The ability to use vague language ("bags of time", "doing stuff", "sort of thing", "and all that") is an aspect of communicative competence of considerable social importance. Vague Language Explored examines the function of vague language in context. It spans genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, psycholinguistics and cross-cultural sociolinguistics, in a variety of world cultures - examining applications in professional, educational, and social contexts. In EFL applications it asks questions such as "What should learners be taught to understand and use, and why?" and suggests directions for future research.

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
Introduction to Vague Language Explored; J.Cutting
PART 2: VAGUENESS AND GENRE
'This We Have Done': the Vagueness of Poetry and Public Relations; G.Cook
'About Twelve Thousand or so': Vagueness in North American and UK Offices; A.Koester
Caught Between Professional Requirements and Interpersonal Needs: Vague Language in Health Care Contexts; S.Adolphs, S.Atkins & K.Harvey
'Well Maybe not Exactly, but it's Around Fifty Basically?': Vague Language in Mathematics Classrooms; T.Rowland
'I think he was Kind of Shouting or Something': Uses and Abuses of Vagueness in the British Courtroom; J.Cotterill
PART 3: PSYCHOLOGY OF VAGUENESS
Vague Language for Self-Protective Avoidance: Tension Management in Conference Talks; H.Trappes-Lomax
'Looking out for Love and all the Rest of It': Vague Category Markers As Shared Social Space; J.Evison, M.McCarthy & A.O'Keefe
PART 4: CROSS-CULTURAL VAGUENESS
The Use of Vague Language across Spoken Genres in an Intercultural Hong Kong Corpus; W.Cheng
{ / [ Oh ] Not A < ^ Lot > }: Discourse Intonation and Vague Language; M.Warren
'Und tralala': General Extenders in German and New Zealand English; J.Holmes & A.Terraschke
PART 5: CONCLUSION
'Doing more stuff - where's it going?': Exploring Vague Language Further; J.Cutting
Index

JOAN CUTTING is Senior Lecturer in TESOL in the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has published on spoken grammar of academic discourse communities, the English of airport ground staff and Chinese students in the UK. She is author of Analysing the Language of Discourse Communities and Pragmatics and Discourse.