In our textbook Language: Its Structure and Use, Finegan (2015) discussed the notion of ambiguity. Finegan describes ambiguity as a phrase that has several meanings due to having more than one constituent structure or referential meaning. In other words, there are two types of ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity and semantic ambiguity.
The internet has so many examples of signs and comics showing ambiguity that are uploaded by people because they find humor in the signs and comics. Below are some signs and a comic that I found that shows ambiguity. I also provided the different meanings that can be understood from the sign/comic.
Meaning 1: Young girls are wanted for hire to help with pickling and bottling food. For those who are interested in this job apply within.
Meaning 2: Young girls are wanted to be pickled and bottled. Those who want to be pickled and bottled apply within.
Meaning 1: Be careful of mountain sheep crossing the road. Roads can be slippery when wet. (Implying that when roads are slippery because its wet, it’ll be hard to break to avoid mountain sheep crossing the road).
Meaning 2: Be careful of mountain sheep crossing the road. Sheeps are slippery when wet.
Meaning 3: Look at mountain sheep that are crossing the road. Roads can be slippery when wet.
Meaning 4: Look at mountain sheep that are crossing the road. Sheeps are slippery when wet.
Meaning 1: Any persons, except golf players, who are caught collecting golf balls on this course will be prosecuted and have the golf balls that they took confiscated.
Meaning 2: Any persons, except golf players, who are caught collecting golf balls on this course will be prosecuted and have their genitals removed.
Meaning 2: Don’t let worries kill you, let the church help to kill you instead.
Meaning 3: Don’t let your worries make you feel suicidal, let the church help with your problems.
Meaning 1: Children are slowly crossing the road.
Meaning 2: Slow down, there are children crossing the road.
Meaning 3: Unintelligent children are crossing the road.
In this comic, the old man failed to make the right interpretation of the old woman’s utterance. Instead of interpreting ‘nose ring’ as a piece of jewelry pierced on to one’s nose, he interpreted it as literally a nose that rings like a bell.
References
Ambiguous. Retrieved from http://blogiburton.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html
Finegan, E. (2015). Language: Its structure and use (7th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Semantic ambiguity. Retrieved from http://www.neurolang.com/research/semantic-ambiguity/
Thomas Jefferson and amphibolies. Retrieved from http://blog.ivman.com/thomas-jefferson-and-amphibolie/
T.E.D. (2012, July 10). Re: Meaning of “before” in this sign [Online forum comment]. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/74054/meaning-of-before-in-this-sign
0 comments:
Post a Comment