Get fulltext from our e-platform
Vagueness as an Implicitating Persuasive Strategy
The book presents an integrated model of vagueness as an implicit and persuasive strategy, pervasive in everyday language use and public discourse. It considers three macro-dimensions of the phenomenon: linguistic-theoretical, psychological, and social-discursive.
It shows how vagueness can be strategically employed to elude recipients’ critical evaluation of intended contents, to deresponsibilize the source and make their arguments unchallengeable.
It explores the semiotic, semantic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic nature of vagueness, and looks at its use in contemporary public (with a focus on Italian) discourse.
It also delves into under-explored aspects of the phenomenon such as: the continuum of intentionality in the use of vague expressions; the evolutionary significance of vagueness; its implicitating and persuasive functions; the phenomenon of vagueness by implicature; the interaction between vague expressions and context precisation; the cognitive functioning of vague expressions; the use of vagueness in contemporary persuasive vs. non-persuasive text types; gender-based differences in the use of vagueness in public discourse.
It shows how vagueness can be strategically employed to elude recipients’ critical evaluation of intended contents, to deresponsibilize the source and make their arguments unchallengeable.
It explores the semiotic, semantic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic nature of vagueness, and looks at its use in contemporary public (with a focus on Italian) discourse.
It also delves into under-explored aspects of the phenomenon such as: the continuum of intentionality in the use of vague expressions; the evolutionary significance of vagueness; its implicitating and persuasive functions; the phenomenon of vagueness by implicature; the interaction between vague expressions and context precisation; the cognitive functioning of vague expressions; the use of vagueness in contemporary persuasive vs. non-persuasive text types; gender-based differences in the use of vagueness in public discourse.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 350] 2025. ix, 272 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 9 January 2025
Published online on 9 January 2025
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–2
- Chapter 2. Linguistic vagueness: Its definitions and implementations | pp. 3–44
- Chapter 3. Vagueness and underspecification as implicit, persuasive and potentially manipulative strategies | pp. 45–117
- Chapter 4. Experimental study on reading times of vague expressions in precising vs. non‑precising contexts | pp. 118–137
- Chapter 5. Vagueness in political speeches | pp. 138–183
- Chapter 6. Vagueness in radio ads | pp. 184–203
- Chapter 7. Vagueness in non-predominantly persuasive speeches | pp. 204–221
- Chapter 8. Conclusion | pp. 222–225
- Appendixes
- Appendix A. Stimuli set | pp. 228–236
- Appendix B. Heat map of vagueness’ absolute values in the political corpus | pp. 237–245
- Appendix C. Cross-level tagging database for the political corpus (sample) | pp. 246–249
- Appendix D. Links to corpora and sub-corpora anlyses | p. 250
- References | pp. 251–268
- Index of proper names | pp. 269–270
- Index | pp. 271–272
“Vagueness as an Implicitating Persuasive Strategy is an original and promising volume written by Giorgia Mannaioli (University of Genoa) on the manipulative character of the use of vagueness in verbal language. [...] With this work, Mannaioli has inaugurated an important strand of empirical and text-based studies on vagueness by presenting them as two mutually integrable and, to a certain extent, interacting perspectives, as the experimental data on the processing of vague expressions allows us to account for the reasons underlying certain uses of vagueness and how these can impact the general understanding of a text. In conclusion, this volume is part of a scientific panorama of studies in philosophy of language, experimental pragmatics and discourse analysis, among many others, with which it dialogues in an excellent and meritorious way. It thus constitutes a remarkable advance in the study of vague language and how it can be used to influence others. In short, an unusual light in the dark and insidious forest of linguistic manipulation.”
Viviana Masia, Roma Tre University, in Journal of Argumentation in Context 14:2 (2025).
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Coppola, Claudia, Giorgia Mannaioli & Viviana Masia
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.