Grey Information In Language Communication

In 1980s, Professor Deng Julong proposed the famous Grey System Theory which is widely used in some abstract systems, such as society, economy and ecology. And language is considered as a semiotic system (Halliday, 1978; Eggjns, 1999); therefore, there must exist grey phenomena. Based on Grey System Theory, this thesis attempts to make a comparatively comprehensive study on the grey information in language communication from an informational-pragmatic perspective.In linguistic field, greyness manifests itself as indeterminacy which can be found at every linguistic level. Therefore, its realizations vary semantically, syntactically and pragmatically. Investigations show that indeterminacy inevitably exists in both langue and parole.What's more, communication is to inform others, that is, to change something unknown (black information) to something clear (white information). Therefore, communication can be considered as a process of information whitening, In other words, the main purpose of language communication or language interaction is to make the message known by others. Therefore, to make the utterance clear enough without costing the hearer more efforts to decipher it is the general tendency. However, communication is so complex that sometimes it is necessary to add some grey information to the utterance. By doing so, the greyness of the utterance increases, and more relevant implicit information such as showing politeness, mitigating face threats or disguising deficient knowledge etc. is discovered. Thus, the greyness is manipulative, which is subject to the language users' communicative purposes. In fact, appropriate use of grey information is of great significance in language communication. It can make the message conveyed more accurate. It can make the utterance more flexible. Besides, it can make the utterance laconic, and at the same time can attach politeness to the utterance. In addition, greyness in communication is greatly influenced by communicative purposes and certain social factors such as power, social distance and social identity.The investigation of grey information in language communication is of great significance to further research into semantics and pragmatics. What's more, it is of great practical value to the appropriate use of grey information in language interaction.