intentional ambiguity in the Arabic language : its patterns and its purposes

Document Type : Original Article

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Faculty of Arts - Menoufia University

Abstract

The present paper attempts to prove that the Arabs tried to avoid ambiguity; however, they, sometimes, used it on purpose. The speaker was deliberately ambiguous with the listener for different purposes. This is because language usage is speaker-controlled. Only he or she may decide to be clear or ambiguous based on given circumstances and ends at the time of speaking. Ambiguity may be deliberately used via different patterns that hide the deep structure and elucidate a superficial structure that the listener understands in a way other than the one intended. Otherwise, the listener may get multiple aspects of double-speak, none of them is certain. This makes Arabic a thorough, flexible and genius tongue. With the development of society, people became in need of politeness, so they took advantage of the phenomenon of confusion supposed to exist among the speakers, so they built their orbits on it, so they deliberately confused! Confusion in primitive society was a familiar matter imposed by the harsh nature of primitive life, and the connotations of words in this primitive society are often devoid of accuracy, and there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity, and they often only express the necessities of daily life, and therefore their sentences are short, and their links are few.

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