| Fuzziness is an inherent property of natural language, and fuzzy language is a linguistic phenomenon existing extensively in human communication. The study of fuzziness abroad can be traced back to 1965 when L.A. Zadeh, professor of the University of California in the United States proposed the "fuzzy sets" theory, which signified the beginning of fuzzy theory. In china, it was Professor Wu Tieping who first introduces fuzzy theory in the late 1970 s with his article Primary Exploration on Fuzzy Language in Beijing Normal University. In the past decades, an increasing number of linguistics researchers as well as postgraduates have realized the importance of fuzzy language in language communication. They have made plenty of achievements with their studious effort. The subsequent researches touch upon language itself as well as other disciplines. At the same time, some researchers begin to investigate fuzziness in various kinds of writings from the pragmatic perspective.However, the author finds that the pragmatic study of fuzzy language in social news can seldom be found, and the theoretical bases are mainly Leech's Politeness Principle or Verschueren's Adaption Theory. The study of fuzzy language from the angle of Grice's Cooperative Principle(CP) is rare so far. Therefore, this thesis attempts to conduct a comprehensive analysis of fuzzy language in social news from the perspective of Grice's Cooperative Principle.As a type of mass media, news participates a significant role in people's daily life and receives much attention from the public. Social news is one of the most common kinds of news whose theme concerns people's life the most. Therefore, social news receives lots of attention from people all over the world. In this thesis, the data are collected from the English version of China Daily which is the window of China as well as an important platform for the world to know china and for China to know the world. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are used in this thesis so as to give a comprehensive overview of the fuzzy language in social news from the pragmatic angle.Based on the theoretical foundations of fuzzy linguistics and Cooperative Principle, the author of this thesis considers that there are seven main pragmatic functions of fuzzy language in social news, namely strengthening the credibility, enhancing the reliability, protecting reporters/writers, avoiding absoluteness, corresponding to the reading psychology of readers, avoiding negative effect and increasing the efficiency of expressions.The author is looking forward that this thesis will help readers grasp the main idea of fuzzy language, CP, as well as social news. Furthermore, by analyzing the fuzzy language in social news cited from China Daily, the author hopes that the results of this thesis will draw attention from journalists so as to produce more valuable news reporting. Finally, the author expects that the findings of this thesis will improve the understanding of people when coming across fuzzy language in news.This thesis can be totally divided into five parts. The first chapter is a general introduction of the background information of the thesis. Chapter two serves as the literature review which illustrates fuzzy language, CP and former research findings on the theme of this thesis. Based on Cooperative Principle, chapter three analyzes the fuzzy language in China Daily. The main seven pragmatic functions of fuzzy language in social news are presented in chapter four. Then the author makes a summary of the whole thesis in the last chapter. |
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