English and Russian vague category markers in business discourse: Linguistic identity aspects

Abstract

Vague category markers (hereafter VCMs), also known as general extenders, are a pervasive phenomenon of spoken discourse. They include expressions such as and things like that and or whatever. They have been studied in conversational contexts and specialised contexts (e.g. courtroom discourse, radio broadcasts) but spoken business and professional communication has received relatively less attention. Using two corpora, this article addresses: (1) the forms and functions of VCMs in English business talk and in Russian business/professional talk, and (2) the comparability of VCMs across the two datasets. In both corpora, a range of VCMs similar to those found in everyday conversational contexts occur. The functions of VCMs in business/professional data replicate those illustrated in previous research into VCM use, i.e., the projection of fluid, exemplar-based categories which appeal to shared knowledge, hedging, the projection of a shared identity both within and between groups and as shorthand references to different levels of shared knowledge, from internal knowledge shared by the group to general, global knowledge and experience. The efficient functioning of VCMs is evidenced in turn-taking. VCMs in both datasets attach to a wide range of exemplar-types, regardless of syntactic configuration. Although the two datasets could not be perfectly matched, sufficient similarities enable useful comparisons to be made, albeit translatability of VCMS is often complicated by the number of internal variants any VCM may display.