3.1.1: Context and Background Knowledge
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The sentence "He is at the bank” doesn't contain enough clues for you to tell whether he is at a river bank or a financial bank. Therefore, the term bank occurs ambiguously.
However, that same word does not occur ambiguously in the following sentence:
Leroy is at the bank frantically trying to withdraw his savings before the financial system collapses.
The river bank interpretation would now be too strange, so the word bank here means financial bank.1 The other words that occur in the sentence give strong clues as to which sense is meant. These surrounding words are part of the context of the sentence. The context can also include surrounding sentences and paragraphs. In addition, the context includes the situation in which the sentences are used, the time, the identity of the speaker, and the speaker's body language. In the above example, the word bank is unambiguous not only because of the context but because of our background knowledge that people withdraw savings from financial banks and not river banks. That is, we can disambiguate in favor of financial bank and against river bank.
The conclusion to be drawn from this example is that the principle "Avoid ambiguity" requires not that you completely avoid using words that have multiple meanings but only that you avoid them when they interfere with communication. The corresponding principle for the listener or reader is to use the context of the sentence and your background knowledge to identify what statement is being made with the sentence.
A statement is what a speaker or writer states, usually with a declarative sentence.
The one declarative sentence "Leroy is at the bank" can be used to make two statements: in one context, a statement about a river bank; in another context, a statement about a financial bank.
Do you see why the failure to properly disambiguate using context is the key to the effectiveness of the following joke?
As Yogi Berra advised: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Yogi Berra was intentionally ambiguous about the reference of the word “it.”
The following joke about America’s First Lady turns on ambiguity in the reader’s presuppositions; she is not making the same presupposition the waiter is making:
The President and the First Lady are eating out in a restaurant.
Waiter: Madame, what would you like to drink?
First Lady: A glass of your house white wine will be fine.
Waiter: And for an appetizer?
First Lady: Tonight, we will skip the appetizer.
Waiter: And for the main dish, madam?
First Lady: I'll have the T-bone steak.
Waiter: And for the vegetable?
First Lady: Oh, he'll have the same thing.
Consider this ambiguous sentence construction: "I saw the man on the hill with a telescope." It is very ambiguous. Which one of the following is not a legitimate disambiguation?
a. The hill with a telescope was where I saw the man.
b. I was on the hill with a telescope, and the man saw me.
c. The man with a telescope, who was on the hill, was seen by me.
d. I was on the hill and I used a telescope to see the man.
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Answer (b). The problem is with "the man saw me," because the original sentence implies I did the seeing, not that I was seen.
The word inconsistent has multiple meanings that can produce difficulties. A person is said to be "inconsistent" if they change their mind more often than you'd expect. That sense of the word is synonymous with inconstant. However, in this book the word inconsistent is normally used in the technical sense of logical inconsistent ─ implying that something is both so and not so. Here is an example of a logical inconsistency from Woody Allen: "I don't believe in the afterlife, but I'm going to take a change of underwear.” We readers quickly realize that Allen’s statement implies he believes that there isn’t an afterlife but also that there is. That shocking revelation is what gives his joke its punch.
During the last few months, Beth has liked Mark off and on from one week to the next. Is she being inconsistent or not?
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Well, she has changed her mind and is being inconsistent in the sense of being inconstant or fickle, but she is not being logically inconsistent in the way that it is inconsistent to say "x is greater than 11 and also less than 11." The first sense of inconsistent concerns time, but logical inconsistency does not.
The word some also has multiple meanings. It can mean "at least one and possibly all” or "at least one but not all.” Only the context can reveal which. Here’s a context in which it is used in the first sense. Suppose three people corner me in an alley at night. After a brief but futile attempt to solve the problem with words, I pull a knife and say, "Get out of here, or some of you are going to die.” Here, I am using the word some to suggest at least one, and possibly all, will die. I don’t mean some will and some won't. For a second example using the first sense of the word some, suppose I bring back rock samples from a mountain. I then do a chemical analysis of one rock and discover that it contains sulfur. So, I say, "OK, now we know that some of those rocks contain sulfur.” Here some means at least one and possibly all. On the other hand, if I say, "I grade on a curve, and some of you are going to flunk,” I mean at least one but not all. Your sensitivity to context and background knowledge enables you to pick the intended sense of some.
Which of the two meanings of some is intended in the following sentence, or can't the reader tell?
The survey of major corporate executives indicates that 60 percent of those sampled believe that some American graduates are not trainable for any entry-level management position in their corporations.
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At least one but not all. Choosing the other interpretation of some would require the speaker to believe that maybe every graduate is untrainable; but surely the speaker isn't that pessimistic.
Having more than one meaning is not necessarily a sign of ambiguity, but only when it inhibits communication. If you say, "I don’t want to fish on that muddy bank. Let's stay in the boat," you won't cause a communication problem, despite the fact that the word “bank” might refer to a muddy financial bank instead of a bank along the edge of the water. Speakers and writers who use phrases that have multiple meanings can legitimately count on the audience or readers to pay attention to context and to rely on their background knowledge in order to remove potential ambiguity. Good writers do not make their readers struggle hard to do so, though.
If I say, "I climbed a tall mountain last year," I am not saying something ambiguous simply because I did not say the name of the mountain. Maybe the context didn’t require naming the specific mountain. However, if I were to ask you which mountain you climbed last year, and you replied with “I climbed an interesting mountain last year,” then you are being ambiguous, and probably evasive.
Explain why the following statement is humorous.
Elasas and other researchers say they believe that aspartame can do more damage over a long period of time than federal health officials.
Hint: it has to do with syntactic ambiguity.
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Personally, I believe federal officials can do more damage than aspartame, not less, don't you? The passage takes a shot at the federal health officials. To remove the disambiguation difficulties, add the word believe at the end of the sentence.
Here is an example of how ambiguity affects argument quality:
Shipments of our tools to Toronto take place on Mondays. Today is Monday. So, there is a shipment of our tools to Toronto today.
This is a sloppy argument because the first reason is ambiguous. Is the first reason saying that we ship every Monday or only that, whenever we do ship, it is on a Monday (but not necessarily every Monday)?
A common kind of ambiguity occurs when the speaker leaves out important information about the comparison class. Suppose Julie says to Janice at a high school basketball game, “He’s cute, isn't he?” and Janice replies with, “Compared to what? He’s cuter than anyone playing on the floor, but not as cute as three boys down there in row two in front of us.” Janice is asking for information about the comparison class, so she can disambiguate the remark and then evaluate it.
What are the two comparison classes that are mentioned in this dialogue?
Janice: The U.S. has the best health care system, don’t you think?
David: Maybe, are you talking about how the system works for the wealthiest in American society?
Janice: Oh, no I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking just about the average person in North America. The typical American is the healthiest, don’t you think?
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Janice’s comparison class is average persons in each of the three countries of North America. She would have been saying something more likely to be true if she had been speaking about the comparison class David had in mind, wealthy people in different societies in the world.
1 The two meanings seem to be quite distinct. Actually they arose from the same prior word bank, which meant what we now mean by "shelf!" People used to think of moneykeepers as storing their wealth on shelves, and they used to think of the side of the river as a shelf that stored dirt above the water.