firstly, it presents a general introduction to the intrinsic features of linguistic fuzziness and the study of it in linguistic literature, and points out that the study of linguistic fuzziness allows different angles; then it introduces the "covert" and "overt" fuzzy language and criteria for classification, puts forward the overt fuzzy language as the subject matter of this dissertation and discusses its properties; next, it briefly introduces the notion of fuzzy strategies, showing that overt fuzzy language is often strategically used to achieve a given communicative goal.Chapter Two takes a further step to discuss more of the background of the notion of fuzzy strategies and then analyzes the linguistic realization of the fuzzy strategies. Various kinds of linguistic forms can be used as a verbal communicative strategy and fuzzy language is an important one. Fuzzy strategies are mainly achieved by the use of fuzzy language, the main linguistic forms of which include hedges, fuzzy category identifiers, placeholder words, round numbers, and fuzzy suffixes.Chapter Three mainly focuses on the analysis of the communicative functions of fuzzy language. Cognitively, it is an economical means in either processing effort or referring to a category; semantically, its indefmiteness of meaning provides more spaces for both the speaker and the hearer to interpret, at the same time, it also makes one's utterance more true according to the real situations; pragmatically, it shows flexibility as to following or flouting the Coopera...
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