Vagueness markers as politeness strategies in an Italian talk-radio

This paper explores the relation between vagueness and politeness in contemporary Italian. This connection is analysed using a spoken corpus of listeners’ phone-ins to a talk radio. Moving from the classification of different vagueness markers, the study shows that vagueness can also be motivated by social reasons which mainly have to do with politeness. Through the analysis of the meanings developed by the vagueness markers un po’ ‘a bit’ and così ‘so’, this investigation describes how their shifts of meaning are motivated by politeness and illustrates how these function-form configurations are socially stratified