Hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision making is a focus point in linguistic decision making, in which the main method is based on preference ordering. This paper develops a new hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method for group multi-criteria linguistic decision making; the method is inspired by the TOPSIS method and the preference degree between two hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs). To this end, we first use the preference degree to define a pseudo-distance between two HFLTSs and analyze its properties. Then we present the positive (optimistic) and negative (pessimistic) information of each criterion provided by each decision maker and aggregate these by using weights of decision makers to obtain the hesitant fuzzy linguistic positive and negative ideal solutions. On the basis of the proposed pseudo-distance, we finally obtain the positive (negative) ideal separation matrix and a new relative closeness degree to rank alternatives. We also design an algorithm based on the provided method to carry out hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision making. An illustrative example shows the elaboration of the proposed method and comparison with the symbolic aggregation-based method, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method and the hesitant fuzzy linguistic VIKOR method; it seems that the proposed method is a useful and alternative decision-making method.

One of characteristics of large-scale linguistic decision making problems is that decision information with respect to decision making attributes is derived from multi-sources information. In addition, the number of decision makers, alternatives or criteria of decision making problems in the context of big data are increasingly large. Correlation analysis between decision making attributes has become an important issue of large-scale linguistic decision making problems. In the paper, we concentrate on correlation analysis between decision making attributes to deal with large-scale decision making problems with linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy values. Firstly, we proposed a new similarity measure between two linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy sets to formally define correlation between decision making attributes. Then we propose linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy reducible weighted Maclaurin symmetric mean (LIFRWMSM) operator and linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy reducible weighted dual Maclaurin symmetric mean (LIFRWDMSM) operator to aggregate linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy value decision information of correlational decision making attributes, and analyze several important properties of the two operator. Inspired by evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) method, we design a solution scheme and decision steps to deal with large-scale linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy decision making problems. To show the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed decision method, we employ the choice of buying a house and the selection of travel destination to demonstrate our method and make comparative analysis with others aggregation operators or methods.