Vague Language
in Spoken Scottish English:
Implications for
Language Teaching
joan.cutting@ed.ac.uk
The University of Edinburgh
23 April 2013
Vague Scot
Aim of this talk
• To describe vague language in spoken part of The
Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech, in answer to
research questions
– Is the vague language in the corpus mainly
Scottish Standard English or mainly Scots?
– How is vague language used textually?
– What are its social functions?
• To consider whether findings should be taught in EFL
classes? If so, how?
SCOTTISH ENGLISH CONTINUUM
- Scottish Standard English
• Components - ‘English lexis, and English grammatical
and syntactic structures’ (Douglas 2003: 25-6)
• Social dimension - ‘the language variety used by the
Scottish middle classes’ (Douglas 2003: 26); ‘the
characteristic speech of the professional class and
the accepted norm in schools’ (McClure 1994: 79-80)
Scottish English Continuum
- Scots
• Components - ‘Scots lexis, Scottish grammatical and
syntactic features, and Scottish pronunciation’
(Douglas 2003: 25-6) - The wee lassie didnae ken
• Geographical dimension - Broad Scots or dialect
Scots - localized vernaculars, Southern, South, West
and East Central, Northern, Highland and Insular
(Kirkpatrick 2007: 49)
• Social dimension - ‘those in the highest [socioeconomic] groups are less likely to speak in Scots
than any other group’ (Scottish Government 2010)
Scottish English Continuum
- Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech
• ‘The SCOTS project is the first large-scale project of
its kind for Scotland’
• 4.5 million words, 23% spoken
• Over 1,100 written and spoken texts, 1945 – 2007
(spoken texts since 2000)
• Range of varieties, genres (correspondence, fiction,
interview, conversations), registers, locations, ages,
genders, occupations
• Excellent corpus – accessible, many tools
(http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk)
VAGUE LANGUAGE
- Definition
• general, imprecise language
• low semantic content, heavily dependent on shared
contextual knowledge for meaning
• can be contrasted with a more contentive expression
rendering the same proposition
• intentionally, purposely, unabashedly vague
• meaning arises from intrinsic uncertainty
(Channell 1994)
Vague Language
- Forms
• Semantically empty nouns
• general nouns
- thing, place and person
• colloquial general nouns
- thingymajig, thingummy
Vague Language
- Forms
• Vague modifiers
• vague quantifiers
- about, roughly, lots of
• vague epistemic modifiers
- a bit, sort of, kinda, wee
• General extenders
- or something, and so on, an that
Vague Language
- Functions
• Informality
– VL makes ‘an important contribution to
naturalness and the informal, convergent tenor of
everyday talk’ (McCarthy 1998: 108-118).
• Politeness
– VL protects face of self and others, used to claim
common ground, show solidarity, in-group
membership, high involvement
RESEARCH DESIGN
• To answer ‘Is the vague language in the corpus
mainly Scottish Standard English or mainly Scots?’,
SSE VL and Scots VL instances counted and converted
to frequency per million (quantitative)
• To answer ‘How is vague language used textually?’,
concordances of VL examined to find collocations of
immediate co-text (qualitative)
• To answer ‘What are its social functions?’,
surrounding discourse surveyed to find interactional
features (qualitative)
QUANTITATIVE RESULTS
- VL mainly SSE
Quantitative Results
- VL is more SSE than Scots
• Eight times as many SSE VL forms as Scots VL forms
• Most frequent SSE VL forms
– general nouns
e.g. people, thing, stuff
– epistemic modifiers
e.g. sort of, a bit
• Most frequent Scots VL forms
– epistemic modifiers
e.g. kinna, a wee bit
QUALITATIVE RESULTS FOR SSE VL
- semantically empty nouns
• General nouns
– 5,800 words per million (6 Scots wpm)
– People (2,218 wpm)
• Rarely modified. + vague quantifiers
there’s a lot o people come intae the area
• More non-inclusive meaning ‘them’
you don’t get pestered by people
than inclusive meaning ‘us’
people from m-my background
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- semantically empty nouns
– Thing (1,889 wpm)
• + other VL forms, e.g.
Cause eh, they do a big // thing up on eh,
what do you call it? Arthur's Seat
• in semantically empty filler expressions, e.g.
Erm, so, as with all things in life
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- semantically empty nouns
– Stuff (839 wpm)
• + pre-head modifiers supplying meaning
the kitchen cooking stuff
• + general verb do e.g.
We had people... to do stuff with the kids
• to be dismissive with emotion or humour
No till aboot October, but got ages yet! I'll
have loads of stuff. I'll have knitted loads
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- semantically empty nouns
• Colloquial general nouns
– thingy (40 wpm)
• refers to a person
thingy lives upstairs from me
• used unsuccessfully by children
F1136
I want to go and get a erm one of the
thingies on it.
F1135
What thingies?
F1136
That thingies.
F1135
I don't know what you're speaking about.
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- vague modifiers
• Vague quantifiers
– 1,344 per million (64 Scots wpm)
– A lot of (904 wpm), lots of (223) loads of (49)
• + general nouns
they do a lot of good stuff
• A lot of + negative emotions, e.g.
There’s a lot of bastards that have got into high
places
• Lots of and loads of + positive emotions
she got loads of nice summer clothes
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- vague modifiers
• Epistemic modifiers
– 2,555 per million (889 Scots wpm)
– sort of (wpm 1,328)
• + hesitation phenomena, negative feature
sort of er drunk and loose and bad
• When speaker unsure of choice of word
things like that, ehm [tut] ehm. We, we sort of
latch on we la-, we, we latch on to words
occasionally, which we like the sound of
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- vague modifiers
– kind of (269 wpm)
• protects hearer’s face, e.g. reformulating
interviewee’s words without offending them
So they kind of got made into something
kind of bad? //Are you left-handed, I
mean?//
• protects speaker’s face mitigating strength of
opinion showing speaker in good light
er I mean I've always kind of been quite
musical, er
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- vague modifiers
– A bit (958 wpm)
• + negative adjectives
a bit dodgy, a bit grungy, a bit snooty
• + ‘of + a + negative noun’ to hedge strong
opinions, potentially intensify them
a bit of a drama, a bit of a waster
• + neutral adjectives, to mean ‘too much’
It’s a bit formal, people get a bit emotional
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- general extenders
• Disjunctive
– Or something (359 wpm), Or something like that
(60 wpm) and Or whatever (66 wpm)
• speaker is searching for words or ideas
‘catching forty winks’ or something like that
would be the the slang for that
• Adjunctive
– And so on (98 wpm) and etcetera (55 wpm)
• And so on in cluster
There was an awful lot of a- atmospheres and
so on and so forth
Qualitative Results for SSE VL
- general extenders
– And stuff (96 wpm) and and things (88 wpm)
• + other general extenders
Uh-huh shells and stuff and harps and all that
– And that (41 wpm) and and all that (41 wpm)
• to mitigate a claim, observe the modesty maxim
And then ehm. Like I did quite well in school
and that
QUALITATIVE RESULTS FOR SCOTS VL
- semantically empty nouns
• Colloquial general nouns
• Bittie/bitty/bitties (101 wpm)
• Aberdeen mother-and-child conversations,
local dialect affectionate baby-talk
• Bittie means specific inanimate entity
just listen tae fit we’re sayin and put your
bittie an aa
Qualitative Results for Scots VL
- vague modifiers
• Epistemic modifiers
– kinda / kind o / kinna / kin’o’ (403 wpm)
• to mitigate a reprimand or a disagreement
You're kinda too old tae be usin that word
• to soften an indelicate expression
- I kinda thought er this is a wee bit kind of er,
you know, taking the piss po- possibly you
know
- you know, it's kinna, it's not quite your kinna
Parkhead or your Easterhouse or whatever,
you know?
Qualitative Results for Scots VL
- vague modifiers
– Sorta and Sort o (216 wpm)
• + verbs, to soften a personal expression
if eh there was a dance an ye had a young
man that ye sorta kinda fancied, ye hoped he
would take ye to the sitootery
– a wee bit (198 wpm) a bittie (72 wpm)
• softens an insult
he used to think you were a wee bit daft
• softens an order (to show affection)
do up this bittie a wee bittie
Qualitative Results for Scots VL
- general extenders
• Adjunctive
– An aa (55 wpm) an that (48 wpm) An everything
/ an awthing (20 wpm)
• clusters
we washed aw the walls doon an awthing //
an that
• mitigates personal actions
- we had this kinda recalcitrant boy, and I was
tryin tae get him on side an everything
- I'll get a clootie and we'll wipe this window
an aa
CONCLUSION
- Summary
• VL is a SSE phenomenon
• Most frequent - SSE general nouns people, things,
stuff, place add to informality and involvement
• Second most frequent – epistemic modifiers SSE sort
of, kind of and Scots kinda/kind o/kinna/kin’o’,
sorta/sort o save face
• SSE a bit mitigates negative stance; Scots a wee bit
and a bittie shows affection
• Vague quantifiers SSE a lot of, lots of express stance
• General extenders - more SSE than Scots
Conclusion
- Applications
• ESL students in Scotland could be given exercises
based on the findings of the SCOTS corpus study:
– notice pragmatic functions of Scottish English
words
– ‘reflect on what resources the standard and local
ELF varieties have to accomplish these pragmatic
functions and to recognize that different speech
communities will accomplish these functions in
different ways’ (Anderson and Corbett 2010: 420-1).
Conclusion
- Applications
• This ‘will help to indicate the level of a speaker’s
desire to affiliate with that particular community’
(Anderson and Corbett 2010: 420-1)
• Roberts (2003: 118)
– VL and in-group knowledge is associated with
social differences and the assertion of power.
– Knowing how to use and interpret a particular cue
means you are a ‘belonger’
– Failure to pick up on a cue sets the minority
linguistic speaker apart
Conclusion
- Applications
• ESL students in Scotland or planning to go could be
– trained to work with the SCOTS corpus itself,
picking out SSE and Scots VLs items and noticing
speakers’ informal, polite and involved
interactional intentions
– reassured to know that informal BrE words that
they already know are central to these Scottish
English
– made aware of the social complexity of producing
the Scots VL inappropriately
Bibliography
• Anderson, W. (2006) ‘Absolutely, totally, filled to the brim with
the Famous Grouse’: intensifying adverbs in SCOTS. English
Today: Vol.22/3.pp.10-16.
• Anderson, W. and Corbett, J. (2010) Teaching English as a
friendly language: lessons from the SCOTS corpus. English
Language Teaching Journal Vol. 64/4.pp.414-423.
• Channell, J. (1994) Vague Language. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
• Cutting, J. (2007) (ed) Vague Language Explored. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
• Douglas, F. (2003) The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech:
Problems of Corpus Design. Literary and Linguistic Computing,
Vol. 18/1.pp.23-37.
Bibliography
• Kirkpatrick, A. (2007) World Englishes: Implications for
International Communication and English Language Teaching.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• McCarthy, M. (1998) Spoken Language and Applied
Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• McClure, J. D. (1994) English in Scotland. In Burchfield, R. The
Cambridge History of the English Language, volume v.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.pp.23-92
• Scottish Government (2010) Public Attitudes Towards the
Scots Language.
www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/01/06105123/0
• SCOTS Project (2011)
www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/about/background/
THANKS AN AA THE REST O IT!