The Use of Vague Language Across Spoken Genres in an Intercultural Hong Kong Corpus

Vague language in Hong Kong English, ‘Something like that’

English Today ◽

10.1017/s0266078419000415 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Patrice Quammie–Wallen

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Computational Analysis ◽

Language Variety ◽

Naturally Occurring ◽

N Gram ◽

Lexical Bundle ◽

Vague Language ◽

Hong Kong English

The computational analysis of corpora, a body of ‘naturally occurring language texts chosen to characterize a state of variety of a language’ (Sinclair, 1991: 171) provided the opportunity to reveal otherwise unobservable features and patterns across varieties, registers and languages. One such language feature is a ‘lexical bundle’ otherwise known as an n-gram. Vague terms in any language variety can often present themselves in the form of not just individual words (e.g. things, plenty, scores, stuff) but as a group of words that tend to co-occur: a lexical bundle (e.g. loads of, stuff like that, and so on, or what have you). In this paper, the function in Hong Kong English (HKE) of the vague n-gram ‘something like that’ will be explored via corpus methodology to account for its observed hyper-usage in Hong Kong society.

Download Full-text

The use of vague language in intercultural conversations in Hong Kong

English World-Wide ◽

10.1075/eww.22.1.05che ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 81-104 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Winnie Cheng ◽

Martin Warren

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Language Use ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Communication Problems ◽

Successful Communication ◽

Naturally Occurring ◽

Similar Range ◽

Native Speakers Of English ◽

Vague Language ◽

Specific Concern

This paper presents the findings of a study of vague language use based on a corpus of naturally-occurring conversations between native and non-native speakers of English in Hong Kong. The specific concern of the paper is to describe the use of vague language by the two sets of speakers. The forms of vague language present in our data are defined and exemplified. Both the native English and the non-native speakers use vague language extensively in our data for a similar range of purposes, for example to achieve informal communication, classify objects, fill a lexical or knowledge gap, and accommodate one another. We also investigated whether communication problems are experienced in these intercultural conversations by speakers using vague language differently. We conclude that in our data at least there is no evidence to suggest that such communication problems arise from differences in vague language use. On the contrary, the use of vague language by both native and non-native speakers facilitates rather than hinders successful communication in intercultural conversations.

Download Full-text