Computing with words in decision making through individual and collective linguistic choice rules

A fuzzy preference relation is a popular model to represent both individual and group preferences. However, what is often sought is a subset of alternatives that is an ultimate solution of a decision problem. In order to arrive at such a final solution individual and/or group choice rules may be employed. There is a wealth of such rules devised in the context of the classical, crisp preference relations. Originally, most of the popular group decision making rules were conceived for classical (crisp) preference relations (orderings), and then extended to the case of traditional fuzzy preference relations. Moreover, they often differ in their assumptions about the properties of the preference relations to be processed. In the paper we pursue the path towards a universal representation of such rules that provides an effective generalization of the classical rules for the fuzzy case. Moreover, it leads to a meaningful extension to the linguistic preferences, in the spirit of the computing with words paradigm.