Cover not available
Article published In:
Vagueness and Elasticity of 'Sort of' in TV Discussion Discourse in the Asian Pacific
Edited by Vahid Parvaresh and Grace Zhang
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 29:1] 2019
► pp. 86–110

Pragmatic functions of ‘sort of’ in Persian

A vague language perspective

| Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom
| The University of Queensland, Australia

It goes without saying that as a pragmatic phenomenon, vagueness has over the past few years been a topic of extensive research. However, a huge gap still exists when it comes to the investigation of how vagueness is expressed across different languages and cultures. In the present study, we have put under scrutiny the pragmatic functions of ‘sort of’, a vague expression, in Persian conversation with a view to making cross-linguistic comparisons between different languages possible. Besides confirming the fact that the vague item ‘sort of’ enables interactants to fulfil a wide variety of functions in interactional settings, particularly in face-to-face interactions, the current study reveals that the expression in question can also serve to signal ‘a moment of awkwardness’ as well as the presence of ‘inferable information’. With the former function, ‘sort of’ signals that the speaker is experiencing a feeling of inconvenience and embarrassment. When used as an inferable information signal, however, ‘sort of’ indicates that the utterance has been inferred from the previous or current exchange.

Keywords: ‘sort of’, Persian, inferable, vague language, vagueness, pragmatic function
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Vague language
  • 3.The current study
    • 3.1 Sort of in Persian
    • 3.2Data and method
  • 4.Analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Transcription conventions
  • References
Published online: 16 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00022.par
References
Aijmer, K.
(1984) ‘Sort of and ‘kind of in English conversation. Studia Linguktica, 38(2), 118–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002) English discourse particles: Evidence from a corpus (Vol. 101). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bavelas, J. B., Black, A., Chovil, N., & Mullett, J.
(1990) Equivocal communication. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Beeching, K.
(2016) Pragmatic markers in British English: Meaning in social interaction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berndt, R. S., & Caramazza, A.
(1978) The development of vague modifiers in the language of pre-school children. Journal of Child Language, 5(02), 279–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, D.
(1972) Degree words (Vol. 531). Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, G.
(1977) Listening to spoken English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C.
(1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 41). Cambridge university press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carter, R., & McCarthy, M.
(2006) Cambridge grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Channell, J.
(1985) Vagueness as a conversational strategy. Nottingham Linguistic Circular 141, 3–24.Google Scholar
(1994) Vague language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Coates, J.
(1987) Epistemic modality and spoken discourse. Transactions of the Philological Society, 851, 110–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crystal, D., & Davy, D.
(1975) Advanced conversational English. London: Longman Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J., & Haugh, M.
(2014) Pragmatics and the English language. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cutting, J.
(Ed.) (2007) Vague language explored. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Vague language in conference abstracts. Journal of English for academic purposes, 11(4), 283–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015)  Dingsbums und so: Beliefs about German vague language. Journal of Pragmatics, 851, 108–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drave, N.
(2000) Vaguely speaking: A corpus approach to vague language in intercultural conversations. In P. Peters, P. Collins, & A. Smith (Eds.), Language and computers: New frontiers of corpus research. Papers from the Twenty-First International Conference of English Language Research and Computerized Corpora (pp. 25–40). The Netherlands: Rodopi.
(2001) Vaguely speaking: A corpus approach to vague language in intercultural conversations. Language and Computers, 36(1), 25–40.Google Scholar
Edmonson, W.
(1981) Spoken discourse. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fernández, J.
(2015) General extender use in spoken Peninsular Spanish: metapragmatic awareness and pedagogical implications. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 2(1), 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, A.
(2010) Hedges in context: Form and function of sort of and kind of . In G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch, & S. Schneider (Eds.), New approaches to hedging (pp. 49–71). Bingley, UK: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fraser, B.
(2010) Pragmatic competence: The case of hedging. In G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch & S. Schneider (eds.), New approaches to hedging (15–34). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gassner, D.
(2012) Vague language that is rarely vaguep: A case study of “thing” in L1 and L2 discourse. International Review of Pragmatics, 4(1), 3–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, M.
(2017) Implicature and the inferential substrate. In Piotr Cap and Marta Dynel (eds.), Implicitness: From Lexis to Discourse (pp. 281–304), John Benjamins, Amsterdam. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J.
(1986) Functions of ‘you know’ in women’s and men’s speech. Language in Society, 151, 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1988) ‘Sort of’ in New Zealand women’s and men’s speech. Studia Linguistica, 42(2), 85–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hübler, A.
(1983) Understatements and hedges in English. John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyde, D.
(2016) Vagueness, logic and ontology. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, K.
(1996) Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied linguistics, 17(4), 433–454. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
James, A. R.
(1983) Compromisers in English: A cross-disciplinary approach to their interpersonal significance. Journal of pragmatics, 7(2), 191–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, A. H., Smith, S. W., & Ludge, T.
(2003) Interactive aspects of vagueness in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 351, 1737–1769. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koutlaki, S. A.
(2009) Two sides of the same coin: how the notion of ‘face’ in encoded in Persian communication. In: Bargiela-Chiappini, F., Haugh, M. (Eds.), Face, Communication, and Social Interaction. Equinox, London, pp. 115–133.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G.
(1972) Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Chicago Linguistic Society Papers, 81, 183–228.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R.
(1975) Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Li, S.
(2017) A corpus-based study of vague language in legislative texts: Strategic use of vague terms. English for Specific Purposes, 451, 98–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Metsä-Ketelä, M.
(2016) Pragmatic vagueness: Exploring general extenders in English as a lingua franca. Intercultural Pragmatics, 13(3), 325–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, M.
(1986) The kind of women who put ‘-ish’ behind everything and ‘sort of in front of it – a study of sex differences in New Zealand English. Unpublished M. A. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar
Miskovic-Lukovic, M.
(2009) Is there a chance that I might kinda ‘sort of’ take you to dinner?: The role of the pragmatic particles ‘kind of’ and ‘sort of’ in utterance interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(3), 602–625. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikula, T.
(1996) Pragmatic force modifiers. Jyvaskyla, Finland: University of Jyvaskyla.Google Scholar
Parvaresh, V.
(2015) Vague language that is vaguep in both L1 and L2: A comment on Gassner (2012). International Review of Pragmatics, 7(1), 129–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017) Panegyrists, vagueness and the pragmeme. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 61–81). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.Google Scholar
(2018) ‘We are going to do a lot of things for college tuition’: Vague language in the 2016 U.S. presidential debates. Corpus Pragmatics, 21, 167–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parvaresh, V., & Ahmadian, M. J.
(2016) The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners. The Language Learning Journal, 44(4), 436–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parvaresh, V., Tavangar, M., Rasekh, A. E., & Izadi, D.
(2012) About his friend, how good she is, and this and that: General extenders in native Persian and non-native English discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(3), 261–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parvaresh, V., & Tayebi, T.
(2014) Vaguely speaking in Persian. Discourse Processes, 51(7), 565–600. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 1321, 91–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pierce, C. S.
(1902) Vagueness. In M. Baldwin (Ed.), Dictionary of philosophy and psychology II. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Powell, M.
(1985) Purposive vagueness: An evaluative dimension of vague quantifying expressions. Journal of Linguistics, 211, 31–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. F., J. Frader, & C. Bosk
(1982) On hedging in physician-physician discourse. In R. J. di Pietro (Eds.), Linguistics and the professions. Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. N., & Svartvik, J.
(1972) A grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Raclaw, J.
(2013) Indexing inferables and organizational shifts:‘No’-prefaces in English conversation (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder).Google Scholar
Ruzaitė, J.
(2007) Vague language in educational settings: Quantifiers and approximators in British and American English. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Sabet, P., & Zhang, G.
(2015) Communicating through vague language: A comparative study of L1 and L2 speakers. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharifian, F.
(2007) L1 cultural conceptualization in L2 learning: the case of Persian-speaking learners of English. In: Sharifian, F., Palmer, G. B. (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics. John Benjamin B.V., The Netherlands, pp. 33–52.Google Scholar
(2011) Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications (Vol. 11). John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sobrino, A.
(2015) Inquiry about the origin and abundance of vague language: An issue for the future. In Towards the future of fuzzy logic (pp. 117–136). Springer: Switzerland.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H.
(2005) (Im) politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stubbs, M.
(1986) A matter of prolonged field work: Notes towards a modal grammar of English. Applied Linguistics, 71, 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tayebi, T.
(2016) Why do people take offence? Exploring the underlying expectations. Journal of Pragmatics, 1011, 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Implying an impolite belief: A case of tikkeh in Persian. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(1), 89–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tayebi, T., & Parvaresh, V.
(2014) Conversational disclaimers in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics, 621, 77–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williamson, T.
(1994) Vagueness. London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zhang, G.
(2011) Elasticity of vague language. Intercultural Pragmatics, 81, 571–599. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Elastic language: How and why we stretch our words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar