Education as a Source of Vagueness in Criteria and Degree

Abstract

Individual differences in application are considered a hallmark of vague terms. When a term is truly vague there exists a range of applications that are considered permissible by competent users of the language. The divergence in application may be the result of indeterminacy with respect to the conditions for application (vagueness in criteria) and indeterminacy with respect to the extent of application given fixed conditions (vagueness in degree). We propose a formal procedure to determine whether individual application differences result from vagueness in criteria and/or vagueness in degree. The procedure provides an experimental perspective on vagueness in that it involves the comparison of two groups of participants that differ on a variable of interest. The procedure establishes whether the variable systematically affects application of a term. We present a case study in which we compare categorization data from participants who went on to higher education after completing compulsory education and participants who did not. Application of the proposed procedure shows that education systematically affects categorization. Higher education participants tend to apply common terms like vegetables, furniture, and tools more conservatively than compulsory education participants do (vagueness in degree). For terms they are arguably more familiar with, like sciences, they are found to employ different conditions for application (vagueness in criteria). The results demonstrate that part of the permissible variation that is deemed characteristic of vagueness reflects sociolinguistic variation.