Opérateurs de l’indétermination et marques de la modalité dans un article de l’hebdomadaire roumain Dilema Veche
Operators of Indeterminacy and Modality in an Article from the Romanian Weekly Magazine “Dilema Veche”

Summary/Abstract: In natural languages there are numerous linguistic signs characterized by a certain referential opacity, vague predicates – mainly nouns and adjectives – which researchers categorize in various typologies. In discourse, these predicates can be combined with others of the same type or can be combined with various hedges (fr. enclosures) that modify the vagueness expressed by the meaning of the former in one way or another. Phrases, clauses, sentences containing vague predicates or other elements – even figures – used with an indeterminate meaning, as expressions of approximation, are vague constructions which give our usual discourse its imprecise character we all have noticed in various communication situations. We shall not discuss in this article the various classes of vague predicates; we shall attempt instead to find the answer to several questions such as: a) is it possible to treat indeterminacy as modality? b) are there operators which might explicitly intervene in discourse in order to give to the form of expression chosen by the speaker / enunciator the imprecise character required by the specific strategy to which he or she resorts to in order to guide his or her interlocutor in the argumentative direction he or she chooses? c) is there an affinity between the type of indeterminacy called vagueness and the well-known subjective modalities? d) for which purpose can we use operators of indeterminacy and modality in a combined way in media discourse?

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