Ambiguous Language
Ambiguous Language
“Natural vernaculars contain a variety of "logical operators" which interact with each other to give rise to different types of ambiguity” (Hurum 1988). Ambiguous language refers to language that may have conflicting or totally separate meanings that can sometimes be confusing. Ambiguities in language often go unnoticed mainly because of the words that surround them giving them their proper meaning. In the English language there are so many that they cannot even be counted. An example of the type of language I am referring to would be something like this, “He fed her cat food”. This could mean the male fed the females cat some food or the male fed the female food for cats. Another great example given by Michael Stubbs (2001) is the word “table”, in combination with other words “table” can mean many things. Table can be a piece of furniture where people eat dinner, a mathematical chart of some kind, a table of contents in a book, and to table a discussion for a later date. With all of these different meanings how can someone truly …show more content…
Also he noticed that in most repeated speech gossip was accompanied by a female identifier. So even though men most certainly gossip women are the ones associated with that word, “gossiping old women” and “the women gossiped and the men smoked”. It would sound kind of funny to say “all the men sat around drinking coffee and gossiping on Saturday morning”. So not only do certain words automatically have a meaning in our brains but also are sometimes culturally associated with gender. Now there is not ambiguity about the word “gossip” now a days but it makes its way into this discussion because once upon a time the word gossip meant godparent and now it means rumor spreading. Stubbs also discussed that “gossip”, which has a more negative connotation, is actually part of a sub-category of “talk”. (Stubbs
“Natural vernaculars contain a variety of "logical operators" which interact with each other to give rise to different types of ambiguity” (Hurum 1988). Ambiguous language refers to language that may have conflicting or totally separate meanings that can sometimes be confusing. Ambiguities in language often go unnoticed mainly because of the words that surround them giving them their proper meaning. In the English language there are so many that they cannot even be counted. An example of the type of language I am referring to would be something like this, “He fed her cat food”. This could mean the male fed the females cat some food or the male fed the female food for cats. Another great example given by Michael Stubbs (2001) is the word “table”, in combination with other words “table” can mean many things. Table can be a piece of furniture where people eat dinner, a mathematical chart of some kind, a table of contents in a book, and to table a discussion for a later date. With all of these different meanings how can someone truly …show more content…
Also he noticed that in most repeated speech gossip was accompanied by a female identifier. So even though men most certainly gossip women are the ones associated with that word, “gossiping old women” and “the women gossiped and the men smoked”. It would sound kind of funny to say “all the men sat around drinking coffee and gossiping on Saturday morning”. So not only do certain words automatically have a meaning in our brains but also are sometimes culturally associated with gender. Now there is not ambiguity about the word “gossip” now a days but it makes its way into this discussion because once upon a time the word gossip meant godparent and now it means rumor spreading. Stubbs also discussed that “gossip”, which has a more negative connotation, is actually part of a sub-category of “talk”. (Stubbs