Quantification is a grammatical and discursive resource especially important in the public account genre. In this type of texts, quantification is used to valorize the achievements of an institution. In the public account of a Technology Transfer Office, these achievements may refer to contracts, patents, awarded projects or funds, among other measurable indicators of productivity. Quantification in public accounts can be potentially expressed in a fuzzy way, for example, “our office reviewed more than 200 ventures”. Using mixed methods (a case study with quantitative phases), we describe how fuzzy quantities operate in the public account rendered by a Chilean Technology Transfer Office. Our analysis showed that fuzzy quantifications correspond to almost 50% of the total quantifications. Three semantic types of fuzzy quantifiers were found: those approaching a vector (approximants), those exceeding a vector (‘overreachers’) and those blurring a number (diffusers). The latter was the most frequent resource for fuzzy quantifications. Furthermore, we provide evidence that would favor a stylistic explanation over a rhetorical one regarding the fuzzy quantification in the discourse of the analyzed public account.
Keywords:
Public account, quantification, fuzziness, technology transfer, discourse analysis
Varas, G., & Sabaj, O. (2020). Fuzzy quantifications in the annual account of a Technology Transfer Office: rhetoric or style?. Boletín De Filología, 55(1), pp. 379–403. Retrieved from https://cuadernosdehistoria.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/57741
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