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Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest: Linguistic and pragmatic approaches
Edited by Ilaria Fiorentini and Chiara Zanchi
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 347] 2024
► pp. 176–207

Chapter 8
Vagueness explored

The role of comment clauses

| University of Cagliari

The paper sets out to explore the function of vagueness served by comment clauses in Italian, that is, (de-)verbal parentheticals performing various meta-discursive functions. Meta-discourse reflects the expression of speaker’s comment on discourse to different levels ranging from the communication of epistemic commitment to the encoding of an attitude of mirativity and emphasis. In this paper I address meta-discourse that is expressed by comment clauses that assist the speaker in the communication of informative, relational, and discursive vagueness. Specifically, the strategies here investigated indicate a relation of underspecification between the speaker and the formulation to different degrees pertaining to approximation, expression of epistemic stance, categorisation of reference via exemplification, attenuation of speaker’s force, and on-line planning. I argue that vagueness should be related to the expression of speaker’s subjectivity and indexicality, as the performing of this function helps the speaker contextualising the interpretation of various stretches of discourse.

Keywords: vagueness, comment clauses, Italian, commitment, emergent discourse, spoken discourse, meta-discourse, subjectivity, indexicality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and overview: The linguistic expression of vagueness
  • 2.The linguistic expression of vagueness: Some theoretical premises
    • 2.1Systemic vs intentional vagueness
    • 2.2Means to be vague in discourse: From taxonomic nouns to parentheticals and beyond
    • 2.3Methodology: Object of analysis, corpus, and parameters
  • 3.Vagueness in discourse through the lens of comment clauses
    • 3.1Informative vagueness: Approximation on the content level
    • 3.2Relational vagueness: Between epistemic functions, epistemic exemplification, and attenuation
      • 3.2.1Relational vagueness: Epistemic functions
      • 3.2.2A special case of relational vagueness: Epistemic commitment and categorisation aims
      • 3.2.3Relational vagueness: The case of attenuation
    • 3.3Discursive vagueness: Diluting discourse while planning utterances on-line
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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