Analysis On The Fuzziness Of Nouns In Chinese Idioms From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the fuzziness of nouns in Chinese idiomswith the help of Cooperative Principle. It divides nouns into differe nt categories and analyzessome of them, in order to show that the fuzziness of nouns is very common and important inChinese idioms. How to understand the fuzziness of nouns in a Chinese idiom is a key issuein our communication, which deserves much attention. Cooperative Principle, first putforward by Grice in1975, is four maxims which the speakers and the hearers obey in theirconversations. In this essay, Cooperative Principle will be used as an effective tool to analyzethe fuzziness of nouns in Chinese idioms, which is the researching target of this essay. Thereare in all three parts of the whole essay.First of all, several related definitions–fuzziness, vagueness, ambiguity and generality–are introduced and the distinctions between them are made. Then, the definition of idiom ismade. After that the research on fuzzy linguistics, Chinese idioms and Cooperative Principleboth domestically and abroad is reviewed, determining to provide the related backgroundinformation. In the second chapter, the theoretical framework of this essay–CooperativePrinciple of Pragmatics–and three research methodologies used in this essay are offered. Sofar, the analysis foundation of this essay has already been laid.Chapter Three is the key part of this thesis. The analysis begins in this part. First, severalexamples are exemplified from the phonological level, morphemic level, lexical level, andimplicature evolution level, among which the lexical level bears more attention. Then,analysis on the understanding of fuzzy nouns from the perspective of violating CooperativePrinciple is made. After that, several main factors resulting in fuzziness are illustrated briefly.The analysis is of great importance for it studies the way how the nouns conveyfuzziness in Chinese idioms, the reasons leading for fuzziness of nouns, as well as the effectsand influence of nouns’ fuzziness in the field pragmatics. In a word, though it has somelimitations, such as not scientific enough definitions, not overall enough literature review andnot profound enough analyses, what cannot be ignored is that it makes its own contribution in both the academic field and the application field. On one hand, in the academic field, it is thefirst one researching the fuzziness of nouns in Chinese idioms with the help of CooperativePrinciple, which will result in prosperity in researching from this angle. On the other hand, inthe application field, people can understand the fuzziness of nouns better, use Chinese idiomsmore properly and communicate with each other more effectively.