A Corpus-Assisted Analysis on the Use of Vague Language Across the BNC and the ICE Corpora

Despite being a key component of natural interaction, vague language has been often overlooked in English language teaching, especially within the Italian education system. While traditionally dismissed as imprecise, vague expressions have recently attracted scholarly attention for their pragmatic relevance in spoken discourse. Against this background, the present research aimed to carry out a corpus-assisted analysis of two key vague linguistic items – placeholder nouns and general extenders – by relying on both quantitative and qualitative methods and adopting a sociolinguistic perspective. The analysis was conducted in three main stages, which are reflected in Chapters 3 to 5. Chapter 3 focused on placeholder nouns, examining their frequency and distribution across the Spoken British National Corpus and eight national varieties of English from the International Corpus of English. Chapter 4 applied the same methodology to general extenders, highlighting differences in use across different speaker groups and regional varieties. Chapter 5 presented the results of a questionnaire administered to 209 Italian university and high school students, designed to assess their awareness of vague expressions and their perception of such forms in formal contexts. These core chapters were preceded by a theoretical overview (Chapter 1) – which explored vagueness from a linguistic perspective – and a methodological chapter (Chapter 2), which outlined the corpus linguistics tools and research methodology adopted in the study. The thesis concluded with Chapter 6, which summarized the key findings and discussed their pedagogical implications. By combining corpus linguistics tools with sociolinguistic insights and learner-oriented data, the research provided a comprehensive overview of vague expressions in English and highlighted their communicative functions. The findings may serve as a useful resource for language educators and contribute to raising EFL learners’ awareness of the pragmatic use of vagueness in spoken English.