Ambiguity In English Newspaper Headlines

Newspaper has a long history. The earliest published newspaper appeared in 1566 in Italia. Although more than four hundred years have passed, newspaper still plays an active role in the modern world. While reading newspaper, people usually just look through the headlines to find out the contents which they are really interested in. But we can always encounter some obscure headlines, which hinder us from properly grasping the real meaning of them. We can not figure it out until we read through the whole news. In this case, we say that ambiguity arises.Ambiguity refers to such a linguistic phenomenon that an acceptable language form can be interpreted in two or more than two ways. It is an inherent feature to language and rather common in language. Kaplan Abraham (1950) once gave a vivid description of ambiguity, which reads, "Ambiguity is the common cold of the pathology of language. The logicians believe that ambiguity generally result in false reasoning. Publicists and public opinionists found out in their research and study that ambiguity is a huge barrier for effective communication. Even in the scientific circle, there always are arguments on the ambiguous meanings of the key word. " We see that ambiguity may exist in everywhere, no matter which field it is, and no matter what kind of language it is. Ambiguity is the natural property of language, and co-exists with language in the world. Therefore, the study on ambiguity started more than two thousand years ago and remains to be one of the key arguments of modern linguists. The study does not only focus on the ambiguity in linguistics any more, but also on ambiguity occurring in business, psychotherapy and many other fields.The argument on ambiguity has lasted for centuries. Most linguists thought that ambiguity was the misuse of language, and hindered people from communicating freely. Therefore, we should try to avoid it. There are also some linguists who believe that ambiguity can play a positive role as well, if we use it cleverly. These are two sharply contrasted attitudes towards ambiguity. As to newspaper headlines, I am on...