The concept of an image of a fuzzy set under a fuzzy relation has proved to be a very powerful tool in fuzzy set theoretical applications. In this paper, we explain how it can be used to model linguistic expressions. For the representation of expressions, such as "at least middle-aged, "brighter than average, we will use fuzzy ordering relations, while resemblance relations will be suitable to model linguistic terms, such as "more or less expensive" and "very tall. We will show how these representations can be smoothly integrated in approximate reasoning schemes using the compositional rule of inference.