从语用学角度浅谈研究语言歧义的意义

论文总字数：37094字

摘 要

歧义是一种普遍的语言现象。在日常交际中，语言歧义既有消极的负面作用，也有积极的正面作用，歧义可导致误解，造成交际障碍，而有时人们又故意运用歧义来达到意想不到的特殊效果。因此，我们有必要全面辩证地去分析语言歧义，从而最大限度上避免其消极影响，利用歧义的积极作用，达到一定的交际目的。

本文从语用学角度出发，结合语境，分析语言歧义会给人们带来哪些消极影响及如何避免这些负面作用；同时，探讨语言歧义的语用价值，即人们可以在不同语言场合有意地利用歧义以达到某种特殊的语用目的，从而展示研究语言歧义的意义。

关键词：歧义；消极作用；积极作用；

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Definition and Causes of Ambiguity 3

3.1 Definition of ambiguity 3

3.2 Causes of ambiguity phenomenon 5

4. Negative Effects of Ambiguity 7

4.1 Leading to the listener’s misunderstanding 7

4.2 Bringing unexpected troubles to the speaker 7

5. Avoidance of Negative Ambiguity 8

5.1 Using cultural knowledge 8

5.2 Using shared knowledge 8

6. Positive Functions of Ambiguity 9

6.1 Discourse functions 10

6.2 Rhetoric functions 12

6.3 Aesthetic functions 13

7. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 16

1. Introduction

As a universal linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity exists in every language and on every linguistic level. Worldwide attention has been received for many years in linguistic field, such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics etc. Different linguistic schools investigated ambiguity from their own particular perspectives, which have produced many achievements.

Ambiguity has been explored in various linguistic fields, and many papers focus on how to avoid ambiguity in language use. People may have a misunderstanding that ambiguity is totally negative and should always be avoided. However, every coin has two sides. There is no denying that ambiguity has its existing necessity since ambiguity is a universal linguistic phenomenon and can be found in every language. A great deal of advantages of ambiguity is applicable to many occasions, although ambiguity sometimes hinders communication. On one hand, negative effects of ambiguity should be avoided and eliminated as much as possible; on the other hand, positive functions of ambiguity can be applied to produce special effects. So we should not be excessively exaggerated about the negative role of ambiguity. We should recognize that, if the ambiguity used appropriately, it can also play a very active role.

The purpose of this paper is to explore linguistic ambiguity mainly from its negative effects and positive functions in the field of pragmatics in order to help people use ambiguity properly to reach a successful communication or create particular effects. This article consists of seven parts. The first part is an introduction which presents some background information on linguistic ambiguity. The second part gives a literature review of linguistic ambiguity study. The third part summarizes some definitions of ambiguity and points out two non-linguistic factors that may lead to ambiguity phenomenon. The fourth part mainly discusses the negative effects of ambiguity from the standpoint of both speakers and listeners. The fifth part presents some suggestions about how to avoid the negative effects of ambiguity according to its causes mentioned above. The sixth part talks about the positive functions of ambiguity mainly from discourse, rhetoric and aesthetic aspects. Finally, it gives a conclusion, which makes a summary of the thesis and invites thinking about the further study.

2. Literature Review

Ambiguity is an important feature of our language and also an interesting topic. Its study has a long tradition. Many scholars have been researching it from different points of view in the history. The earliest study can be traced back to the ancient European country. There have been many precedents about the study on linguistic ambiguity. Lots of linguists applied different linguistic theories into the study to explore ambiguity from different perspectives. They studied ambiguity on phonological level, lexical level, grammatical level and semantic level etc. and then gradually deepened their studies to pragmatic level taking context into consideration. Though there have been many studies on this topic, some deficiencies remain to be solved. For example, I consulted dozens of papers on this topic, but most of their studies were similar. Their studies still stayed on the language level and they mainly studied ambiguity just as a simple linguistic phenomenon. It seems that it is difficult to combine ambiguity study with other disciplines and fields. Thus, the study results cannot be actually applied. But it cannot be denied that these scholars’ studies build a solid foundation for the follow-up researchers and help people have a more profound insight of ambiguity. In the following paragraphs I would like to discuss specifically about the current situation of domestic and international ambiguity studies as well as its deficiencies expecting to make good use of the existing studies and make some compensations on the deficiencies.

First, through the analysis of the previous studies, we can see that research angles of ambiguity were broad in linguistic field. Language scholars try to analyze ambiguity from different perspectives so as to make new breakthroughs constantly.

Second, the study scopes of ambiguity phenomenon are similar. In general, many studies on ambiguity are just from different angles to discuss similar contents, mostly about causes or classification of ambiguity or how to avoid the negative influence of ambiguity. However it should be admitted that there are some breakthroughs during these decades, but these studies are not that integrated.

Third, the study about how to apply the findings of study is not sufficient. There are many studies about ambiguity, but the study is just about ambiguity itself. As a general linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity exists everywhere. The final purpose of studying ambiguity is not just to know it but is to apply it. So the study on ambiguity should not just linger on the linguistic level; rather, it should be combined with other disciplines and fields.

3. The Definition and Causes of Ambiguity

3.1 Definition of ambiguity

Ambiguity is a universal linguistic phenomenon, which exists in every language and on every linguistic level. From the syntactic and semantic point of views, language scholars have given many definitions to ambiguity. John Lyons, an English linguist, defines ambiguity as: any form (this form can mean a word, a phrase, a sentence or a discourse), which can make more than one paring, is ambiguous. Cann has pointed out that “a sentence is said to be ambiguous whenever it can be associated with two or more different meanings” (Cann 8). Zhang Qiao also states: “an ambiguous expression has more than one meaning, and they are semantically unrelated” (Zhang 180). In other words, an expression is considered to be ambiguous if it can be interpreted in different ways, and the interpretations are not paraphrases of each other. Take Chomsky’s famous sentence for example, “Flying planes can be dangerous”. The sentence is ambiguous, since it has two different explanations. We can interpret it as “planes that are flying can be dangerous” or “the act of flying planes can be dangerous”.

With the development of pragmatics, some scholars began to study ambiguity from the pragmatic perspective. The pragmatic ambiguity study puts the study into real communication situation and takes factors of both speakers and listeners into consideration. Taking speakers’ intention and speaking effects into account, we can classify ambiguity into two categories, that is, intentional ambiguity and unintentional ambiguity. For example,

A wife saw her husband lying at the bottom of the stairs and exclaimed, so she asked:

“Did you miss a step, dear?”

“No,” groaned the husband, “I hit every one of them.”

In the dialogue, intentional ambiguity can be found. The wife asked her husband whether he missed a step of the staircase and then had an accident. But the husband chose to play a joke to make himself not that embarrassed in a humorous self-mockery way. So he said that he hit or, say, bumped against every step of the staircase i.e. he fell down the stairs and that’s the reason why he lying at the bottom of the stairs and groaned with pain. The husband obviously understood what the wife meant, but he deliberately took the discourse of his wife as an ambiguous sentence and interpreted it as he didn’t hit one of the stairs i.e. miss a step.

Sometimes the speakers have the intention to provide information, but they use some ambiguous expressions without realization. Such kind of ambiguity is unintentional. According to the results or effects caused by unintentional ambiguity, we can subdivide it into two categories: negative unintentional ambiguity and positive unintentional ambiguity. The former one may leads to communication failure while the latter one often makes people burst into laughter. For example,

Teacher: “What’s an abstract noun, Jane?”

Jane: “I don’t know, Madam.”

Teacher: “What? You don’t know? Well, it is the name of a thing that you can think of, but you can’t touch. Now, give me an example.”

Jane: “A red-hot poker.”

In this dialogue, the teacher tries to explain what an abstract noun is in an indirect way so as to elicit the student Jane’s answer. However, Jane takes the literal meaning of teacher’s words and gives an answer that is quite unexpected and hilarious.

From the above, we can have a panoramic view of ambiguity, and in this paper, focus is mostly on pragmatic ambiguity. Thomas defined pragmatic ambiguity as “the phenomenon of the speaker using uncertain or vague or indirect utterance in a special context or text to express several illocutionary acts or forces”. But Xiang Chengdong thinks that this definition only takes the speaker into consideration and neglects the listener. Language communication should be carried out at least between two persons, one being the speaker, and the other the listener. Influenced by the context, though the speaker thinks his or her words are clear, the listener may not understand the meaning completely, or even misunderstand the meaning. Ambiguity is not always caused by the speaker but sometimes by the misunderstanding of the listener. So he redefined the pragmatic ambiguity as “the phenomenon that a certain utterance may have different understanding and expresses several illocutionary acts or forces”. His redefinition emphasizes both speaker and listener so it is more accurate than the former.

Ambiguity caused by language structure such as phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity and syntactic ambiguity will be exposed or eliminated or used on pragmatic level. Therefore, pragmatic level is the most important part in the whole process of ambiguity study movement so that it is the study emphasis in this thesis.

3.2 Causes of ambiguity phenomenon

There are linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors which lead to ambiguity. Linguistic factors mainly result in phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity. From the perspective of the speaker, the factors that lead to ambiguity are rather complex which is mostly concerned with aspects of language itself, i.e. linguistic factors. But this paper talks about linguistic ambiguity from the perspective of pragmatics, that is to say, factors related to context are considered. Also, pragmatic ambiguity phenomenon has some overlapping areas with cross-cultural pragmatic failure. As we know, in the course of communication breakdowns sometimes it is the structure of the language itself that is causing the trouble; sometimes it is because the speaker fails to communicate effectively to the hearer; and sometimes it is because the hearer fails to see the speaker’s intention of speaking. That is to say, ambiguity phenomenon that results from non-linguistic factors of the listener will be discussed here.

Before we talk about the causes of ambiguity phenomenon in detail, I want to first clearly tell the differences between semantics and pragmatics. Semantics is the study of the literal meaning of a sentence without taking context into consideration, while pragmatics is the study of the intended meaning of a speaker taking context into consideration. What essentially distinguishes semantics and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning the context of use is considered. For example, “Today is Sunday.” Semantically, it means that today is the first day of the week; pragmatically, you can mean a lot by saying this, all depending on the context and the intention of the speaker, say, making a suggestion or giving an invitation.

It is necessary to point out the definition of pragmatics and distinguish pragmatics from semantics because all the following studies are based on context, not just rest on superficial meanings and that is the most important reason why we just talked about non-linguistic factors next.

Non-linguistic factors associated with the listener that may lead to ambiguity can be concluded from two aspects: cultural differences and the differences in cognitive experience or knowledge

First, cultural differences: for example, “we had a party last night to celebrate Judy’s birthday and the house was at sixes and sevens this morning”. At first, maybe listeners are confused with its meanings. What does it talk about? Numbers or time? People may feel confused without the same cultural background as “at sixes and sevens” is an English idiom which means “in disorder, in a mess or in confusion”. In this discourse, it actually refers to the untidy room. So, cultural differences may lead to ambiguous phenomenon, that is, the misunderstanding to the discourse even if the sentence itself is totally correct.

Second, differences in cognitive experience or knowledge: for example,

A: Will you go to the movies tonight?

B: I’m going to have an exam tomorrow.

It seems that B’s answer is totally different from A’s question. As a matter of fact, there exists certain relevance between two. Its possible process of inference may be as follows: Examination is coming tomorrow, so B must prepare for it and cannot go to movies tonight. It’s not very difficult to figure it out according to people’s cognitive experience or knowledge. Here, we consider the conversation as an ostensive communication. From the perspective of post-Gricean developments and on the basis of principle of relevance proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986, Sperber and Wilson present optimal relevance and argue that “all Gricean maxims, including the CP itself, should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as: every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance”(Sperber and Wilson 76), that is, they think that hearers always do their best to make little efforts in order to get the biggest cognitive effects in actual communication. However, to gain the point of “Optimal Relevance”, people must concentrate on information that is related most. In other words, “Optimal Relevance” must be applied in particular context; otherwise, it will result in unsuccessful communication. Consequently, partners should abide by Principle of Relevance together. This is the key for successful communication. For example, from above conversation, apart from the interpretation mentioned above, there may be some other explanations inferred from other possible “most related information” in the particular context. For example, if the speaker doesn"t have the habit of preparing for examination, meanwhile the listener also know it, in this way, listener will understand that “I will have an exam, fortunately, tonight we go to the movies, I can relax before exam”. Therefore, different understanding for discourse will depend on cognitive context shared by partners in communication, that is, the same shared cognitive experience can facilitate communication, while different cognitive experience will lead to ambiguous interpretations of the discourse.

4. Negative Effects of Ambiguity

The existence of pragmatic ambiguity has much relation to context, i.e. lacking context and background information can easily lead to ambiguity phenomenon and hinder communication. Ambiguity may stand in the way of language comprehension, resulting in communication failure and thus generate some negative effects and consequences. It can be explored from listeners and speakers respectively.

4.1 Leading to the listener’s misunderstanding

From the perspective of listeners, ambiguous expressions may lead to the misunderstanding of the listener to the speaker’s utterance and consequently hinder communication.

For example: “They have different ideas of what students have to learn”.

This sentence is ambiguous with two distinctive interpretations on the ambiguous word ‘what’ which may both refer to the content of what the students have to learn and it may emphasize the classification of the students who are going to learn. Therefore, if the hearer doesn"t know the specific context, he can’t get the real information from the speaker and their talking cannot be going on.

4.2 Bringing unexpected troubles to the speaker

From the perspective of speakers, the listeners’ misunderstanding due to the ambiguity phenomenon may seriously damage their relationships, which is unexpected to the speakers.

For example: a salesman says to an aged Chinese man: “I am going to send the clock to you”.

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