Vagueness and approximation in relevance theory

Communicating through Vague Language

“…She notes that each country or culture possesses unique ways of abiding by or demonstrating any maxims. Franken (1997) questions the foundation of Sperber and Wilson's account of vagueness and approximative utterances as cases of loose talk, asserting that there is no reason to put them in this category. Vagueness originates from vague concepts-but there is no such thing as approximate concepts (p. 150).…”

An Analysis of Pragmatic Functions of Hedging in American Presidential Inaugural Addresses

“…In example [2], President Truman resorted to the hedging devices "almost" and "hundreds of millions of" to meet the need of vague expression. The hedge "almost" and the round-number "one year" help to make up an acceptable numerical conception that should be free from any suspicion concerning its truthfulness .The hedge "hundreds of millions of" can also avoid arbitrariness that might result from the proposition of an accurate number.…”

‘Like the Wise Virgins and All that Jazz’: Using a Corpus to Examine Vague Categorisation and Shared Knowledge

“…Vague language is defined in a number of ways. Franken (1997) distinguishes between 'vagueness' and 'approximation' while Channell (1994) restricts the definition of vagueness to 'purposefully and unabashedly vague' uses of languages. She divides vagueness into three categories: 1) vague additives (which include vague approximators such as about and tags referring to vague categories such as and things like that) 2) vagueness by choice of words (e.g.…”