| Fuzziness is one of the intrinsic features of natural language. It occurs frequently in language communication, so it is very important in language communication. The definition of fuzziness was put forward by Zadeh, an American mathematician, in 1965. His book Fuzzy Sets introduced the definition of fuzziness to mathematics field for the first time, which, in some degree, made the theory of fuzzy language formalized and digitized. Then it was studied in the field of natural science. Many new interdisciplinary courses have been born in 1970s, such as fuzzy logics, fuzzy rhetoric and fuzzy linguistics and so on. Many scholars and researchers have made the explorations of fuzziness and paid great attention from perspectives of philosophy, semantics and pragmatics, and so on. Now the fuzzy language in the fields of politics, economics, sports, entertainment, and technology also becomes focus for many researchers. In China, the research of fuzziness in language began in 1979. It was put forward by Professor Wu Tieping in his paper, An Analysis of Fuzzy Language. The fuzziness of words has the limited extent, but the boundary is not clear. Because there are so many words with the meaning of fuzziness in natural language, fuzzy linguistics has become an important research for linguists from 1970s.But the study of fuzzy numerals has drawn little attention by now. By employing descriptive and qualitative methods, the present thesis probes into the pragmatic fuzzy numerals in news reporting based on the theoretical framework developed by Grice (1975) and Sperber & Wilson (1986, 1991, 1995, 2000). In the present thesis, the author focuses on a number of selected news materials from the authoritative news websites and newspapers to seek the pragmatic functions. Through the detailed analyses of the relationship between Grice's Cooperative Principle and the fuzzy numerals, Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory and the fuzzy numerals, it is found that fuzzy numerals are inevitably employed by reporters in news reporting, and it is an effective and appropriate strategy to realize the pragmatic functions, such as avoiding negative effect on the society, achieving politeness, increasing creditability, conforming to the peculiarities, contributing vividness and liveliness, enhancing self-protection and avoiding absoluteness or arbitrariness, protecting from taking responsibilities, so on and so forth. Then there are some suggestions for writing better news reporting.The findings of the present study may enrich the research on fuzzy numerals and provide some hints to reporters and readers, such as to help reporters use fuzzy numerals more appropriately and tactfully, or help readers obtain a better understanding of why reporters employ fuzzy numerals in news reporting. The study also helps people to learn to write news reporting in a tactful way.
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