Vague Expressions Of American Everyday Conversation: A Discussion In Light Of Relevance Theory

Vague expression is pervasive in everyday verbal communication. Due to instantaneousness and interactiveness of everyday communication, vague expressions in everyday conversation are quite different from those in written forms. In this dissertation, Sperber & Wilson's relevance theory (RT), instead of Grice's Cooperative Principle, is introduced to analysis of vagueness in everyday conversation. Optimal relevance between cognitive context and utterance, and effort/effect balance is the theoretical grounding of our discussion. Cognitive process of verbal communication is analyzed in light of RT. The study utilizes American Switchboard corpus of Linguistic Data Consortium and Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English as source of authentic material. The research finds that vague expressions serve varied functions in verbal communication other than merely expressing uncertainty. 1. Vague expressions can reduce processing efforts of both part of conversation, and maintain fluency of verbal communication. The balance of effect/effort of RT applies to both speaker and listener. Speakers may keep a balance of processing cost of accessing information and the cost to fluency. 2. Vague expressions can also serve as focusing device in communication directing the hearer's attention to the most relevant information. Vague quantifying expressions may convey meaning by focusing the listener on different aspects of a situation. They may indicate insignificance of quantity or to the contrary, convey a message of significance to hearer or to the contrary or convey a message of significance to hearer. 3. Some vague expressions encourage participation of hearer and evoke mutual understanding, such as and everything anticipates and emphasizes general understanding of a topic, and the following statement can achieve best effect of clarification. 4. Vague expressions may convey extra information to hearer. In expressing quantities, vague expressions serve to convey speakers'attitude and set the observed quantity in relation to the presumed speaker and listener expectations. Thus,vague expressions in everyday conversation are not substitute of precise expressions. Rather, they often convey meaning that is different from, and more relevant than a precise expression. They help guide the hearer towards the best interpretation of the speaker's intention.