Vagueness of Language: Indeterminacy under Two-Dimensional State Uncertainty

Saori Chiba

Discussion papers from Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University

Abstract: We study indeterminacy of indicative meanings (disagreements about meanings of messages among players), a kind of language vagueness examined in Blume and Board (2013). They, using a cheap talk model in which the state distribution and the players’ language competence were ex-ante uncertain, demonstrated that this vagueness occurs as the equilibrium language. We expand the work of Blume and Board by using a model between an uninformed decision maker and an informed agent in which the state-distribution and the state are both exante uncertain. We show that this two-dimensional uncertainty also leads to indeterminacy of indicative meanings, that is, to a set of conditions in which an agent with different perceptions of state-distribution intentionally uses the same symbol for the different extents of information on the state. Our vagueness can lead to welfare improvement.

Keywords: Information.; Language.; State-Uncertainty.; Vagueness. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 D83 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-knm and nep-mic
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Journal Article: Vagueness of Language: Indeterminacy under Two-Dimensional State-Uncertainty (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kue:epaper:e-18-003

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