Vague language in conference abstracts

Cutting, Joan

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2012.05.004

Cited by 69 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Based on previous studies (CUTTING, 2012), (GRANT, 2010), (FERNANDEZ and YULDASHEV, 2011) about vague language, about courtroom language (GONÇALVES, 2011), and about television show language (QUAGLIO, 2009), we were able to support our findings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Vieira

Lança

2014

Revele

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TV series have been a source of input for English language learners, especially the ones interested in real language use. There are studies that show how close to real life some TV shows are (ORFANO, 2010(ORFANO, , 2012. For this study a corpus of a TV seriesLaw and Order: Special Victim´s Unit (SVU) -was compiled. This corpus is composed of 6 episodes (44.400 words). The analysis considered that every Law and Order episode carries investigation and court scenes. The main point of this investigation is to analyze the use of vague words such as any, anything, anyone, anybody, anyway, and anywhere in the TV show. An analysis of the episodes showed that these words occurred 139 times with a frequency distribution that varied in the investigation and court scenes. The results may reveal that more formal contexts, represented in the TV series by the court scenes, do not favor the use of vague language. In such argumentative contexts speakers tend to be more precise.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Vieira

Lança

2014

Revele

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“…Though some of the literature on conferences takes a more general stance with regard to the nature and purpose of conferences (Elton, 1983;Hart, 1984;Hickson, 2006;Pereira, 2011Pereira, , 2012Skelton, 1997), most of the disciplinary work on conferences either focuses on the historical importance of a conference for the discipline (e.g., Carpay, 2001 for psychology;Gibbons, 2012 for English;McCulloch, 2012;Walford, 2011 for education), or on the necessity of working at conference practice for the improvement of the field or discipline (e.g., Jeffrey, 2003 for geography). A number of academics in applied linguistics are publishing on specific elements of conferences, from abstracts (Cutting, 2012), to the introductions of presentations (Hood & Forey, 2005), to question time (Querol-Julián & Fortanet-Gómez, 2012). This smattering of references performs what Clegg, drawing on communities of practice literature, refers to as 'boundary work' for research in higher education (Clegg, 2012, p. 671).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic conferences: representative and resistant sites for higher education research

Henderson¹

2015

Higher Education Research & Development

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“…As noted above, that natural language use is frequently vague has repeatedly been established by researchers (see Channell 1994;Cheng and Warren 2001;Cutting 2007Cutting , 2012Fern ‡ndez 2015;Fern ‡ndez and Yuldashev 2011;Janney 2002;Parvaresh and Tayebi 2014;Pan and Felser 2011;Peires 1997;Powell 1985;Ruzait• 2007;Zhang 2011Zhang , 2013. In the same way, it has been argued that while speakers have the ability to make their language less vague, it would be impossible for them to make it perfectly precise (Williamson 1994).…”

Section: Some Notes On Vlmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…This may be partly due to the fact that speakers often feel that further precision would not contribute to their argument (Cutting 2012; see also Cutting 2015), and that conversational contributions need to be tailored to Ôthe perceived informational needs of the other participant(s)Õ (Drave 2000: 27). In this respect, research has demonstrated that VL Ôis by no means equal to loose talk but rather is an endeavor strategically made to achieve certain communicative goalsÕ (Parvaresh and Tayebi 2014: 597).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners

Parvaresh

Ahmadian

2016

The Language Learning Journal

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Vague language (e.g. thing, somewhere) is one of the linguistic features which typically differentiate the language use of a native or near-native speaker from that of a language learner since native speakers typically make abundant use of vague expressions. Thus far, however, there has been no published research on how features of pedagogic tasks might encourage L2 learnersÕ production of vague expressions. The present study sets out to examine whether and how task structure affects the number and type of vague expressions used by a group of higher-intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 50 Iranian EFL learners from six intact classes, all native speakers of Persian with limited opportunity to communicate with native speakers of English, and no experience in English-speaking countries. To elicit data, two picture description tasks were used. These picture-stories possessed the defining characteristics of structured and unstructured narrative tasks, respectively. Results revealed that (a) unstructured tasks were associated with the production of significantly more vague expressions; and (b) the most notable differences between performances on the two task types concerned Ôvague nounsÕ, Ôvague quantifiersÕ, Ôvague deintensifiersÕ and Ôvague subjectivisersÕ. The results of the study have implications for both teachers and teacher educators in that they may help identify the kinds of tasks which induce language learners to use vague expressions more frequently.

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Vague language in conference abstracts

Cited by 69 publications

References 20 publications

Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Academic conferences: representative and resistant sites for higher education research

The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners

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