For my final paper, I have chosen the topic of ‘vagueness’. I think firstly, I have to distinguish vagueness from ambiguity as they are close but not the same and are often times confused. I think I myself still get confused between the two and so working on this topic will help me have a clearer understanding. Indeterminacy is also associated with vagueness as it leaves room for question regarding the properties of a word. The word friend does not specify which gender the friend is, however the word ‘friend’ itself only holds one meaning, not several. This is why it is indeterminate, rather than ambiguous. I would like to go further in detail about vagueness and how people view certain words which have a different meaning depending on context. For example, if the verb tall was used, I could possibly survey students on how tall they think someone should be to be considered tall. I liked the example we used in class with shaquille o neill as he is one of the tallest men known, however when standing next to the statue of the world’s tallest man, he was shorter in comparison. Therefore, I think comparison is very important when discussing vagueness and would like to focus on this. I also think it’s interesting that vagueness ties into the topic of antonyms which we learned in class. When discussing scalar antonyms, there needs to be context in order to determine which side something is on. For example, there is either hot or cold, but there can also be somewhere in the middle which is warm or room temperature for example. Therefore, these antonyms can be considered vague as it also depends on context. How hot does something have to be to be considered hot and not warm, for example. The reason that simple antonyms are not vague is because they leave no room for question or context. If is a light switch is on, it physically cannot be off at the same time. Through my paper, I hope to tie these two topics together to explain the concept of vagueness and how important context is when speaking on something.

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