The value of ambiguous speech

Sometimes you don't even notice that your language has an ambiguity problem until you try translating it.

In my native Spanish, "to wish" and "to desire" are expressed by the same word, and it took me years to realize that the English "wish" and "desire" were different concepts. (This was a huge source of confusion when I was studying Buddhism.)

Similarly, "to await", "to hope" and "to expect" are the same word in Spanish. (One song in Spanish by Shakira has a funny verse that uses the same word three times, but by the specific usage you can tell it should translate as "I hope you don't expect me to wait for you.")

I don't know what specific circumstances prompted Spanish to conflate those sets of concepts under unifying words (or maybe what happened was that English had some reason to separate originally closer concepts; I don't know), but this is a big blind spot for people not exposed to other languages.

Precise language is great when you have a precise message. Often what we are trying to convey is itself not precise.

If words paint mental pictures, then precise language is like sending a photograph where everything is in full focus. It's great in that there's a lot of information there, but it's not always clear what to do with it and focusing on the wrong bits can get in the way of an important message.

Instead you can turn down the depth of field such that the only thing in any focus is the object you're pointing at - and even then only in sufficient detail to identify it and no more. Then you have no choice but to recognize the actual intended message because you were careful not to dilute your point with extraneous information that often comes with careless use of language.

If I'm pointing out a tiger, not only do I want to make sure you don't get distracted looking at the flowers, I want to make sure you can't argue with me over which kind of tiger it is if I happen to guess wrong.

I happen to be studying lojban at the moment, and I think the designers have defined linguistic ambiguity not as the opposite of specificity (one of the first lojban words I learned was "zo'e" /ZO.he/, which means something like "contains contextually sensitive information that makes this utterance true, the exact value of which is irrelevant or obvious"), but rather as a linguistic property whereby a semantic construct cannot be pinned down to communicating a specific value. The classic English language example is "time flies like a banana", in which any of the first three words can be the verb.

I feel like this is almost a degenerate-case explanation, but perhaps the primary application of ambiguity is brevity.

The Persian king threatens, "If we win this war, we will kill all your men and enslave your women."

The Laconian king answers, "If."

The Persian king says, "I'm not sure what you mean by that."

The Laconian king says: "Like, 'If you win.'"

The Persian king says: "'If you win' what? Like I said, if we win, we'll kill you and enslave your women."

The Laconian king says: "Right. If you win."

The Persian king says: "I'm so confused."

The Laconian king says: "I'm emphasizing the use of 'if' to draw attention to the idea that I don't plan to let you win."

The Persian king says: "Ohhhh oh I get it. Okay, yeah, that's pretty good. Scribe, blot out everything after he said 'If.'"

Ambiguity isn't a unary function. It doesn't make sense to say "this sentence is ambiguous" without some context:

• What's the social context in which the sentence is spoken? "I love you" from a child to a parent almost certainly doesn't mean the same thing as "I love you" from an adult to a lover. This isn't ambiguity; it's context dependence.
• What are the likely (mis)interpretations? How distant are they from each other in meaning-space? Do those differences matter? "Go to the library and get me Moby-Dick" might leave the hearer unclear as to which library is meant (the college library? the public library? the main branch of the public library? the room in the house with lots of bookcases?) ... but maybe the speaker doesn't care about the difference — they just want their damn whale book.
• Is the sentence intended to nail down one specific meaning when some hearers would prefer a different one? For some purposes, such as laws and rules, people want a very clear idea of what's being forbidden, even in a context where people have strong disagreements about what should be forbidden. See for instance the U.S. jurisprudence notions of the vagueness doctrine and the "chilling effect".
• For that matter, what level of language skill does the speaker/writer expect from the hearer/reader, and how much care is the hearer/reader expected to apply? Some grammatical forms are harder to parse. There are a number of example sentences where introducing a comma or pause in the wrong place can completely change the sense of the sentence.

"Woman: Without her, man is nothing" / "Woman, without her man, is nothing".
"I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse" / "I helped my uncle jack off a horse".
"Unless a player has Book Burning deal six damage to him or her ..." / "Unless a player has Book Burning, deal six damage to him or her ..."

In the original context, the alleged desirable ambiguity was the ability to concisely omit information--that is, to say "people" instead of "men and women". Tabooing 'ambiguity', I'd frame this as a matter of having words for large sets rather than requiring speakers to construct them out of smaller sets, and say that this is a good thing if those sets are commonly referred to.

On a similar note, there can be intensions whose extensions are not agreed upon--"good" and "right" spring to mind. At first I thought it would be necessary to have words for these, but upon reflection I'm not sure. Could we replace them with more specific words like "right according to classical utilitarianism" or "right according the ethics of the person this word relates to"?

Ambiguity is good for plausible deniability, among other things...

Ambiguity has its uses. In flirting for example, where the offer of intimacy is made implicitly so rejection can be given implicitly (by pretending not to have heard the offer) in order to avoid the pain of explicit rejection.

And in all sorts of situations where explicit statements of particular facts or opinions are punishable, the ability to make them in ambiguous, i.e. deniable form, can be crucial.

But I find the baseline of unintentional ambiguity in most forms of human-to-human communication to be a problem, not an asset, most of the time.

Is a lack of ambiguity necessary for clear thinking? Are there times when it's better to be ambiguous?

No. Yes.

I interpret "ambiguity" as "having multiple meanings in the given context". It can be a bad thing or a good thing. The "optimal level of ambiguity", I think, is very much situation-dependent and I'm not optimistic about formulating any general rules for that.

Off the top of my head I can come up with a couple of way ambiguity is useful. One is when you are thinking at several levels simultaneously. In such a case ambiguity can provide vital linkages between levels helping to keep them in sync. Two is when you use ambiguity to postpone choosing a path for a bit. Here it's similar to a wavefunction which you might find convenient to hold in an uncollapsed state for while and then collapse it (= resolve the ambiguity) at the right moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle

We have to make some assumptions that communication is being done in good faith. otherwise all communication would suffer.

some of what you are asking about is covered in that principle.

I think some ambiguity is useful for communication; but at some point people should be making specific claims which can then be discussed and proven true/null etc. (i.e. both are needed)

This was going to be a reply in a discussion between ChristianKl and MattG in another thread about conlangs

In general when you refer to another thread on LW, it's good to add a link.