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1、Ambiguity and Its Pragmatic Functions英语歧义及其实用功能赵 宣Abstract: 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 commu
2、nication effects. In this thesis, the author first introduces Wu Qianguangs classification of ambiguity and then explores the functions of ambiguity, especially the pragmatic functions of ambiguity, which can be summarized as follows: avoiding conflict, achieving politeness and realizing purpose, et
3、c. Key words: ambiguity; pragmatic functions; meaning1. IntroductionAs a feature of language, ambiguity arises when a word, phrase, or sentence has more than one meaning. As far as ambiguity is concerned, it is always associated with wrong or bad language use mainly due to the speakers or writers ig
4、norance or negligence. For a long time, there has been a common belief among people that good language use involves clarity and should not contain any ambiguity. Deemster has said that Communication does not always require absolute clarity: partial understanding is often enough for making inferences
5、 that a hearer is most interested in (1996: 204). So not only in oral communication, but also in other language uses such as in literary works, attentive and sensitive people will find that ambiguity is not worthless or good-for-nothing. This thesis is going to explore ambiguity from the perspective
6、 of pragmatics. The ultimate purpose of the thesis is to study the functions of ambiguity. 2. The classification of ambiguityScholars abroad and at home have put forward many ways of classifying ambiguity. The significance of making a classification lies in the fact that it can help people understan
7、d how ambiguity is caused. This paper intends to apply the Chinese scholar Wu Qianguangs classification. He puts forward two ways of classifying ambiguity. One includes lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity; the other includes phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, and grammatical ambiguit
8、y. (伍谦光，1994) 2.1 Phonological ambiguityPhonological ambiguity is mainly caused by homonymy, variation of stress and tone, liaison, etc. Such kind of ambiguity often appears in spoken language and disappears in written form or it appears in written form and disappears when spoken out. Homonymy is a
9、common phenomenon in both English. Flower/ flour and heir/ air are some examples. Ambiguity caused by stress change can be shown in the phrase “a green house: a house whose color is green” when the stress is put on the word house and “a green-house: a special house designed for the growth of flowers
10、” when the stress is on green. As for ambiguity resulting from liaison, grey day and Grade A, “a nice man” and an ice man are some cases in point.2.2 Lexical ambiguityLexical ambiguity is mostly related with polysemy and homophones. For example, in sentence “The damage was done by the river”, by can
11、 mean “beside” or “through the agency, means, or instrumentality of”. So this sentence may mean either “The damage was done beside the river” or “The river brought about the damage.” “Pass the port” is a more ambiguous sentence, because there are two polysemous words: pass may mean “go across”, or “
12、give by hand”; port has the meaning “harbor” or “a kind of wine.” Hence the sentence can mean: “(The ship) went across the harbor,” or “Please hand me the wine.” Only the actual situation can decide the meaning of such ambiguous sentences. 2.3 Grammatical ambiguityAnother type is grammatical ambigui
13、ty arising from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase. For example, the phrase young men and women can be analyzed either as “young/men and women/” (i.e. both are young.) or “/young men/ and women” (i.e. only the men are young.) Another example is He left the room unwashed where unwashe
14、d is ambiguous in that it can be a complement to the room or to he. The whole sentence may mean: he did not do some washing to the room; or he left without taking a bath. 3. The functions of ambiguityIn the scientific fields that require and worship accuracy, ambiguity has always been identified as
15、the main obstacle for various natural language processing tasks. In such cases, it is justifiable to regard ambiguity as something negative, which should be avoided as far as one can. When it comes to some other occasions such as daily communication and literary works, however, ambiguity is not alwa
16、ys so undesirable as people usually think. Instead, ambiguity also has its positive aspect, which mainly lies in its pragmatic functions. 3.1 Ambiguity and rhetoricIt is widely acknowledged and recognized that ambiguity can be used to achieve unexpected rhetoric effects. Most of the traditional stud
17、ies of ambiguity focus on its relations with rhetoric. So the paper will first explore the relations between ambiguity and rhetorical devices, such as metaphor, pun and irony. 3.1.1 Ambiguity and metaphorMetaphor is a figure of speech in which a word of phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is
18、 used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. (Dictionary of the English Language, 1992). Metaphor can be regarded as a kind of pragmatic ambiguity, because every kind of metaphor contains its literary meaning and implied meaning, and the two meanings in one word or phrase make the
19、 sentence ambiguous. For example,1)Girl: You remind me of the ocean.Boy: Wild, romantic and restless.Girl: No, you just make me sick. (邱述德1998: 543)The word sea is used as a metaphor. We usually use this word to express the meaning of broad-minded and it is a praising word. So when the boy heard tha
20、t he was like an ocean, he was certainly very glad. But to his surprise, the girl used the word to imply that the boy reminded her of the sailing of the sea. That is to say he also made her sick. The same word creates quite different effects, thus ambiguity occurs.3.1.2 Ambiguity and punThe pun expl
21、oits ambiguity, or similarity between two words, to make the same word suggest two different but equally possible meanings. From its definition we can see that the semantic emphasis of pun is laid on its ambiguity. So pun uses the ambiguity caused by the words of homophony or polysemy to express the
22、 real intention of the speaker. For example,2)Farewell to Arms.This is one of the masterpieces by Hemingway. It is translated into Chinese永别了，武器. Strictly speaking, the name of the book is ambiguous, because arm is a polysemous word, it can be understood as weapon or upper limbs of a human being. So
23、 some scholars think that the figure of speech pun is used in the title. The hero was far away from the war at last, but he lost his love一the warm arms of a lady as well. 3.1.3 Ambiguity and ironyIrony is the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literary meani
24、ng. So obviously the figure of speech irony violates the quality maxim of Cooperative Principle, but irony violates this maxim deliberately so as to create a sarcastic rhetorical effect that is more forceful than direct expression. For example,3)It is truth universally acknowledged that a single man
25、 in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife. (Austin, J., Pride and Prejudice)This is the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice in chapter I. The first part of the sentence sounds elegant and serious and makes people think a certain great truth will be announced. But after reading the whol
26、e sentence, people cant help feeling very disappointed; it is just an ordinary fact. The latter half of the sentence connects wealth with marriage and its content is plain and the tone is sarcastic. Jane Austin used this special ambiguity deliberately to make a strong contrast between elegance of la
27、nguage form and plainness of content, seriousness of tone and irony of intention so as to create a funny and ironical effect. 3.2 The pragmatic functions of ambiguityIn fact, ambiguity can not only create special rhetoric effects as mentioned above but also play an important role from another aspect
28、, which is pragmatics. Semantics concentrates on the meaning that comes from linguistic knowledge, while pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account our knowledge about the physical and social world. (Peccei: 2000)
29、 For example, 4)He is like a fish.This sentence may have different analysis on different levels. At phonological level, its characteristics of phonology such as stress and intonation can be discussed. At semantic level, its meaning of words in the sentence can be discussed. At syntactic level, the s
30、entence structure can be discussed. But the sentence is just analyzed as an abstract sentence, so it has no definite meaning. As soon as the sentence is uttered by a speaker in a concrete context, it becomes an utterance. If the speaker is speaking in a swimming pool, it means: He is good at swimmin
31、g. If the speaker is speaking in a party, it means: He can drink much. If the speaker is talking about somebodys temperament, it means: He is indifferent to people. This is what we call pragmatic analysis of the sentence. The focus of pragmatic analysis is on the meaning of words or sentences as spe
32、akers use them in contexts. The following part of the paper will discuss the pragmatic functions of ambiguity. 3.2.1 Avoiding conflictGrices CP implies that speakers and hearers act in a rational manner so that their conversations continue successfully. However, it is interesting and important to no
33、te that people do not follow these rules strictly. Instead, they often flout or violate the rules. Analyzed closely, such kind of flouting or violating is only a superficial phenomenon. Their ultimate purpose is to keep the conversation going on or try to be cooperative. Take the following dialogue
34、as an example,5)“This is a white hotel”, he said.I looked around. “It isnt white, such a color needs a great deal of cleaning,” I said.“But I dont think I mind.” (W. E. B. Du Bois, On Being Crazy)In the dialogue, the hotel attendant tells the hero, an Africa-American, that the hotel is for only whit
35、es, but the hero misunderstands it on purpose. The hero interprets the mans utterance as the hotels color is white. By taking advantage of the ambiguity of white, the hero avoids a head-on conflict with the race-prejudiced man, and at the same time gives his own statement some illocutionary forces a
36、nd even a potential to lead to a perlocutionary act. It may make the man change his attitude and let the hero stay in the hotel.3.2.2 Achieving politenessGrices Cooperative Principle explains the relationship between the literal and real meanings of utterances and how conversational implicature is c
37、reated and interpreted. Leechs Politeness Principle is a complement to Grices CP in that PP explains why people violate CP in communication. Politeness Principle helps to preserve the friendly relation between people. The following example will illustrate this point. 6)I have never found Blair to be
38、 incompetent.(a) I have never found Blair to be incompetent. He is competent.(b) Blair is probably incompetent, but I have never found it. Anyway I suspect him of being competent.According to Leech (1983), negatives, all things being equal, are less informative than their positive counterparts. Due
39、to the uninformativeness, negative sentences are pragmatically less favored than positive ones and should be avoided if positives can be used, which is advocated in the Maxim of Quality. If negative sentences are used, it is implied that they are for a special purpose. Never in the sentence can be u
40、sed to modify found and the implied meaning will be (b). It can also be used to modify incompetent, the meaning will be (a).In this situation, ambiguity is employed as a politeness strategy. A person is asked to write a recommendation for Blair. He knows Blair is incompetent. But it is impolite and
41、merciless to tell the truth. On the other hand, it is immoral to tell a lie. It is ambiguity in Sentence 7 that helps him out of the dilemma, leaving the message receivers a task to figure out the true meaning of the message. Thus he shifts some responsibility to the message receivers and puts himse
42、lf in a safer position.3.2.3 Realizing purposeAustin argues that one carries out three kinds of acts when he/she speaks: the locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act (1962). The locutionary act refers the specific act of uttering words or sentences. When performing a locuti
43、onary act, one is actually giving information or a warning, announcing a verdict, making an appointment or doing something else, i.e., performing an illocutionary act. Once the speakers real purpose is understood, the hearer may take some action, namely, perlocutionary act. Sometimes the hearer has
44、figured out the speakers intention, but he/she does not take any action. Therefore no perlocutionary act is performed. According to Austins theory, ambiguity can be used to achieve purpose sometimes. For example, 7)Stranger: Boy, will you direct me to the bank?Boy: I will ask for a dollar.Stranger:
45、A dollar! Thats a high pay, isnt it?Boy: Sure, but bank directors always get high pay. In this dialogue, the stranger does not mean to be ambiguous and even does not realize the ambiguity of the word direct, i.e., it means, telling someone the way to a place and manage. So the bank director can be t
46、he manager of a bank or a person who shows others the way to the bank. By taking advantage of this ambiguity, the boy expresses indirectly and humorously his reason for charging a high fee, thus keeping the conversation going on smoothly and making it more possible for the stranger to accept his cha
47、rge. So an ingenious use of ambiguous expressions can help people perform an illocutionary act or even a perlocutionary act successfully. 4. ConclusionIn summary, the traditional view that ambiguity creates obstacles for people in communication reveals only part of ambiguitys nature. As discussed in
48、 the above-mentioned words, ambiguity is not so negative as people traditionally think. It may play an active role in communication if used properly. In this thesis, the rhetoric effects of ambiguity are studied, but more emphases have been put on exploration of pragmatic functions of ambiguity, tha
49、t is, why people are motivated to use ambiguity and what kind of purposes they want to achieve. In communication, people sometimes find it hard to express something freely and directly, but they have to air their view. In this case, ambiguity helps the speakers to evade answering some questions directly and clearly, thus avoiding a conflict that is ready to happen otherwise. Moreover, ambiguit
