Activity!!!!Guess what it means…

Guess what it means…• After a number of injections my jaw got number.• Entire store 25% off• "Please press ANY key to continue...“• "Please wait for hostess to be seated"• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.• I saw her duck.• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

• Happily they left.• We don't just serve hamburgers, we serve people.• "Slow children at play.“• COPENHAGEN AIRLINE OFFICE:

We will take your bags and send them in all directions.• PARIS HOTEL:

Please leave your values at the front desk.• Clearly misunderstood• In a Tacoma, Washington men's clothing store: 15

men's wool suits, $10. They won't last an hour!

• On a bar of Dial soap: Directions: Use like regular soap. (and that would be how?)

• On a string of Christmas lights: For indoor or outdoor use only. (As opposed to use in outer space.)

• Advanced BASIC• Found missing• In downtown Boston: Calahan Tunnel -- No

end• The guy was all over the road. I had to

swerve a number of times before I hit him.

Nabua, Johanna GracePanti, LeoSalvador, Mirasol

AMBIGUITY

In Literary Studies, it is any verbal nuance,

however slight, which gives room for alternative

reactions to the same piece of language

•More than one meaning

•Effect of the uncertainty of choices between different meanings.

• Engages the human capacity for accepting the lack

of certainty.

A feature inherent in literary texts,

especially in poetry, highly connotative

poetic meanings are “of their very nature unspecific and ambiguous” and therefore

“elusive of precise description”

The masterpiece of Mr. Empson where he express his deep appreciation to the literary pieces (especially poetry) and to its beauty which motivated writers to save good sense.

Subjected for its aim not to point out the ‘right’ meaning, but to explore possible extended alternate, multiple and simultaneous meanings.

Critique

James Smith’s Objection (Criterion, July 1931) Empson’s Answer

“We do not ordinarily accuse a pun, or the better type of conceit, of being ambiguous because it manages to say two things at once; its essence would seem to be conciseness rather than ambiguity.”

“But if an irony is calculated to deceive a section of its readers I think it would ordinarily be called ambiguous, even by a critic who has never doubted its meaning.”

Your term of Ambiguity is just a product of your exaggeration.

If a pun is quite obvious it would not ordinarily be called ambiguous because there’s no room for puzzling no more.

Why call it Ambiguity?

“We call it ambiguous, I think, when we recognise that there could be a puzzle as to what the author meant, in that alternative views might be taken without sheermisreading.”

THE SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY

1. Ambiguity arises when a detail is effective in several ways at once

Metaphor: Asserts a correlation or resemblance between two things that are otherwise unrelated.

Literary Samples in Metaphor

But soft, what light through yonder windows breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun!

- (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

-(James Joyce, Ulysses)

Explanation in Metaphor

Shakespearean Sonnet 73

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet bird sang

There is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind.

Sample 1: “Beastmode kung magalit si Madam”

Beastmode:an animal; especially : a wild animal that is large, dangerous, or unusual

Beastmode:an unkind or cruel person

Sample 2: “Hulog ka ng langit, Sir”

Hulog:A sort of blessing

Hulog:to come or go down quickly from a high place or position

Sample 3: “Get out of my house. I don't need a parasite!”- Maricel Soriano, Separada (1994)

Parasite:an animal or plant that lives in or on another animal or plant and gets food or protection from it

Parasite: a person or thing that takes something from someone or something else and does not do anything to earn it or deserve it

Antithesis: Antithesis is the use of contrasting concepts, words, or sentences within parallel grammatical structures. 

Literary Samples in Antithesis

HAMLET: To be, or not to be, that is the question—Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to sufferThe Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,And by opposing, end them?

- (William Shakespeare, Hamlet)This case is not a difficult one, it requires no minute sifting of complicated facts, but it does require you to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant.

-(Harpet Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird)

Sample 4: “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” –Barack Obama

Two opposing ideas:“Extend your hand”“Unclench your fist”

Sample 4: “One joy scatters a hundred grieves”

Two opposing ideas:“joy”“grieves”

Sample 5: “Akala mo lang wala, pero meron! Meron! meron!”- Carlo Aquino, Bata, Bata paano ka ginawa (1998)

Two opposing ideas:“wala” (none)“meron” (there is)

“Wee”-Enjoyment-Peeing

Sound 

2. When two or more meanings are resolved into one

Literary Sample:

Cupid is winged and doth range,Her country so my love doth change

But change she earth, or change she sky,Yet I will love her till I die.

(Anon, Oxford Book)

Time is viewed in two ways here:

Time in distance (You can control it)Time where you’re looking on your watch,

waiting to show up (immediate problem)

3. Two apparentlyunconnected meanings are given simultaneously.

Pun

A pun is a play on words which usually hinges on a word with more than one meaning or the substitution of a homonym that changes the meaning of the sentence for humorous or rhetorical effect. 

Literary Samples

HAMLET: I will speak to this fellow.—Whose grave’s this, sirrah?GRAVEDIGGER: Mine, sir.HAMLET: I think it be thine, indeed, for thou liest in ’t.GRAVEDIGGER: You lie out on ’t, sir, and therefore it is not yours.

For my part, I do not lie in ’t, and yet it is mine.HAMLET: Thou dost lie in ’t, to be in ’t and say it is thine. ‘Tis for

the dead, not for the quick. Therefore thou liest.GRAVEDIGGER: ‘Tis a quick lie, sir. ‘Twill away gain from me to you.

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Alice: ‘You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis–‘

‘Talking of axes,’ said the Duchess, ‘chop off her head!’- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Sample:

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.-Mark Twain

What do you call someone with no body and nose? Nobody knows.

A bicycle can’t stand on its own because its two tired.

"Atheism is a non-prophet institution" - George Carlin

Sample:

Sample: “Nababakla si Hesus”- Pasyong Mahal

Sample: “Hayop, Hayuuup! Hayuuupppp!” –Nora Aunor, Ina ka ng Anak Mo (1979)

Sample: “Punta ilog, hugas itlog”- Joey de Leon, Starzan (1989)

Let’s See...

BOWL LIMN YEAHPaolo Manalo BULIMIASee cell yeah, who boughtWho bad, sew cat cut A one, mass a rough

He mass in. MooComma put la, seeMoo rah mass socket

The hill doom ooh doWall doom ooh do wallPay roe Hindi boon tease

Si Celia, hubo’tHubad, suka’t kat-Awan, masarap Himasin moKo maputla, sik-Mura masaket Dahil dumudu-Wal dumuduwalPero hindi buntis.

Empson’s Notion

FOURTH TYPEOccurs when two or more

meanings of a statement do not agree among themselves, but

combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the

author

The fourth type may be as great, the pun as intended, the mixture of modes of judgment as puzzling, but they are not in the main focus of consciousness because the stress of the situation absorbs them and they are felt to be natural under the circumstances.

Example 1:

Let me power forthMy tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

And by this Mintage they are something worth, For thus they be,Pregnant of thee,

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more, When a tear falls, that thou falst which it bore,

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

(John Donne, A Valediction: Of Weeping)

Tears are precious as well as something worth or something valuable.

poet is afraid that their love for each other might lose if they are apart.

The poet is afraid that their love for each other might lose if they are apart.

Allow me to cry in front of you it is only when I’m with you that I only shed valuable tears

Where is the

ambiguity in the

poem?

Example 2:It’s okay..I’m used to

it!

I’m sorry, it’s so traffic. Did you wait

too long?

FIFTH TYPE 

occurs when the author is discovering his idea in the act of writing or not holding it at all in his mind at one, so that,

for instance, there is a simile which applies to nothing exactly, but lies half way between two things when the

author is moving from one to the other.

Words build on words until they lead to the thought that you did not think about it.

Example:“ I am so wise lying here and look what i

have done so far, just sliding all the way down to...look I just look like a snake in the grass..”

6TH TYPE

“FILL IT IN”

The Reader is forced to invent statements of his own and they are liable to conflict with one another

EMPSON:

A Statement says

nothing

Yow! What’s up?

Uy!Ang ganda mo.

Girl 1: Maganda ba?

Girl 2: Ayos lang

YOU FILL IT IN

7TH TYPE

“OPPOSITE”

“Many People have died so their Ideas

may Live”.

A contradiction may be meaningless, but can never be blank.

Gives a sort of INTENSITY to it.

QUESTIONS?