Fuzziness In Business English

Fuzziness is an inherent characteristic of language. In China, the original discussion about fuzziness had been found in the Book of Changes and Lao Tzu during the Spring and Autumn Era. While in western countries, the probe into fuzziness could date back to the days of Plato. But until1965, L.A. Zadeh, the professor at the University of California, Berkeley, published his "Fuzzy Set Theory’ in the magazine of Information and Control. After that the study of fuzziness came into a new era. Since then, there have been a lot of scholars which have carried out widespread researches on fuzziness in various fields.As an ESP, business English should be accurate and clear. But in real business communication, it is found that fuzzy language does exist in business English. So the study of fuzzy language also includes business English, especially vague language in business English correspondence and translation strategies. Cambridge Business English Certificate examination, which is popular in the world, is the Examination Center of the Ministry of Education and the British University of Cambridge Examinations Board examinations organized in cooperation. The teaching materials,"New Cambridge Business English" are recommended by Cambridge ESOL Examination Center and the Ministry of Education, published by Economic Science Publishing House. This material is based on modern business activities as the material prepared for the exam, and it covers all the relevant business information, including business articles, business correspondence letters, business conversation and business advertisements. There is a lot of fuzzy language in it. However, up till now, there are no studies on vague language in New Cambridge Business English. Based on the previous researches on the fuzzy language in business English, this thesis plans to study the vague language in New Cambridge Business English (Vantage, student book, the second edition).Then it discusses why the vague language is employed in business English from the pragmatic perspective:making language more accurate, more tactful, and more efficient. At the same time, the speaker realizes self-protection. This thesis chooses14business ads,6business letters and10business articles from the student book to make research how fuzzy language is used in them. Based on the study, it is found that:1、Fuzzy language is widely used in the three types of writing.2、The use of fuzzy language is shown in three aspects:vague words, hedges and vagueness by implicature. In business articles, there is also rhetorical fuzziness-puns.3、According to the statistics of this thesis, the frequency and distribution of fuzzy language is different in the three types of writing. Fuzzy language is the most widely distributed in business articles.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the present study as a whole, including the origin of study, the objectives, the framework and the significance of the thesis. Then it reviews the literature on fuzziness both abroad and in China, including a historical review on language fuzziness, definition of language fuzziness, comparison among fuzziness, vagueness and ambiguity and the previous studies on fuzziness in business English.In the third chapter, it mainly explores the fuzzy language in New Cambridge Business English (Vantage, student book, the second edition), including business ads, business letters and business articles.Chapter four analyzes the pragmatic functions of fuzzy language in Business English. According to the cooperative principle of H.P. Grice, the employment of fuzzy language in business English makes language more accurate. In view of Leech’s politeness principle, fuzziness makes language more tactful and he speaker realizes self-protection. While according to Adaption Theory of Verschueren, fuzziness makes language more efficient.At last, Chapter five concludes the major findings, the implications and limitations of the thesis and also gives some suggestions fro future research on this topic.With Cambridge Business English Certificate getting more and more attention from the world, there are more and more students and business people taking part in BEC examination. The major results of the thesis are expected to guide business people to use fuzziness flexibly, properly and effectively in achieving successful communication, to lead us to study fuzzy language from different perspective and related fields, to provide some reference for business English teaching.