Language, Vagueness, and Social Communication

In his paper, "Language, Vagueness, and Social Communication," Colin B. Grant adopts an interdisciplinary approach to an interrelated complex of language, communication, and society. Grant operates with a modified concept of vagueness as a pragmatic property and attempts to establish a link between pragmatic vagueness and contingency in communication. This communicative contingency takes the form of improbabilities (entropy). Grant observes that the challenge lies in modelling communication as porous networks which nonetheless enable society to function. In this sense, contingency in communication must not be confused with arbitrariness just as cognitive closure cannot be confused with solipsism. This line of argumentation allows us to question and reassess conservative notions of dialogue or intersubjectivity in order to reveal the precariousness of social interaction processes. Cognitive autonomy, contingency in communication, and fictionality are then interrelated in an examination of the highly complex fictionalizations which enable these processes to take place. Colin B. Grant, "Language, Vagueness, and Social Communication" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 3.4 (2001):