Week 4 discussion - Question 3

The reading that stood out to me the most this week was ambiguity. We focused a lot on this term in my Comm 40 class last semester so it was interesting to me to see it pop up again in readings this semester. Ambiguity means that something is unclear or can be interpreted in different way by different people. For example, saying "It's hot" is ambiguous because what is hot for someone may be not the same for another person. It would be understood better if someone says, "It's 80 degrees today." because everyone knows exactly what 80 degrees feels like and they can say for themselves if that is hot or not. The meaning of words or phrases is changed depending on who it is. Most people are misunderstood because they used ambiguous words instead of being specific when they are trying to communicate something. Communication is improved if people had less ambiguity in their speech.