Part of
Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest: Linguistic and pragmatic approachesEdited by Ilaria Fiorentini and Chiara Zanchi
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 347] 2024
► pp. 52–84
Edited by Ilaria Fiorentini and Chiara Zanchi
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 347] 2024
► pp. 52–84
Chapter 4Vagueness and ambiguity are very different (persuasion
devices)
Without taking a strong theoretical stance on the terminological boundary between ambiguity and vagueness, we suggest that, at least when considered as persuasion devices, they are quite different and almost opposite phenomena. We suggest that vagueness is effectively persuasive in that it can specifically divert epistemic vigilance from questionable or unpleasant contents. Ambiguity, conversely, encodes multiple meanings drawing additional attention to the message. We support such claims through examples from markedly persuasive texts and through the results of a self-paced reading experiment revealing differences between contextually precise vague expressions (VE), contextually non-precise VE, and precise expressions.
Keywords: vagueness, ambiguity, persuasion, epistemic vigilance, implicit meaning, cognitive linguistics, experimental pragmatics
Article outline
- 1.Vagueness and ambiguity: Different or continuous phenomena?
- 2.Vagueness and ambiguity as persuasion devices
- 2.1Persuasive vagueness
- 2.2Persuasive ambiguity
- 2.3Two different (almost opposite) persuasive processes
- 3.Experimental evidence
- 3.1Previous research and present research hypotheses
- 3.2Design and procedure
- 3.3Results and discussion
- 4.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements -
Notes -
References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References
Adolphs, Svenja, Sarah Atkins, and Kevin Harvey
2007 “Caught
between professional requirements and interpersonal needs:
Vague language in healthcare
contexts.” In Vague
Language Explored, ed.
by Joan Cutting, 62–78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 
Alxatib, Sam, and Francis J. Pelletier
2011 “The
Psychology of Vagueness: Borderline Cases and
Contradictions.” In Mind
&
Language 26 (3): 287–326.
Arnold, Jennifer, Thomas Wasow, Ash Asudeh, and Peter Alrenga
2004 “Avoiding
attachment ambiguities: The role of constituent
ordering.” Journal of Memory
and
Language 51 (1): 55–70.
Barton, Steven B., and Anthony J. Sanford
1993 “A
case study of anomaly detection: Shallow semantic processing
and cohesion
establishment.” Memory &
Cognition 21 (4): 477–487.
Bazzanella, Carla
Black, Max
1937 “Vagueness.
An exercise in logical
analysis.” Philosophy of
Science 4 (4): 427–455.
Bochnak, M. Ryan, and Lisa Matthewson
2020 “Techniques
in complex semantic
fieldwork.” Annual Review of
Linguistics 6: 261–283.
Bonini, Nicholao, Daniel Osherson, Riccardo Viale, and Timothy Williamson
1999 “On
the Psychology of Vague
Predicates.” Mind and
Language 14 (4): 377–393.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson
1987 “Universal
in Language Usage: Politeness
Phenomena.” In Questions
and Politeness. Strategies in Social
Interaction, ed.
by E. N. Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burgers, Christian, Margot van Mulken, and Peter Jan Schellens
2013 “On
verbal irony, images and creativity: A corpus-analytic
approach.” In Creativity
and the Agile Mind: A Multi-Disciplinary Study of a
Multi-Faceted Phenomenon, ed.
by Tony Veale, Kurt Feyaerts, and Charles Forceville, 293–312. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Caffi, Claudia
2007 Mitigation. Oxford: Elsevier.
2012 “Mezzi
linguistici della mitigazione in italiano: risultati e
prospettive di
ricerca.” In Grammatica
e Pragmatica, ed.
by Franca Orletti, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri, and Anna Pompei, 147–189. Roma: Il Calamo.
2013 “Mitigation.” In Pragmatics
of Speech Actions, ed
by Marina Sbisà, and Ken Turner, 257–286. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Channell, Joanna
1994 Vague
language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1985 “Vagueness
as a conversational
strategy.” Nottingham
Linguistic
Circular 14: 3–24.
Chomsky, Noam
2002 “An
interview on
minimalism.” In On
Nature and Language, ed.
by Noam Chomsky, 92–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Christiansen, Morten H., and Nick Chater
2008 “Language
as Shaped by the
Brain.” Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 31 (5): 489–509.
Copilowish, Irving M.
1939 “Border-line
cases, vagueness, and
ambiguity.” Philosophy of
science 6:181–195.
Cotterill, Janet
2007 “ ‘I
think he was kind of shouting or something’: Uses and abuses
of vagueness in the British
courtroom.” In Vague
language explored, ed.
by Joan Cutting, 97–114. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Crystal, David, and Derek Davy
1975 Advanced
Conversational
English. London: Longman.
Cutting, Joan
2007 Vague
language
explored. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
D’Errico, Francesca, Laura Vincze, and Isabella Poggi
2013 “Vagueness
in Political
Discourse.” In Proceedings
of 2nd International Workshop on Argumentation in Artificial
Intelligence and Philosophy: computational and philosophical
perspectives. Argaip, ed.
by C. S. Villalta, 1–12.
Dong, Tian, and Pingpin Shao
2016 “The
Semantic Analysis of Ambiguity in
Advertisements.” Proceedings
of 2016 5th International Conference on Social Science,
Education and Humanities Research. Advances in Social
Science, Education and Humanities
Research, 1135–1138. Atlantis Press.
Duffy, Susan A., Robin K. Morris, and Keith Rayner
1988 “Lexical
ambiguity and fixation times in
reading.” Journal of Memory
and
Language 27 (4): 429–446.
Duszak, Anna
2002 “Us
and others: an
introduction.” In Us
and Others. Social identities across languages, discourses
and cultures, ed.
by Anna Duszak, 1–28. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Egré, Paul, and Benjamin Icard
2018 “Lying
and
Vagueness.” In The
Oxford Handbook of Lying, ed.
by Jörg Meibauer, 354–369. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Egré, Paul, and Jeremy Zehr
2018 “Are
Gaps Preferred to Gluts? A Closer Look at Borderline
Contradictions.” In The
Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure:
Experimental Perspectives, ed.
by Elena Castroviejo, Louise McNally, and Galit Weidman Sassoon, 25–58. Berlin: Springer.
Erickson, Thomas D., and Mark E. Mattson
1981 “From
words to meaning: A semantic
illusion.” Journal of Verbal
Learning and Verbal
Behavior 20 (5): 540–551. .
.Evison, Jane, Michael McCarthy, and Anne O’Keeffe
2007 “Looking
out for love and all the rest of it: Vague category markers
as shared social
space.” In Vague
language explored, ed.
by Joan Cutting, 138–157. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ferreira, Victor, Robert L. Slevc, and Ervin Rogers
2005 “How
do speakers avoid ambiguous linguistic
expressions?” Cognition 96 (3): 263–284.
Fillmore, Charles J.
1985 “Frames
and the semantics of
understanding.” Quaderni di
Semantica 6 (2): 222–254.
Fine, Kit
1975 “Vagueness,
Truth and
Logic.” Synthese 30
3 (4): 265–300.
Frazier, Lyn, and Keith Rayner
1990 “Taking
on semantic commitments: Processing multiple meanings vs.
multiple senses.” Journal of
Memory and
Language 29: 181–200.
Gornostaeva, Anna
2016 “American
Political Discourse: Irony in Pre-Election Campaign
2016.” Russian Journal of
Linguistics 20 (4): 179–196.
Green, Matthew J., and Kees van Deemter
2019 “The
elusive benefits of vagueness: Evidence from
experiments.” In Vagueness
and rationality in language use and
cognition [LCAM
vol. 5], ed.
by Richard Dietz, 63–86. Berlin: Springer.
Hornby, Peter A.
1974 “Surface
structure and
presupposition.” Journal of
Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behaviour 13 (5): 530–538.
Huang, Ruihong
2020 “A
Study of Intentional Ambiguity from the Perspective of
Pragmatics.” OALib 07 (03): 1–10.
Jucker, Andreas H., Sara W. Smith, and Tanja Lüdge
2003 “Interactive
aspects of vagueness in
conversation.” Journal of
pragmatics 35 (12): 1737–1769.
Klepousniotou, Ekaterini, and Shari R. Baum
2007 “Disambiguating
the ambiguity advantage effect in word recognition: An
advantage for polysemous but not homonymous
words.” Journal of
Neurolinguistics 20 (1): 1–24.
Koester, Almut
2007 “’About
twelve thousand or so’: Vagueness in North American and UK
offices.” In Vague
language explored, ed.
by Joan Cutting, 40–61. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kraljic, Tanya, and Susan Brennan
2005 “Prosodic
disambiguation of syntactic structure: For the speaker or
for the addressee?” Cognitive
Psychology 50 (2): 194–231.
Krebs, John R., and Richard Dawkins
1984 “Animal
Signals: Mind Reading and
Manipulation.” In Behavioural
Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, ed.
by John R. Krebs and Nicholas B. Davies, 380–402. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lakoff, George
1972 “A
study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy
concepts.” Chicago Linguistic
Society
Papers 8: 183–228.
Larina, Tatiana, Vladimir Ozyumenko, and Douglas Mark Ponton
2019 “Persuasion
Strategies in Media Discourse about Russia: Linguistic
Ambiguity and
Uncertainty.” Lodz Papers in
Pragmatics 15 (1): 3–22.
Lewis, David
1982 “Logic
for
Equivocators.” Noûs 16: 431–441.
Lin, Chien-Jer C., and Kathleen Ahrens
2000 “Calculating
the Number of Senses: Implications for Ambiguity Advantage
Effect During Lexical
Access.” Proceedings of the
Seventh International Symposium of Chinese Languages and
Linguistics, 141–155. National Chung-Cheng University, Jiayi.
Loftus, Elizabeth F.
1975 “Leading
questions and the eyewitness
report.” Cognitive
Psychology 7 (4): 560–572.
Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo, and Viviana Masia
2015 “Context-dependent
information processing: towards an expectation-based parsing
model of information
structure.” In Modeling
and Using Context, ed.
by I.S. Henning Christiansen, 440–453. Berlin: Springer.
Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo, Laura Baranzini, Doriana Cimmino, Federica Cominetti, Claudia Coppola, and Giorgia Mannaioli
2020 “Implicit
argumentation and persuasion: A measuring
model.” Journal of
Argumentation in
Context 9(1): 95–123.
Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo
2016 “The
“exaptation” of linguistic implicit
strategies.” SpringerPlus 5: 1–24.
2019a La
Lingua Disonesta. Contenuti Impliciti e Strategie di
Persuasione. Bologna: Il Mulino.
2019b “Sfruttamento
di “immagini” implicite nella pubblicità e nella propaganda
politica
italiana.” In Sguardo
sull’Immaginario Italiano. Aspetti Linguistici, Letterari e
Culturali, ed.
by Eliana Moscarda Mirković, and Tanja Habrle, 267–294. Pola, Croatia: Edizioni dell’Università degli Studi Juraj Dobrila di Pola.
2021 “Presupposition,
attention and cognitive
load.” Journal of
Pragmatics 183: 15–28.
Magni, Elisabetta
2016 “Setti
tipi di ambiguità nel mutamento
linguistico.” In Problemi
e prospettive della linguistica storica: Atti del XL
Convegno della Società italiana di
glottologia [Biblioteca della
Società Italiana di
Glottologia 40], ed.
by Patrizia Cordin and Alessandro Parenti, 13–34. Roma: Il Calamo.
Mannaioli, Giorgia, Alessandro Ansani, Claudia Coppola, and Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
2024 “Vagueness
as an implicit-encoding persuasive strategy: an experimental
approach.” Cognitive
Processing.
Masia, Viviana, Paolo Canal, Irene Ricci, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri, and Valentina Bambini
2017 “Presupposition
of new information as a pragmatic garden path: Evidence from
Event-Related Brain
Potentials.” Journal of
Neurolinguistics 42: 31–48.
Musolff, Andreas
2017 “Metaphor,
irony and sarcasm in public
discourse.” Journal of
Pragmatics 109: 95–104.
Mzoughi, Mohamed-Nabil, Safa Chaieb, and Karim Garrouch
2017 “The
effects of rhetorical ambiguity in advertising on
comprehension and persuasion: moderating role of tolerance
of ambiguity.” Recherches en
Sciences de
Gestion 123 (6): 103–134.
Nerlich, Brigitte, and David D. Clarke
2001 “Ambiguities
We Live by: Towards a Pragmatics of
Polysemy.” Journal of
Pragmatics 33 (1): 1–20.
O’Keeffe, Anne, and Winnie Cheng
2015 “Vague
language.” In Corpus
Pragmatics: A Handbook, ed.
by Karin Aijmer, and Christoph Rühlemann, 686–869. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Östman, Jan-Ola
2005 “Construction
discourse: A
prolegomenon.” In Construction
grammars: Cognitive grounding and theoretical
extensions, ed.
by Jan-Ola Östman, and Mirjam Fried, 121–144. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Overstreet, Maryann, and George Yule
1997 “On
being inexplicit and stuff in contemporary American
English.” Journal of English
Linguistics 25 (3): 250–258.
Piantadosi, Steven T., Harry J. Tily, and Edward Gibson
2011 “The
communicative function of ambiguity in
language.” Cognition 122: 280–291.
Rathert, Monika
2005 “Ambiguity.” In Encyclopedia
of Linguistics, ed.
by Philipp Strazny. New York/Oxon: Routledge.
Reboul, Anne
2011 “A
relevance-theoretic account of the evolution of implicit
communication.” Studies in
Pragmatics 13 (1): 1–19.
Rodd, Jennifer M., Mattew H. Davis, and Ingrid S. Johnsrude
2005 “The
neural mechanisms of speech comprehension: fMRI studies of
semantic ambiguity.” Cereb.
Cortex 15: 1261–1269.
Russell, Bertrand
1923 “Vagueness.” Australasian
Journal of Psychology and
Philosophy 1: 84–92.
Sanford, Anthony J., and Patrick Sturt
2002 “Depth
of processing in language comprehension: Not noticing the
evidence.” Trends in
Cognitive
Sciences 6 (9): 382–386.
de Saussure, Louis
2005 “Manipulation
and Cognitive Pragmatics: Preliminary
Hypotheses.” In Manipulation
and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse,
Language, Mind, ed.
by Louis de Saussure, and Peter Schulz, 113–146. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Sbisà, Marina
2007 Detto
non Detto. Le Forme della Comunicazione
Implicita. Roma/Bari: Laterza.
Schwarz, Florian
2015 “Presuppositions
vs. Asserted content in online
processing.” In Experimental
perspectives on presuppositions, ed.
by Florian Schwarz, 89–108. Berlin: Springer.
2016 “Experimental
work in presupposition and presupposition
projection.” Annual review of
linguistics 2: 273–292.
Scotto Di Carlo, Giuseppina
2013 Vagueness
as a Political Strategy: Weasel Words in Security Council
Resolutions Relating to the Second Gulf
War. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Serchuk, Phil, Ian Hargreaves, and Richard Zach
2011 “Vagueness,
Logic and Use: Four Experimental Studies on
Vagueness.” Mind &
Language 26 (5): 540–573.
Simpson, Greg B.
1994 “Context
and the processing of ambiguous
words.” In Handbook
of Psycholinguistics, ed.
by Matthew J. Traxler, and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 359–374. San Diego: Academic Press.
Solt, Stephanie
2018 “Multidimensionality,
subjectivity and scales: Experimental
evidence.” In The
Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure:
Experimental
Perspectives (Vol. 4), ed.
by Elena Castroviejo, Louis McNally, and Galit Weidman Sassoon, 59–91. Berlin: Springer.
Sorensen, Roy
2018 “Vagueness.” In Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi, and Deirdre Wilson
2010 “Epistemic
Vigilance.” Mind &
Language 25 (4): 359–393.
Strazny, Philipp
2005 Encyclopedia
of linguistics. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.
Sturt, Patrick, Anthony J. Sanford, Anthony Stewart, and Eugene Dawydiak
2004 “Linguistic
focus and good-enough representations: An application of the
change-detection
paradigm.” Psychonomic
Bulletin &
Review 11 (5): 882–888.
Tsakona, Villy, and Diana Popa
2011 “Humour
in politics and the politics of
humour.” In In
Between Political Critique and Public
Entertainment, ed.
by Villy Tsakona, and Diana Popa, 1–30. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Tuggy, David
1993 “Ambiguity,
polysemy, and
vagueness.” Cognitive
Linguistics 4 (3): 273–290.
Van Dijk, Theun A.
2006 “Discourse
and manipulation.” Discourse
&
Society 17 (3): 359–383.
Van Rooij, Robert
2011 “Vagueness
and
linguistics.” In Vagueness:
A Guide, ed.
by Giuseppina Ronzitti, 123–170. Berlin: Springer.
Voghera, Miriam
2012 “Chitarre,
violino, banjo e cose del
genere.” In Per
Tullio De Mauro. Studi Offerti dalle Allieve in Occasione
del suo 80° Compleanno, ed.
by Miriam Voghera, and Anna M. Thornton, 341–364. Roma: Aracne.
2013 “A
Case study on the Relationship between Grammatical Change
and Synchronic Variation: The Emergence of tipo[-N] in
Italian.” In Synchrony
and Diachrony: a Dynamic
Interface, ed.
by Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri, and Piera Molinelli, 283–312. Amsterdam/Philadephia: Benjamins.
2017 “Quando
vaghezza e focus entrano in contatto: il caso di un attimo,
anzi un
attimino.” In Di
Tutti i Colori. Studi Linguistici per Maria
Grossmann, ed.
by Roberta D’Alessandro, Gabriele Iannàccaro, Diana Passino, and Anna M. Thornton, 385–397. Utrecht: Utrecht University Press.
Wasow, Thomas
2015 “Ambiguity
Avoidance is
Overrated.” In Ambiguity:
Language and Communication, ed.
by Susanne Winkler, 29–48. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Wenzhong, Zhu, and Li Jingyi
2013 “A
Pragmatic Study on the Functions of Vague Language in
Commercial
Advertising.” English
Language Teaching, Canadian Center of Science and
Education 6 (6): 103–103.
Xi-yao, Yang, and Wu Yong-an
2008 “Same
vague expression, different
conceptualizations.” US-China
Education
Review 5 (9): 50–54.
Zempleni, Monika-Zita, Remco Renken, John C. J. Hoeks, Johannes M. Hoogduin, and Laurie A. Stowe
2007 “Semantic
ambiguity processing in sentence context: Evidence from
event-related
fMRI.” NeuroImage, 34(3): 1270–1279.
Zhang, Quiao
1998 “Fuzziness –
vagueness – generality –
ambiguity.” Journal of
Pragmatics 29 (1): 13–31.