Cover not available

In:Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest: Linguistic and pragmatic approaches
Edited by Ilaria Fiorentini and Chiara Zanchi
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 347] 2024
► pp. 208–233

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 9
Using ambiguity and vagueness to avoid problematic answers

The case of Italian abbastanza

 | University of Insubria
Published online: 26 September 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.347.09bar
Abstract
This paper focuses on the use of the Italian adverb abbastanza ‘enough, quite’ when it is used as a stand-alone reply to potentially problematic and face-threatening questions. Despite its positive semantics, in some contexts, this word can be perceived as vague or even ambiguous by speakers, in the sense that it is possible to interpret it both as a (vague) ‘yes’ and a (vague) ‘no’, thus functioning as an off-record politeness strategy. To verify in which contexts this word can be perceived as ambiguous and vague, we will examine data gathered from a questionnaire specifically created and from corpora of contemporary Italian (KIParla corpus and ItTenTen). The analysis will confirm a correlation between the level of ambiguity and contexts where the speaker is asked to evaluate something strongly related to the hearer. Finally, we will argue how the potential ambiguity of this adverb is linked to its core semantics of quantitative adequacy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ambiguity and vagueness: Flaws or communicative strategies?
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Abbastanza to quantify or measure something
    • 4.2Abbastanza to evaluate something
  • 5.Discussion: How much enough is ‘enough’?
  • 6.Conclusions and prospects
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (28)
References
Barotto, Alessandra, and Ilaria Fiorentini. 2020. “Assolutamente: sì o no?.” Quaderni di Semantica. 2020. Special Issue: 175–195.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bobin, Joanna. 2011. “When We Talk, it Never Materializes: Functions of Off-Record Communication in Conflict Talk.” In New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies, ed. by Jakub Bielak, and Mirosław Pawlak, 165–176. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bromberger, Sylvain. 2012. “Vagueness, Ambiguity, and the ‘Sound’ of Meaning.” In Analysis and Interpretation in the Exact Sciences: Essays in Honour of William Demopoulos, ed. by Melanie Frappier, Derek Brown, and Robert DiSalle, 75–93. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caffi, Claudia, 2007. Mitigation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Channell, Joanna, 1994. Vague Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheng, Winnie, and Martin Warren. 2003. “Indirectness, Inexplicitness and Vagueness made clearer.” Pragmatics 13 (3): 381–400.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cianci, Margherita. 2017. Aimaisa: a Pragmatic Research on Japanese Ambiguity and Politeness in Invitations. Spanyol: Universitas Salamanca.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collu, Laura. 2018. Quantificazione vaga: uno studio contrastivo sul parlato italiano e tedesco. Ph.D. dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cutting, Joan. 2007. Vague Language Explored. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Roger J., and Osamu Ikeno. 2011. Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture. North Clarendon: Tuttle PublishingGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Jerry L. Morgan, and Peter Cole, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2003. “Japanese and Non-Japanese Perception of Japanese Communication.” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 5: 156–177.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakubíček, Miloš, Adam Kilgarriff, Vojtěch Kovář, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel. 2013. “The TenTen Corpus Family.” Paper presented at the 7th International Corpus Linguistics Conference CL 2013, Lancaster 2013. 125–127.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas, Sara W. Smith, and Tanja Lüdge. 2003. “Interactive Aspects of Vagueness in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1737–1769. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Magni, Elisabetta. 2016. “Sette tipi di ambiguità nel mutamento linguistico.” In Problemi e prospettive della linguistica storica, ed. by Patrizia Cordin, and Alessandro Parenti, 13–34. Roma: Il Calamo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 2001. “Tyotto: Speech Act Qualification in Japanese Revisited.” Japanese Language and Literature 35 (1): 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mauri, Caterina, Silvia Ballarè, Eugenio Goria, Massimo Cerruti, and Francesco Suriano. 2019. “KIParla corpus: a New Resource for Spoken Italian.” In Proceedings of the 6th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CLiC-it, ed. by Raffaela Bernardi, Roberto Navigli, and Giovanni Semeraro. <[URL]> (22 March 2022).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miura, Akira. 2003. Essential Japanese Vocabulary: Learn to Avoid Common (and Embarrassing!) Mistakes. North Clarendon: Tuttle PublishingGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piantadosi, Steven T., Harry Tily, and Edward Gibson. 2011. “The Communicative Function of Ambiguity in Language.” Cognition 122(3): 280–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pizziconi, Barbara. 2009. “Stereotyping Communicative Style in and out of the Language and Culture Classroom: Japanese Indirectness, Ambiguity and Vagueness.” In Pragmatics Applied to Language Teaching and Learning, ed. by Reyes Gómez Morón, Manuel Padilla Cruz, Lucía Fernández Amaya, and María de la O Hernández López, 221–254. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serianni, Luca. 2000. Italiano. Grammatica, Sintassi, Dubbi. Milano: Garzanti.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tuggy, David. 1993. “Ambiguity, Polysemy and Vagueness.” Cognitive Linguistics 4: 273–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Voghera, Miriam, and Laura Collu. 2017. “Intentional Vagueness: A Corpus-based Analysis of Italian and German.” In Intensity, Intensification and Intensifying Modification across Languages, ed. by Maria Napoli, and Miriam Ravetto, 371–390. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 2015. “Ambiguity Avoidance is Overrated.” In Ambiguity: Language and Communication, ed. by Susanne Winkler, 29–47. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weiser, Ann. 1974. “Deliberate Ambiguity.” In Papers from the 10th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 723–731. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. 1994. Vagueness. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue