On Business English Fuzziness

As an essential feature of language, fuzziness, in recent years, has been paid great attention to by many linguistics and scholars. Since it exists widely in many aspects of human language, lots of valuable researches have been carried out. Business English, generally regarded as an ESP, is a language to be applied by business people for communication in business activities. Due to great sense of purpose and sociality it involves, Business English has long been identified with accuracy and clarity, no room is left for fuzziness. However, researches show that fuzzy expression still exists in such an accurate and clear language.In this thesis, the author, on the basis of proving the wide existence of fuzzy language in business communication, analyzes the functions of fuzziness played in business language and from the perspectives of Cooperative Principle, Polite Principle and Relevance Principle, gives interpretations of this fuzzy phenomenon and makes further discussions about the ways to apply fuzziness appropriately.This thesis first makes introduction of the historical development of fuzzy concepts and relevant definitions of fuzziness given by different scholars. Based on that, the author puts forward the definition of fuzziness and Business English and introduces the structure of this thesis. Then, this thesis goes to analyze the attributes of fuzzy natural language and Business English respectively. And based on 13 business correspondences and business discourses which cover almost each step of international business transaction, this thesis proves that fuzzy language does exist in Business English. Yet the thesis does not confine itself to the list of fuzzy cases but goes further to analyze the functions fuzzy language plays in business communication. The author holds that fuzziness can help business people to give right amount of information, to deliberately withhold information, to use language persuasively, to show politeness and to make self-protection. At last, Cooperative Principle, Polite Principle and Relevance Principle are applied not only to make interpretations of this adoption of fuzziness in business communication but more importantly to serve as guidance for the proper use of fuzziness in Business English. Under this guidance, the author, further points out that such fuzziness can be realized at three linguistic levels---lexical, syntactical and discourse level.Although some limitations can be found, the present study has nonetheless its significance, such as to make some contribution to researches on fuzzy language, to help business students to better understand and apply Business English, to facilitate business people to apply fuzzy language in business communication in a tactful and appropriate way.