ABSTRACT
In a more serious vein, the issues involved in the exchange of sentiments or opinions require rather more mental activity than the speakers care to make, or are capable of exercising. If there is some doubt about the complicity of a suspicious character, then he becomes "sort of guilty." There is also a usage by artful dodgers who are neither accidently nor playfully imprecise but find it necessary to conscript loose grammatical formulations in a somewhat more sinister semantic cover-up. Richard Gott was a stalwart for decades in the radical left's sympathetic commentaries about Castro, Afro-Asian insurrections, third world liberation movements, progress in Communist China, Pol Pot's socialist idealism, and paused only for bouts of acrimonious polemics against reactionary American Cold War policies. Sort of/kind of often gives semiotic signals on occasions rather more important than even the confessions of international espionage.
