Interactive aspects of vagueness in conversation

Vagueness in reference is often seen as a deplorable deviation from precision and clarity. Using a relevance theoretical framework of analysis, we demonstrate instead that vague expressions may be more effective than precise ones in conveying the intended meaning of an utterance. That is, they may carry more relevant contextual implications than would a precise expression. In introducing entities into a conversation, we found that vague referring expressions often served as a focusing device, helping the addressee determine how much processing effort should be devoted to a given referent. In characterising events and experiences, they may indicate a closer or looser assignment of a characteristic to a conceptual category. For expressing quantities, they may convey the speakerʹs attitude about the quantity itself, and they may convey assumptions about the speakerʹs and/or the hearerʹs beliefs. They may be used to directly express the degree of commitment a speaker makes to a proposition, or they may convey other propositional attitudes such as newsworthiness and personal evaluation more indirectly. Finally, they may serve social functions such as engendering camaraderie and softening implicit criticisms. They may thus be seen as managing conversational implicature. Our analysis is based on a corpus of semi-controlled spoken interactions between California students, who were asked to converse on specific topics, such as movies, sports or opera. Following the categories proposed by Channell (Channell, Joanna. 1994. Vague Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford), we analysed examples of vague additives, i.e., approximators, downtoners, vague category identifiers and shields, and examples of lexical vagueness, i.e., vague quantifying expressions, vague adverbs of frequency, vague adverbs of likelihood, and placeholder words. Such expressions are used regularly in everyday conversations and they rarely lead to detectable misunderstandings; we argue that their success depends on the exploitation of common ground.