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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning)
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Unruly Words - A Study of Vague Language (Hardcover, New)
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Unruly Words - A Study of Vague Language (Hardcover, New)
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Vague words, like "tall," "rich," and "old," lack clear boundaries
of application: no clear line divides the tall people from the
above average, or the old people from the middle-aged. Because they
lack clear boundaries, these ordinary words cause logical and
semantic problems in various disciplines including philosophy,
decision theory, and the law. Philosophers and linguists have
proposed several theories of vagueness to handle these
difficulties, but none has been widely accepted.
Raffman contends that virtually all previous treatments of
vagueness have made two crucial mistakes: they have supposed that a
semantic (non-epistemic) theory must abandon bivalence, and they
have paid insufficient attention to the character of ordinary
speech using vague words. She develops a new theory of
vagueness-the multiple range theory-that corrects both of these
errors. The new theory begins with the observation that ordinary
speakers seem to apply vague words in multiple arbitrarily
different but equally competent ways, even when all contextual
factors are held fixed. Raffman interprets this feature of their
use as evidence of multiple ranges of application in the semantics
of vague words, where a range of application is a range of
properties whose instances satisfy the word in question; for
example, a range of application of "tall" is a range of heights, a
range of "old" a range of ages, and so forth. The fundamental idea
is that a vague word has multiple ranges of application, and
applies to things relative to those ranges, even given a single
fixed context. The fact that the ranges of a vague word are
arbitrarily different-there is no reason to favor any particular
one-is key to solving the notorious sorites paradox.
The multiple range theory preserves bivalence and is more intuitive
than other approaches. It is also simpler; for instance, it has no
need of a definiteness operator, and it rules out the possibility
of higher-order borderline cases, both of which introduce severe
complications into other accounts. Some of the evidence Raffman
draws upon in constructing her theory comes from a new
psychological study of the way ordinary speakers actually use vague
words.
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