This paper investigates vague lexis in spoken academic discourse and in advanced corpus-based learner’s dictionaries. Although vague lexis (e.g. somewhat, around, sort of) characterises everyday language use, it is “part of our taken for granted world” (Channel 1994: 4) and little attention is devoted to it in the teaching of English as a foreign language. In addition, vagueness is often considered undesirable, especially when “good” language use is expected. Nevertheless, vague lexis performs a variety of functions, raging from expressing doubt to hedging the strength of statements for politeness purposes. In addition, speakers may deliberately exploit vagueness to present information in ways that favour their argument. Although the distinction between imprecision and strategic uses may be difficult to draw, the ability to employ vague lexis idiomatically, effectively and in the right communication context is an important aspect to master, especially for non-native speakers of English who may otherwise sound stylistically inappropriate, a risk that may undermine the authoritativeness of their argument. The first aim of this paper is to explore the use of vague lexis in spoken academic discourse by native and non-native speakers of English. The corpus for analysis is the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) (Simpson et al. 2002). A selection of the most frequently occurring items, retrieved using the MICASE on-line search engine, will be examined in their context of use to describe the functions they play in discourse. Subsequently, selected vague lexical expressions will be analysed as treated in the latest editions of three advanced corpus-based learner’s dictionaries in order to examine how these reference tools, which are becoming increasingly hybrid “sites” between norm and use, present such a highly context-sensitive lexical phenomenon. The dictionaries examined are the following: the fifth edition of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (COBUILD5) (2006), the third edition of the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (CALD3) (2008), and the eighth edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD8) (2010).
Vague Lexis in Spoken Academic English and in Advanced Corpus-Based Learner's Dictionaries
MOLINO, Alessandra
2014-01-01
Abstract
This paper investigates vague lexis in spoken academic discourse and in advanced corpus-based learner’s dictionaries. Although vague lexis (e.g. somewhat, around, sort of) characterises everyday language use, it is “part of our taken for granted world” (Channel 1994: 4) and little attention is devoted to it in the teaching of English as a foreign language. In addition, vagueness is often considered undesirable, especially when “good” language use is expected. Nevertheless, vague lexis performs a variety of functions, raging from expressing doubt to hedging the strength of statements for politeness purposes. In addition, speakers may deliberately exploit vagueness to present information in ways that favour their argument. Although the distinction between imprecision and strategic uses may be difficult to draw, the ability to employ vague lexis idiomatically, effectively and in the right communication context is an important aspect to master, especially for non-native speakers of English who may otherwise sound stylistically inappropriate, a risk that may undermine the authoritativeness of their argument. The first aim of this paper is to explore the use of vague lexis in spoken academic discourse by native and non-native speakers of English. The corpus for analysis is the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) (Simpson et al. 2002). A selection of the most frequently occurring items, retrieved using the MICASE on-line search engine, will be examined in their context of use to describe the functions they play in discourse. Subsequently, selected vague lexical expressions will be analysed as treated in the latest editions of three advanced corpus-based learner’s dictionaries in order to examine how these reference tools, which are becoming increasingly hybrid “sites” between norm and use, present such a highly context-sensitive lexical phenomenon. The dictionaries examined are the following: the fifth edition of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (COBUILD5) (2006), the third edition of the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (CALD3) (2008), and the eighth edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD8) (2010).
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