Entry #9: My Nerdiness Has An Application!

Not surprisingly since I helped pick it, this week's article was one that really interested me. I have a fascination with ambiguous language. It's a bit funny, actually, because I haven't always been the best at recognizing or understanding it (still not great at it...). I'm not exaggerating (though I wish I were) when I say it took me until high school before I understood the "seven ate nine" joke because I couldn't see the other meaning of "eight." I could have told you "eight" and "ate" were homophones but could not make the connection in that context at all.

I think, though, my fascination with ambiguous language started in my undergraduate when I learned about garden path sentences in the context of understanding syntax. Garden path sentences are those that start in a way that lets you to believe it will be one thing, but if you read it that way, it is ungrammatical. One of the ones I remember learning was, "The old man the boat." When you initially read it, you think the noun phrase is "the old man," but if it was read like that, it wouldn't be a grammatical sentences. Instead, the subject is "the old" and the predicate is "man the boat." I took an entire course on syntax (and loved it), and my favorite sentences to diagram were garden path sentences and sentences that had more than one meaning. (Though I did like doing grammatically complex sentences too... Tree diagrams are just fun.) 

Grammatically incorrect first guess

Grammatically correct garden path sentence

However, even as I loved these sentences in syntax class, I couldn't see how they were relevant to the real world. When would you intentionally use these types of sentences? When are the old going to man the boat? Which brings me to now. In the article, Zipke (2008) helped me see how humor uses ambiguous language all the time, and in the textbook, Tompkins (2017) showed how common ambiguous words actually were. (My jaw almost dropped when I saw the list of common words that had five or more meanings. No wonder it is so hard to learn languages!)

For people who don't think humor is worthwhile, I think about an interview I did with an ENL teacher during my undergraduate when she said that the best moment in teaching was when an EL made their first joke in English. Being about to manipulate language and form an identity in English are powerful things. When you can make a joke in a new language, you are able to show who you are, to be yourself. By teaching ambiguous language, I'd be helping my students build their identity. That is something we are constantly talking about in our group discussions; students should be able to know and be who they are in my classroom. 

Plus, it's just fun. Sometimes, language skills are quite boring. It's hard to make grammar rules or parts of speech exciting. Homonyms and ambiguity, however, are fun. I spent this past weekend with my aunt and uncle, and my uncle kept regaling us with dad jokes. Every single one of them manipulated language using lexical and structural ambiguity. 

I ended up using Zipke's (2008) article to create a unit plan in another class. I thought it would be difficult to come up with four lessons using riddles as the focus, but I had no difficulties coming up with content. From looking at homophones and homonyms to dissecting riddles using the 3W chart to looking at books that use ambiguous language to writing and performing riddles, the unit plan probably could have been longer. It just really made me see how prevalent - and powerful - ambiguity is. 

References

Tompkins, G.E. (2017).  Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Zipke, M. (2008). Teaching metalinguistic awareness and reading comprehension with riddles. The Reading Teacher, 62(2), 128–137. https://doi.org/10.1598/rt.62.2.4