APLNG585 L2 Pragmatics

Die Zhu

12/5/2017

Literature review of vagueness & vagueness as a strategy in simultaneous interpretation

Introduction

When I did the presentation with Roxanna on the topic of vagueness, our chosen paper is

Fang Xi’s A Study on the Vagueness in English Language Teaching from the Pragmatic

Perspective. Xi firstly analyzes the functions of vagueness in discourse, especially in written works.

Then, she talks about how using vague language can benefit both teachers and students in English

teaching class. At the end, Xi gives a suggestion on how teachers can enhance students’

understanding and sense of using vague language.

The most expressive question was risen by Sarah, it happened on her and her family when

they were in China. In Chinese, the pronunciation of the third pronoun of he and she is exactly the

same, “ta”. As the result, when Sarah tried to translating Chinese into English to her family, she

had to firstly which one “ta” refers to. Sarah’s experience shows factors that vagueness is truly

existing in everyday speaking, and when people trying to learn other languages, it matters. Sarah’s

sharing reminded me my learning experience in my undergraduate college. I started to think when

it comes to vague information, how interpreters should deal with it.

In this paper, I firstly give a brief literature review about the study of vagueness abroad and

at home. And in this part, I give definition and examples of vagueness, generality, polysemy,

homonym, and ambiguity, trying to do a distinguish. Then, the history and development of

simultaneous interpretation, and the reason why I chose it as my object. Inspired by Chester’s

question. Vagueness could be the trap of interpretation, meanwhile, vagueness could be a great
interpretation strategy if it is taken its fully advantage, which carries pedagogical implications.

However, it is few taught officially in class based on my personal learning experience.

Literature review of vagueness

Although throughout the history, many scientists, logicians and linguists have been

engaged in the research of vagueness, it was not until the American scientist Lofti Zadeh published

his paper Fuzzy Set in Information and Control in 1965 that a further and systematic study on

vagueness began. Zadeh devises a form of set theory called “fuzzy set theory” to model categories

that allow gradation of meaning, that is to say, fuzziness can be formally handled in terms of a

fuzzy set—a class of entities with a continuum of grades of membership. (Zhang Qiao, 1998).

Comparatively, the fuzzy set theory is contrary to the classical set theory. In a classical set,

everything is either in the set (has the membership value 1) or is outside the set (has the

membership value 0). In a fuzzy set, as Zadeh’s definition shows, additional values are allowed

between 0 and 1. Thus if a category like vegetable is treated as a fuzzy set, then its members will

manifest different degrees of membership, and the grades of membership are assigned a quotient

between 0 and 1. In short, in a fuzzy set the membership is defined not categorically, but in terms

of degree or probability of membership. Zadeh’s fuzzy set theory is originally for mathematics and

logics, but it did arouse further attention on vagueness in linguistic perspective.

As the deepening exploration of linguistic vagueness, studies have been spreading from

original interests in logic and semantics to pragmatics, in which the study of hedges has become

one of the most appealing topics in vagueness. American linguist Lakoff is the first linguist who

gives rise to the concept of “hedges” in the field of linguistics. He applies Zadeh’s fuzzy set theory

to the study of meaning, and suggests that natural language concepts have fuzzily defined

boundaries, that sentences about category membership are judged by speakers as to degrees of
truth. In each category, there must be some typical members and also some hardly to define. He

suggested “some of the most interesting questions are raised by the study of words who’s meaning

implicitly involves fuzziness, words whose job it is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy.”

With the birth and development of fuzzy linguistics, in China, the systematic study of fuzzy

linguistics began in the late 1970s. It is commonly acknowledged that Wu Tieping’s tentative

analysis of fuzzy language is the first article of fuzzy theories in China. His study on fuzzy

linguistics covered a wide range which is the guideline to the Chinese scholars in the research of

the vagueness of Chinese language. Zhang Qiao, who has been dealing with the study on fuzzy

linguistics since 1970s when she was a postgraduate, later adopted “The Semantics of Fuzzy

Quantifiers” as the topic of her dissertation for doctor’s degree in Edinburgh University, focusing

her study on fuzzy semantics through Zadeh’s fuzzy set theory. She adopts Chinese and English

as main language materials to discuss fuzzy semantics from aspects of natural language and formal

language. From the semantic perspective, she has proved the existence of compositionality of

fuzzy words by study on fuzzy quantifiers, which reflects a rule that fuzzy words of the same type

have same effect on the parts they modify. That is to say, fuzzy words do not have idiomatic

characteristic. Her research is more comprehensive which brings other disciplines into the study

pool and review vagueness perspectives more than linguistics.

At the first chapter of Joanna Channell’s Vague Language (1994), it begins with a quotation

from Paul Theroux, the London Embassy, “Language is deceptive, and though English is subtle it

also allows a clever person – one alert to the ambiguities of English – to play tricks with mock

precision and to combine vagueness with politeness. English is perfect for diplomats and lover.”

Actually, all the other languages would fulfill the above-mentioned function by the vague parts of

their own systems. Although some linguists insist that there is less vague information carried in
written and formal context than in oral and informal ones and pupils would be taught to use “good

language” which is clarity and precision, even someone suggests that words are like blurred

photographs and argues, “Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp

one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” (Wittgenstein 1953), vague information

could not be judged simply as good or bad. Vagueness, ambiguity, imprecision and general

woolliness, all of them could lead to information vagueness.

However, the definition of vagueness is never fixed due to the vague nature of vagueness

itself. Considerable confusion still exists between concepts of vagueness, generality, homonym

and ambiguity. Based on Zhang Qiao and other scholars research fruits, according to the shared

vague nature of these four, I think it is necessary to do a little distinguish among these vague items.

Generality

Meaning of an expression is general in the sense that it does not specify certain details; i.e.

generality is a matter of unspecification. For example: city has general meaning because it does

not specify whether or not a city is big or small, modern or ancient. My friend is general, as it could

mean a female friend, a male friend, or a friend from New Zealand. (Zhang Qiao,1998) The word

“chair” can be used to refer to chairs with different shapes, different sizes, and which are made of

different materials.

Polysemy

Polysemy refers to a case in which a word may have several different meanings which are

supposed to be related to one core meaning. For example, there are two meanings listed in

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English for the word “correspondent (Noun)” 1. someone

who is employed by a newspaper or a television station etc. to report news from a particular area
or on a particular subject. 2. someone who writes letters. However, we can find two more meanings

of it from Longman English-Chinese Dictionary of Business English, which are used specifically

in the business world:1. a bank which is an agent in a foreign town, of a bank which has no branch

there. In USA, a bank that provides services to another (usu. smaller) bank by giving advice,

clearing checks, dealing in securities and foreign exchange and arranging loans. 2. a person or

organization with whom one has regular business relations, usu. on a foreign country. Obviously,

all the other three meanings are originated from “someone who writes letters”, since in the past,

both business communication and news transmission were relied on the postal systems in the basic

form of letters. All the four meanings are etymologically related. Polysemy not only refers to words

like “spring” which has several meanings, but also includes words represent more than one attitude.

For example, communication, most of times is an approving or neutral word, however, in the

sentence “She has nothing to communicate to that sort of person.” it indicates a clear derogatory

attitude. Polysemy is rather vague especially when the context is missing or the information

receiver is lacking in certain knowledge of the terms.

Homonym

Homonym is similar to polysemy. Words who are homonyms share the same shape or

pronunciation. People distinguish them from polysemy by weighting the relevance of their

meanings. Basically speaking, words of polysemy are of high degree of relevance, while

homonyms are having almost non-related meanings, for example, “policy” is a politically agreed

course of actions and at the same time a contract by which the insurer binds himself to pay the

insured when a stated event happens in the insurance cases. In verbal communication, homonyms

of same pronunciations also require more attention to clarify the vague and confused information

they bring into the communication.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is not vagueness. When a word of a sentence has two or more interpretations and

therefore results in misunderstanding, ambiguity appears. An ambiguous expression has more than

one meaning, and they are semantically unrelated (Zhang Qiao, 1998). People usually categorize

ambiguity into three groups: phonetic, lexical and grammatical ambiguity. For example, she is a

friend of my sister who lives in Liverpool. The audience can interpret this sentence as this

mentioned friend lives in Liverpool, or “my sister” lives in Liverpool.

The development of interpretation in China

If the sixties were a period that experienced a boom in literature translation, the nineties

might be characterized as a period that experienced a boom in translation theory. And today, we

are witnessing a renaissance of translation study in many parts of the world. Firstly, a variety of

academic and socio-political events occurring internationally have made conditions ripe for a

“translation turn” in several fields simultaneously, including linguistics, psychology, cultural

studies and so on. No one scholar from one discipline can possibly be hoped to provide all the

answers in his field. We are at the verge of an exciting new phase of research for the field, one that

is forcing scholars to combine theories and resources from a variety of discipline and which is

leading to multiple new insights. At the meantime, as a special form of translation, interpretation

is experiencing a fast development with most attentions from both researchers and customers ever

since its first flourish after the World War I. Particularly in a developing country like China, as a

result of the further implementation of reform and opening up in China, we have more access to

the expertise of all nations throughout the world. In the global environment, international

exchanges in politics, culture, sports, science and technology, business trade and administration

have become indispensable in our contemporary world.

Why interpretation?

Most of the time, due to the language differences, interpretation is required in order to

ensure the effective and efficient communications between languages. Larger and larger demand

of interpreters from the market continuously pushes the training and further development of

interpretation talents. In this connection, on the basis of early interpreters’ experiences and the

research fruit of previous scholars in this field, the research of interpretation is undergoing a very

fast and profound development. Compared with translation, interpretation is even more closely

related to other related disciplines, such as inter-cultural communication, syntax and pragmatics.

Besides, I started to know and learn interpretation. In the whole process, students are Because of

this special nature of interpretation and my personal experience. is going to set about from the

discussion of vagueness and vague information to explore the strategies of vague information

interpretation, which would be both fresh to the study of vagueness and interpretation.

Vagueness is an inherent feature of language, which is conducive and indispensable to human

communication. Ever since the notion of vagueness was introduced into linguistic field, continuous

researches have been conducted from various perspectives, among which insights from dimensions

other than fussy linguistics right represents the trend. Based on the framework of Interpretive

Theory of Translation, setting about from the communication function of vague information, this

paper is oriented to convey an all-round exploration of the vague information interpretation, which

is an extensive discussion involving semantics, lexicology, syntax and pragmatics.

Showing effect of expanded tolerance of lexical equivalence

Although keeping fidelity is the basic principle in translation, in the context of verbal

communication, in terms of the demand of very short reaction time and great stress in interpretation

working process, tolerance to the range of lexical equivalence has been greatly expanded, i.e. SL
and TL cannot be that strictly matched. With the expansion of equivalent range, generality of

words is more and more accepted, therefore, in interpretation, generality can be transferred without

much classification and expressions with vagueness can be rendered accordingly within its vaguely

defined range of meaning. For example, in translating the expression “国际政治中的幼稚行为”,

both “childlike” and “childish” can be used, only because they share one element of meaning --

“immature”. If recording the scrip of interpretation down, we may find that many of the contents

are not completely faithfully rendered. There is no need to blame the interpreter, because this is

right the result of the tolerance expansion of lexical equivalence in verbal communication.

Vagueness as an interpretation strategy

There is a new ideal burst into boom after my final presentation: is vagueness a weakness

or strength in interpretation? Or maybe, vagueness can be a great strategy to improve interpretation

skills as the fact that tolerance of lexical. During finding and reading precious researches, I did see

some interesting ideas using vagueness in interpretation. Because of the different language

characters between English and Chinese, many interpretation problems may occur relating to

phonetic, lexical, structure, etc. Due to my limited understanding, it is impossible to get it through

thoroughly. I may only look at these three aspects in this paper.

Phonetic unsure

In interpretation, due to the oral communication context, there are quite a lot of situations

when phonetic uncertainty would occur. Homonym, accent and noise are all possibly cause

information transmitting inefficiency. In these situations, interpreter should help clarify the real

intention of speaker and deliver it to the audiences correctly. In doing this, both knowledge and

extra-linguistic knowledge as well as context would be used conducted for information decoding.
English is pervasively in business occasions. And interpreters of other foreign languages are in

short demand. Therefore, sometimes, none native English speakers have no choice but using

English to communicate with the interpreter. But in this way, accent would easily become the

hinder. During my process looking for some interpretation situation, I’ve fund that a case that a

Chinese speak interprets for a German beer specialist. When the interpreter was doing

interpretation for a German beer specialist, at the beginning she was very confused by the word

“geast”. But after consulting the speaker she found that this “geast” was only the mispronunciation

of “yeast”. In situations like this, if the interpreter cannot take initiatives to clarify the vague

information, communication between two parties would be greatly affected.

As mentioned before, homonym is also one source of vague information. In oral

communication, homonyms cannot be identified immediately by first “hearing”, the only way to

catch the right interpretation is to have a quick analysis to sentence structure and context. But

sometimes, homonyms are used deliberately to achieve the rhetorical effects. For example, in

Benjamin Franklin’s famous word “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all

hang separately.” “hang” appears as a homonym. On one hand, “hang together” means “to unite”,

on the other hand, “hang” means one form of death penalty. Although, this kind of the language

phenomenon does not commonly happen in communication with interpreters, sometimes, speakers

would like to quote famous words to gilt their speeches. In this situation, there are roughly two

strategies -- one is to treat this special language trick with nothing special, i.e delivering the

meaning without using special forms in target language; the second way is to accumulate classic

translations of famous slogans as many as possible for future use which is under the topic of

building up one’s linguistic knowledge.

Lexical ambiguity
 In the best of all possible world (as far as most Natural Language Process is concerned,

anyway) every word has one and only one meaning. But, as we all know, this is not the case. When

a word has more than one meaning, it is said to be lexically ambiguous. When a phrase or sentence

can have more than one structure it is said to be structurally ambiguous. Ambiguity is a pervasive

phenomenon in human languages. Linguist J.R. Firth once stated that “Each word when used in a

new context is a new word.” Although it is not necessary that every word in English can be

assigned with at least two interpretations, lexical ambiguity can be intrinsically caused by

polysemy or sometimes due to generality in certain context. Lexical ambiguity is not only

problematic because some of the alternatives are unintended (i.e. represent wrong interpretations),

but because ambiguity “multiply”. For example, in the sentence “The office of the president is

vacant.”, both “office” and “president” are polysemies with at least two meaning, therefore, there

are at least four analyses: “总统/总裁/校长的办公室空着。” or “总统/总裁/校长的职位空

着。”. In interpretation, referencing to context is a very natural process, thus, most of times are

noticeable to others. But if this referencing procedure is failed or skipped and vague factors are

not erased completely, even significant losses would occur


In these two sentences, the vague parts are all approximation of numbers. According to

Grice’s maxim of Quality “do not say what you believe to be false”, and “do not say that for which

you lack sufficient evidence” (Grice 1975:46), when the exact numbers are not available or

completely reliable, approximation is a better choice to conform to the academic conventions of

truthfulness in presentation of data. Therefore, in order to keep the preciseness, it is necessary to

render the approximations into TL without modifying or adjusting. And fortunately, expression of

approximations exists in almost all languages, thus the only concern is to choose the right
equivalent by weighing the approximate degrees, i.e. majority or large majority, estimated or

assumed, etc. Let’s take the translation of the above two sentences as an example.

1. Estimated 16,000 children gain the right to live in Hong Kong as a result.

a. 结果,估计有 16000 名儿童获得了在香港居住的权利。


2. The large majority of more than one hundred countries will send representatives.

a. 100 多个国家中的绝大多数将派出代表。

In rendering these two sentences, the italic vague information has been put accordingly into

Chinese without any adding or losing in information, i.e. the vagueness has been well inherited.

Structural ambiguity

Kess (1981) in Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics stated that “Upon careful consideration, one

cannot but be amazed at the ubiquity of ambiguity in language.” Actually, there are quite a lot of

ambiguities existing in communication, intended or unintended. As an interpreter, he/she should

sharply identify these ambiguities and represent them out after clarifying. There are two subcases

of structural ambiguity, attachment ambiguity and scope ambiguity.

Attachment ambiguity refers to the possibility of assuming different syntactic surface

structures. In The policeman observes the lady with the telescope, the prepositional phrase with the

telescope either modifies the lady (thus, the lady is a lady with a telescope) or observes (thus, the

policeman observes with the help of a telescope). The ambiguity of the sentence is an attachment

ambiguity –the prepositional phrase may be attached to different nodes in the syntactic structure.

The other subcase of structural ambiguity, namely scope ambiguity, refers to the possibility

of assuming different structures in the logical form of a sentence. An example is the sentence every
man loves a woman, which has two distinct readings: for each man, there is “his” woman, and he

loves her, or, alternatively: there is a special woman which is loved by all the men. With the first

reading, in the logical form of the sentence the universal quantifier in every man has scope over

the existential quantifier in a woman. With the second reading, it is the other way around.
 Both

of these two cases of structural ambiguity can be disambiguated by contextualization. I have fund

an example from a teaching materials:

1. We have decided to cancel tonight’s performance in honor of Sir William.

Due to the use of prepositional phrase “in honor of Sir William”, there are ways to interpret this

sentence:

a. We have decided that tonight’s performance which is in the honor of Sir William is going
to be cancelled.

b. We have decided, in honor of Sir William, to cancel tonight’s performance.

If the interpreter knows the cause of this cancellation, he/she can easily decide which interpretation

to choose.

All the above ambiguities are unintentional. However, sometimes, people would like to

utilize the language ambiguity on purpose to make some humorous or vague effect. In these

situations, it is very challenging for the interpreter to make out a solution to completely represent

the effect in short time, what he/she can do is to have a detailed illustration of all the possible

interpretations to the listener and explain the trick a little bit to make sure that no misunderstanding

would occur.

Pedagogical implication

Vague information as a common language phenomenon is naturally appearing in people’s

daily communication. What’s more, due to the special pragmatic features of vague information,

they are playing a unique and significant role in the verbal message exchange. Einstein once stated,

“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the

world new.” Ever since the notion of vagueness was introduced into linguistics, many scholars

have done a lot of contribution to the development of this area. However, there are still confusions

and distributes among people when the research is going on.

During the interpretation of vague information, knowledge base and context are viewed as

the keys. The enhancement of knowledge requires the enrichment of both language proficiency

and cognitive knowledge. The accumulation of these knowledges can be from the day-to-day

observation and study and from the specific preparation of each interpretation task. “Interpreters

must ensure that any background knowledge which they are likely to need has been acquired in

advance: seeking colleague’s advice or consulting reference work is not generally possible during

the actual process of interpreting.” (Gile 1995:11-14) The knowledge of vagueness could be listed

as a significant item into the curriculums, during the training of the interpreters. Context is the key

to the disambiguation and crucial to the anticipation in interpretation which is very helpful to the

comprehension. The improvement of awareness to context and the strategies in fully utilizing

context still remain as important points for researchers to cover in interpretation training studies.
Reference

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The Writing Scholar: studies in the language and conventions of academic discourse.

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Gile, D. 1995. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training,

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Grice, H.P.. 1975. “Logic and conversation”. In: P.Cole and J.L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and

Semantics, Vol. 3,41-58. New York: Academic Press.


Kess, J. F.,1981. Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics, John Benjamins Pub Co.


Peirce, C. S. 1902. “Vagueness” [A]. Baldwin, M. Dictionary of Philosophy and

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