Context as a Basis for Understanding Pragmatic Ambiguity with Reference to Arabic

The study of ambiguity has been a central issue in the formulation of linguistic theory, and has been an area which serious psycholinguistic study has focused on since the past two decades. The current study deals with “Context as a Basis for Understanding Pragmatic Ambiguity with Reference to Arabic” and the methods that can be used for translating this phenomenon into Arabic taking into consideration the same effect of the SL writer. No doubt, pragmatic ambiguity is problematic since it is based on intentionality. However, it becomes more problematic when it is translated into Arabic, simply, because English and Arabic are genetically different languages. This research paper aims at (1) studying the phenomenon of pragmatic ambiguity which is the output of any other type of ambiguity such as phonetic ambiguity, phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, sentential ambiguity as well as semantic ambiguity, (2) making the context crystal clear which has an effective impact on understanding the expressions under investigation since intentionality cannot be deduced without knowing context, (3) specifying different patterns of pragmatic ambiguity in the books and articles of pragmatics, (4) translating the specified patterns into Arabic to show their realizations and whether, they will have the same effects as to that of source language or not. It is hypothesized in this research that (1) there is no formal correspondence between English and Arabic, (2) pragmatic ambiguity cannot be solved unless both context and cotext of the phenomenon in question are known, (3) all types of ambiguity cannot be interpreted unless the intention of the writer is clear which is context and cotext bound To test the validity of the above mentioned hypothesis, it is to be noted that only eight different patterns have been chosen to be translated into Arabic, (2) these expressions were translated by six assistant lecturers in the department of Translation/Cihan University/Erbil, (3) Newmarks' method of communicative translation will be adopted in the research under investigation, since it tackles the intention of the writer. The basic conclusions of this research are that, (1) all types of ambiguity are based on the intention of the writer, (2) there was no formal correspondence between both source language and target language, (3) the pragmatic ambiguity was solved by resorting to both cotext and context.