What Is Ambiguity? Reconstruction Kent Bach in his 'Rutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy' entry provides an analysis of what ambiguity is and what ambiguity is not. He argues that ambiguity is a property of linguistic expressions, and that words and sentences can have lexical or structural ambiguity. Ambiguity is not, for Bach, things like vagueness, unclarity, inexplicitness, indexicality, homonymy, and nonliterality. Ambiguity is when a word has multiple meanings (lexical ambiguity) or when a phrase has different ways of interpreting its structure (structural ambiguity). The charge that people are often ambiguous in their language use, however, is a misnomer. The speaker is not being ambiguous, they are being one of the other cases: inexplicit, vague, etc. For Bach, pragmatic ambiguity is an oxymoron. Language use itself provides a way with which words are disambiguated. Only in few cases are ambiguities deliberately employed in communication, but that is the only time: when it is deliberate. Otherwise, the ambiguous meanings are never intended. As a result, ambiguity cannot be a part of speaker meaning, and is to be considered solely as a linguistic property of language. Analysis The argument as I understand it is basically a modus tollens argument: if ambiguity were a linguistic phenomenon, we would expect that linguistic expressions or language use would be ambiguous. To Bach, the ambiguities that might be pointed out as examples of why our language use is ambiguous are not actually ambiguities at all. Rather, they are instances of nonambiguous word use: inexplicitness, vagueness, etc. Pragmatic ambiguity only ever occurs when the confusion brought on by ambiguity is intended by the speaker as part of their own speaker meaning. They are thus employing either syntactic or structural ambiguity to change their meaning. As a result, 'pragmatic ambiguity' is not an actual thing to be considered, and so ambiguity is simply a property of linguistic expressions and not of speaker meaning. Comment I disagree with Bach about status of pragmatic ambiguity. Let's assume with Bach that words and phrases are ambiguous if they have multiple meanings. When Bach is considering structural ambiguities, his examples are all instances of utterances. This is, of course, expected, considering the nature of a 'structural ambiguity'. But all of these utterances are, presumably, things that would be said. After all, we primarily use linguistic expressions for communicating with one another. Is there a reason to suspect that context supplies a sufficient framework for disambiguating sentences, or at least simply offloading the ambiguity charge into another category? I contend that it does not. As Bach himself concedes, psycholinguistic studies have demonstrated that upon hearing an utterance, the hearer runs through possible meanings of the sentences and 'rules out their irrelevant senses'. This at the very least suggests that there are multiple meanings available to linguistic expressions themselves, which is all Bach really contends is what ambiguity is. Listeners can also choose the wrong understanding of an utterance based on their understanding of the context. The meaning of the phrase 'nothing is on TV tonight' may depend on what the speaker means or the state of affairs of the cable networks that evening - if you aren't aware that all of the cable companies have somehow been shut down, you might be lead to believe that the speaker simply doesn't want to watch any shows that are currently on television. But that is not what he means. Listeners can choose the wrong phrase, and thus be misled about the actual meaning - the speaker is being ambiguous. Argument - Reconstruction P1: Ambiguity is a semantic phenomenon. P2: If speaker meaning were ambiguous, then words and phrases within contexts of language use would have unclear meanings. P3: Ambiguous language is rarely intended. P4: Ambiguous uses of language are not consciously entertained. 5: Therefore, language use/speaker meaning does not have ambiguities. C: Ambiguity does not relate to speaker meaning. Argument - Comment P1: Things (words, phrases) are ambiguous if they have more than one meaning. P2: Psycholinguistic evidence shows that listeners rule out irrelevant meanings when hearing expressions to determine the speaker’s meaning. P3: Expressions can have more than one meaning. C: Ambiguity is also a characteristic of speaker meaning. ________________________________________________________________________________ Dilyn Corner (C) 2020-2022