On Tolerance Of Ambiguity In Verbal Communication

Ambiguity is a pervasive feature of language, and a reflection of language universals. Ofcourse, every coin has two sides and so does language. Besides the general characters, eachlanguage has its specific characters. Since different languages possess different structures(phonetic, lexical, and grammatical) and different nations have different language habits andmodes of thinking, there inevitably exist different types of ambiguity in different languages.In verbal communication, speakers will be confused at ambiguity caused by the differences oftwo cultures, which will hamper verbal communication or even lead to the failure ofcommunication. According to the previous study, linguists divide ambiguity into twocategories: intentional ambiguity and unintentional ambiguity. The former one is consideredto be positive in communication but the latter one should be disambiguate. Then if speakersdon't know how to disambiguate or when they are encountered with intentional ambiguityand actual situation allows no disambiguation, how to deal with the ambiguity incommunication? Naturally, the only best way is to tolerate it. To do so entails speakers todevelop the awareness of tolerance of ambiguity (TOA) in order to obtain a successful verbalcommunication.Frenkel-Brunswick (1949:108) indicated that intolerance for ambiguity was "a tendencyto resort to black-and-white solutions, to arrive at premature closure, often at the neglect ofreality." Budner (1962:29) believed that intolerance for ambiguous situations are usuallyperceived as sources of threats. McLain (1993:183) and some other linguists have attemptedto study and develop instruments that quantify an individual's ambiguity tolerance.Numerous attempts have been made to examine the relationship between tolerance ofambiguity and other constructs including prejudicial attitudes, rational decision-making,perceptual psychology, and aptitude for second language acquisition.Even though much systematic descriptive study of ambiguous language has been done,yet few researches have explored into the area of Tolerance of Ambiguity (TOA). Theprevious study has following weaknesses: first, most of the studies are related to vague orambiguous language one-sidedly; secondly, those studies mainly focus on the negative effects of ambiguity; thirdly, there are few whole-sided investigations of TOA in verbalcommunication.Therefore, this paper will focus on tolerance of ambiguity in verbal communication. Itbegins with defining the terms, such as ambiguity, tolerance of ambiguity, and analyzing thecurrent situation of tolerance of ambiguity. Based on the relative theories of TOA of Budnerand Ely, this paper expounds the TOA in verbal communication, and then in combinationwith some theories in second language learning and foreign language teaching, it points outthat TOA can also be used in these two forms of verbal communication and that to developthe awareness of TOA will help language learning or teaching. The author draws a conclusionthat in verbal communication, if speakers have a certain degree of TOA, they will succeed inverbal communication.This paper aims at explaining the following questions:1. What is the definition of TOA in verbal communication?2. Applications of TOA in verbal communication including in Second LanguageLearning and Foreign Language Teaching.3. Demonstrations of ambiguity and TOA in verbal communication.4. How to cultivate the awareness of TOA in verbal communication?5. What is the practical importance of TOA?Based on the analysis, we have found the causes of TOA among whom there are lexicalapplication, cultural background and communication styles. Accordingly, we should payattention to solving the problems in developing the awareness of TOA in verbalcommunication esp. in cross-cultural verbal communication. To develop the culturalawareness is the initial task because language is co-related to culture. And then we shouldchange the traditional methods of learning new words in the way of grasping both denotativeand connotative meanings of basic words, and thirdly, we should find out appropriatecommunicative style and learn to listen across cultures, and what's more, not only the FLTteachers but also SLL learners should know that FD/FT individuals have different methods inlearning. In order to develop their awareness of TOA, teachers should apply different learningmethods. Finally, the schema theory can also be applied in developing the awareness of TOA.Its real implication lies in the impact on FLT, so most studies report that there are correlations between the TOA and foreign language teaching. It is found that individuals whowere more tolerant of ambiguity were also more willing to take risks and more receptive tochange in language learning or verbal communication. Researchers state that althoughtolerance of ambiguity is significant for language learning processes, over high tolerance canlead to language problems such as unquestioning acceptance and cognitive passivity incommunication. More specifically, a non-native speaker who is not stimulated by the doubtcreated by language forms may not be interested in resolving ambiguity and thus unable todiscover the correct forms. Additionally, this lack of the sensitivity to the target language datamay result in early and permanent pidginization or fossilization of incorrect pronunciation,grammar, vocabulary and pragmatic use. On the other hand, speakers who believe that thereis a one-to-one correspondence between their mother tongue and the target language and whodo not confront their intolerance of ambiguity are bound to face problems that will hindertheir language learning processes.It is suggested that moderate levels of TOA be recommended in verbal communication.Since over high tolerance may cause cognitive passivity and low tolerance may impedelanguage learning, mid-point tolerance seems to be satisfactory. Although nobody up to nowhas operationalized this mid-point tolerance of ambiguity, consequently, it is very difficult toindicate the desired level of TOA, while we can still pose some strategies to develop theawareness of TOA.This argument raised in this paper has been supported by data-collection. The subjectsare 116 employees from Hua Wei Technologies Co., Ltd. and 100 students in ChangshaUniversity among whom there are 50 freshmen and 50 sophomores.