Diana Cook's
Notes on Communication Problems Caused by
Linguistic Ambiguities
as explained in:
Oaks, D. (Ed.), Linguistics at Work. Fort Worth, Texas,
Harcourt Brace, 1998 ISBN: 0-15-503532-0
If one of the concerns of the therapist is to understand what the client
is saying, a new book by Dallin Oaks may be helpful in sensitizing therapists
to potential communication difficulties in the session. The book
contains forty-six articles
many of which describe ambiguities in language that can lead to misunderstandings
which have implications for the practicing therapist. I will illustrate
the kinds of problems described by highlighting key points made in four
of the articles and suggest ways they may relate to therapy.
1. Richard L. Garcia, A Linguistic Frame of Reference for Critiquing
Chicano Compositions. (517-522).
| The author explains how prior experience with one language can disrupt
smooth communication in a new language. The point of the chapter
is to educate teachers to recognize these problems so that they can avoid
shaming children for making natural linguistic mistakes.
As the author explains communication mistakes occur because children
have not learned to discriminate the sounds of a new language. The
teacher cannot correct the problem because she does not understand its
cause.
In a similar way, perhaps, it can be difficult for all of us to discriminate
sounds of new words even in our own language. Consider the case of
the client who tells you her husband is omnipotent when she means to say
that he is impotent. |
2. Phillip A. Noss, Communicating the Scriptures across Cultures.
(610-624)
| The author also describes difficult problem in translating when one
language has ambiguities but the other language does not. For instance,
consider translating Psalm 23:1 "The Lord is my Shepherd" into Gbaya.
In Gbaya there are two forms for "my." One form means that the speaker
owns something. The other form means that the speaker belongs to
something. A bad translation would suggest that the speaker in the
Psalm passage actually owned a flock of sheep and that it was the Lord
who looked after them (p.617).
On reflection, however, it is possible to hear
the same ambiguity in the English version. If people fail to hear
it incorrectly, it may be because
we share a common understanding of this particular
passage. But similar phrases in ordinary speech may be more difficult
to interpret. Consider: John is my teacher. Does mean
John teaches the speaker? Or that John is an employee who teaches
others? Such ambiguities in ordinary speech complicate our problems
in understanding clients. |
3. Gyi, M. The Unbreakable Language Code in the Pacific Theatre
of World
War II. (626-633).
Gyi describes military use of Navajo language for sending and receiving
classified information. This language was unknown by German/Japanese,
so the code could not be broken. They give examples of how new words
were translated into Navajo by
making up new words in accordance with old patterns . (Obviously,
they needed to avoid the standard practice of "borrowing" words from foreign
languages.) This required an interesting creativity. An elephant
was "one who lassoes with his nose." Car was "Chuggi" which imitates the
sound of a car. "Gasoline" became "chuggi bi to" or "car's water."
Perhaps this can give suggest ways of communicating nuances of meaning
that are beyond the client's vocabulary. For example, if the therapist
wants to use the phrase "Existential angst" this might be translated as
"the scaird-of-dying feeling." |
4. Raskin, V. Linguistics and Machine Translation. (634-659).
| This was an excellent paper describing how linguistics can help with
translation using computer programs, and it included a fascinating discussion
of linguistic ambiguities. The author distinguishes several kinds
of ambiguity, syntactic, semantic, and attributive referential.
Syntactic ambiguity is based on words being used in different forms
of speech. For example:
|
Some countries the stone people to death. This is a stone
wall.
|
Semantic ambiguity is caused by words that sound alike or
are spelled alike but have different meanings, such as "disgust" and "discussed."
And, "She cannot bear children," could mean either "She cannot give
birth" or "She can't stand children."
And, finally, attributive/referential ambiguity also results in
confusion because we do not know what the terms refer to. Consider:
John would like to marry a girl his parents would not approve of.
|
Ask yourself: Does this girl exist? Or is John going to select this
girl from a pool of "unacceptable mates."
These ambiguities could also occur in the client's speech and the the
therapist would be wise to watch for them.
|
In fact, all of these examples suggest the importance for the therapist
to avoid easy and presumptuous interpretations of the client's statements.
They also suggest , the importance of working with clients to create a
vocabulary for mutual understanding.
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