Ambiguity In Research Paper

Comp II
25 January 2014
Ambiguity: Friend or Foe Often times during our earlier years, we stumble upon ‘loopholes’ within our language. We then take these ‘loopholes’ and mend them to our advantage. These ‘loopholes’ that I am referring to are words that have many different meanings, however actions can also be grouped into this. Much like the cartoon, “Future MBA” illustrated by Mike Shapiro. In this cartoon you see two students sitting at their desks, both with paper and pencil on the desk. The teacher is standing in front of them and one can only be brought to the assumption that these children were either taking a test or doing an assignment that was meant to be finished solo. However, this cartoon depicts that these students did not follow those instructions by giving us the text, “We weren’t cheating. We were consulting.” With this text we are given that the children are
Unfortunately, when these do occur it is not always in a less harmful situation such as a classroom setting over a test or assignment. This often happens in large business and even our government. Through the use of euphemisms you take a word that is particularly disliked and exchange it with a word that has more appeal. On the news for example when there are times of war and there are casualties. The word casualties take the place of saying “four women, seven children, and six men were killed’. It can be used in this scenario where emotions could get the better of the situation and cause an uproar. However, is this right? Has our language helped us or betrayed us by making it so easy to cleverly deceive our minds from what is really going on? Then again, in situations it can help ease the pain of loosing a loved one, and explaining it to a child. For instance, instead of telling a child that their father was decapitated in a car crash and is dead, we can tell the child that their father has passed away. In this case it is our