A Pragmatic Study Of Ambiguity

Ambiguity has traditionally been regarded as a kind of language misuse, which, however, is a quite limited view of ambiguity. Ambiguity is not good-for-nothing. Instead, it can play an active role in helping people to achieve positive communication effects.In this thesis, the author first makes it clear that ambiguity is different from vagueness and then discusses the relationship between the two terms. Next the author suggests classifying ambiguity from three perspectives: linguistic level, speaker intention and hearer reaction. Ambiguity can appear on linguistic level. Thus phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, and grammatical ambiguity appear. It can also arise on nonlinguistic level and context ambiguity appears. According to speaker intention, ambiguity can be divided into intentional and unintentional ambiguity. Intentional ambiguity is pragmatic ambiguity, i.e., the speaker turns to ambiguity on purpose to achieve a special effect or realize a certain purpose in communication. Then the author argues that there are two kinds of ambiguity: latent ambiguity and activated ambiguity, analyzed from hearer reaction. Such kind of classification highlights the fact that the creation and understanding of ambiguity are closely related with the two parties, speaker and hearer, involved in the communication. In the next part, the thesis focuses on analyzing the pragmatic functions of ambiguity, which can be summarized as follows: self protecting, conflict avoiding, politeness achieving, face keeping, purpose realizing, and task fulfilling, etc.