The Ambiguity Trap

Traps, by their nature, are unnoticed and unnoticeable until it’s too late. Computational and linguistic traps are no exception.

One of the most dangerous linguistic traps is that of ambiguity – a word or expression which, without further clarification can have multiple meanings. “You can’t have too much of that” might mean that it’s impossible to have too much, but it can also be understood as you're not permitted to overindulge in it. It's also possible to construe it as saying that you can't have too much, but the rest of us may. Take your pick.

Many statements in their free-standing form are natively ambiguous, that is, they have more than one meaning, depending on the context. We shouldn’t be amazed, therefore, when our listeners are puzzled. We were aware of the context, but they were left in the dark.

The problem arises because communication is very much contextual, and our perceiving brains rely on context to sort out the whole scene. In a conversation, an essay, or a lecture, each idea hangs off the last one and is part of the big picture. Each word or sentence is partly explained by what has come before it, and by the context of the whole.

The difficulty is that we make utterances which flow from what is going on inside our own heads, but nobody else has access to our minds while the idea is being developed. Hence, for myself I have the benefit of the context of my statement, but since you don’t, you’re left puzzled by what I’m trying to say.

There are at least two ways to avoid the ambiguity trap. The first is to ensure that your listener has full access to your context, and that the context and the statement clearly fit each other. This is achieved by making sure you have laid out the background before you unveil your big idea.

The better way is to steer clear of ambiguity in the first place. The classical linguist and rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilian taught, "One should not aim at being possible to understand but at being impossible to misunderstand."

Now, that was clear enough!


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