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VagueLanguage (1)

This document discusses vague language, which is characterized by a lack of precision and clarity often used by native English speakers for politeness or social reasons. It provides examples of vague language, including list completers, placeholders, quantifiers, generalizers, and suffixes, highlighting their cultural significance in communication. The document also includes a task to identify instances of vague language in a conversation.

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Luis Omar Posadas
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2 views

VagueLanguage (1)

This document discusses vague language, which is characterized by a lack of precision and clarity often used by native English speakers for politeness or social reasons. It provides examples of vague language, including list completers, placeholders, quantifiers, generalizers, and suffixes, highlighting their cultural significance in communication. The document also includes a task to identify instances of vague language in a conversation.

Uploaded by

Luis Omar Posadas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The topic for this lesson is:

VAGUE LANGUAGE

1 Introduction
Define briefly what is meant by ‘vague language’ and give one or two examples.
2 Reading

Vague language
Vague language is not totally accurate or clear. Although some people think this is
"bad" English, all native English speakers use vague language when they are unable
or unwilling to give accurate information, or they think it is either unnecessary or
socially inappropriate to do so. A good example of vague language is rounding up
numbers when telling the time. Twenty-six minutes past two becomes:

It's about half past two.


It's almost half past two.
It's half two-ish.
It's nearly half past two.

Often, speakers use vague language not because they do not have accurate
information, but because they feel it is more polite to make a less definite statement.
“That is wrong” becomes:

"I'm not sure that's completely correct."

Short definite statements sometimes sound too assertive to native English speakers,
sothey often add extra vague language to a sentence. This extra language has no extra
meaning, it is just a social softener.

The use of vague language differs from language to language and is an important
cultural consideration when doing business in a foreign language. Native English
speakers, for example, can find Germans direct because German uses little vague
language. On the other hand, for Germans, native English speakers can sound
indecisive, inaccurate and lacking authority. In both cases they are reacting to
characteristics of the language, not their business partner. Here are some more
examples of vague language commonly used by native speakers of English.

List completers

Sometimes a speaker might start a list of some kind and then cannot remember the
rest of the list or does not think the other items are important enough to mention. In
these cases, list completers are ideal:

"I typed some letters, reports and so on."


"You have to ask a doctor or a lawyer or someone like that, you know."

List completers are very common and use words such as things and stuff. Here are
some more list completers:

and stuff like that


and things / stuff

or something like that


or stuff like that
or what / where / whoever

Placeholders

Placeholders are for when a speaker does not know or cannot remember the name of
something or someone. We use general words like thing, person, man, guy, bloke,
woman as placeholders.

"I need a thing for the slide projector."


"I gave it to you know, that guy in the accounts department."

Grammatically these simply replace the name of the person or object that the speaker
cannot remember and never change their form. Other place holders include:

whatsername (for a woman)


whatsit
thingy
thingummy

Quantifiers

Vague language is very common with numbers when expressing quantity, frequency
or the time. Low numbers are often substituted by phrases such as a couple of / a few,
whereas larger numbers are rounded up with about / around or replaced with lots of /
loads of.

"Should we say around three or four o'clock?


"It cost around 20 pounds or so."
"It's about a million."
"The computer caused loads / lots of problems."

With vague language a couple does not necessarily mean two. It could mean up to
three or even four. When people do not want or need to give accurate numbers they
can use the following:

"There were about 30 odd / or so people at the meeting."


"He's not that old. I'd say he's about 30-ish."

"There were a lot of / lots of / loads of problems."

"I've been to Prague a couple of / a few times."

"I think we need about / around 30 (or so)."


Generalisers
Also very common are items like sort of, kind of or you know. These may be used
when someone cannot think of the right word. We also use items like this when we do
not want to be too precise, perhaps because we don’t want people to think we are
trying to look like an expert on a topic.

Suffixes
We often add the suffix –ish or –y to a word to show that we are not being precise.
This is very common with colour adjectives:
“It’s a sort of greenish blue.”
"He's not that old. I'd say he's about 30-ish."
“I’ll try and come around twoish.
“He has kind of blondey hair.”

2 Task 1
How many examples of vague language can you find in this conversation?

SB: What’s your favourite colour?


CM: My favourite colour? Mmm. I suppose it’s blue. I don’t know why I like blue,
except it’s probably the most popular colour for … for a majority of the
population.
SB: You think … more than red?
CM: Well if you look at erm, any group of people together, like say in a football
stadium or something like that you’ll find the predominant colour – I find the
predominant colour invariably is – is blue. Blue jerseys and things like that.
SB: Not if it’s Liverpool and they’re all in red!
I don’t think I have a favourite colour. I just sort of wake up in the morning
and I just feel like pulling on clothes of one colour or another..
CM: Yeah, but if you go shopping or something don’t you choose say a blue shirt
rather than a pink shirt?
SB: Well, I tend to buy – when I buy clothes, most clothes buy tend to be sort of
khaki or olive or sort of greyish, and then I have things with bright colours to
go with them. Not green. I don’t like green. I’m not too keen on yellow either.
But apart from that – red, blue, purple, black, white – you know.

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