“There is a possibility of a terrorist attack.” Indeed. There has always been such a ‘possibility’. “There is a heightened possibility of a terrorist attack.” With no temporal end points and no cues as to the scale – the latter will also be true for all time periods, t+1, for the prediction may still bear out in the yet undefined future.
Vagueness is the oldest form of doublespeak. Vagueness in language is often used as a strategy to provide cues to people to interpret the message in a way that is the most ideologically (more broadly - psychologically) comfortable to them. Vagueness not only allows for you to be right without being right, it allows for people to justify virtually all stances and all actions. Think about the word ‘possibility’ which is defined as something that has a chance of occurring. It doesn’t give you cues as to how probable the scenario is or the scale of the ‘possible’ unfolding. It is fair to imagine a lot of times such information is not available but then without it what are we conveying to people, aside from the strategic wink – nothing and everything – all at the same time?
Using vague words that carry a huge corroboratory burden, and whose latent concepts (variables) must unfold only a specific way to justify the argued course of action, allows policy makers to sound logically coherent without being so.
Language constrains our ability to meaningfully understand the world around us. Vagueness is merely one of the most convenient ways via which we can tune out of reality and argue whatever we want to – and that can be strategic or not. In every day usage, an important reason behind why we vague terms is because precise facts sometimes decompose quickly and people are left with nothing more than vague qualifiers that store impressionistic accounts of those facts. Additionally, vagueness allows people to shield themselves from their own ignorance. It is important to note that I am not arguing that people are not strategic actors in everyday conversation and in fact vagueness is often used as a ploy to argue what is ideologically convenient.
The lessons really are twin – if you are a strategic actor – vagueness works and if you are a citizen - be alert to vagueness as a cover for insidious reasoning.