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11 - Vagueness and Discourse Dynamics

from Part VI - Determining and Questioning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

By
Sam Carter
Edited by
Daniel Altshuler
Daniel Altshuler
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter offers a synoptic survey of work on the discourse dynamics of vague language. It starts by briefly introduction to the traditional philosophical puzzles of vagueness, to do with indeterminacy and tolerance. From there, it turns to evidence that vague language exhibits nontrivial discourse dynamics. Different approaches to the discourse dynamics of vagueness are taxonomized and critically evaluated. The chapter concludes by considering the prospects of leveraging an account of the dynamics of vague language to provide a solution to the traditional puzzles of vagueness.

Keywords

vaguenessdiscourse dynamicslocal contextindeterminacytolerance
Type
Chapter
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Linguistics Meets Philosophy , pp. 337 - 357
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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