Furthermore, from the aspect of pragmatics, words such as approximately, essentially, roughly etc are distinct representatives. But how can we separate pragmatic uses from its semantic functions? Before that, I want to show you some specific types.

3.2.1 Approximators

Approximators can change the structure of sentences’ original meanings, or determine the scope of the change to avoid speaking arbitrarily and talk more objectively .This type of fuzzy language includes two minor species. The first one is adaptors which is a new notion to make listeners hear the concerning topic but not exactly the same, using “sort of, kind of, more or less to make the conversation more suitable.

For example: 

A: What about his ears? Is he still draining fluid?

B: It’s just sort of crusted not really draining.(He 140)

The second one is rounders which are words used to measure the distance between the real situation and the conversation, including about ,or so, approximately…Sometimes people want to make conversation less absolute to avoid mistakes, so they use rounders.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn

For example:

Star Hotel is the largest hotel, which has over 3000 workers.

Some hedges have many kinds of functions which can only be judged by context.

3.2.2 Shields

Shields refer to those words that won’t change the speakers’ original meaning but to add an explanation to the dialogue, expressing the speakers’ or other people’s own attitudes. This kind of fuzzy language includes two types. One is plausible shields including “I think”, “as far as I can tell”, “I’m afraid”, etc.