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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. 208–233

Chapter 9
Using ambiguity and vagueness to avoid problematic answers

The case of Italian abbastanza

| University of Insubria

This paper focuses on the use of the Italian adverb abbastanza ‘enough, quite’ when it is used as a stand-alone reply to potentially problematic and face-threatening questions. Despite its positive semantics, in some contexts, this word can be perceived as vague or even ambiguous by speakers, in the sense that it is possible to interpret it both as a (vague) ‘yes’ and a (vague) ‘no’, thus functioning as an off-record politeness strategy. To verify in which contexts this word can be perceived as ambiguous and vague, we will examine data gathered from a questionnaire specifically created and from corpora of contemporary Italian (KIParla corpus and ItTenTen). The analysis will confirm a correlation between the level of ambiguity and contexts where the speaker is asked to evaluate something strongly related to the hearer. Finally, we will argue how the potential ambiguity of this adverb is linked to its core semantics of quantitative adequacy.

Keywords: abbastanza, Italian, politeness, discourse analysis, face-threatening questions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ambiguity and vagueness: Flaws or communicative strategies?
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Abbastanza to quantify or measure something
    • 4.2Abbastanza to evaluate something
  • 5.Discussion: How much enough is ‘enough’?
  • 6.Conclusions and prospects
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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