Monday, November 26, 2018

Ambiguity and Vagueness - Essay




A comment made by a reader of one of my short stories recently was that there was ambiguity in the ending.  In context with the rest of the comment, the person was either trying to be kind or truly meant it as a compliment. 

After cocking my head like a dog trying to fix on a high pitched sound, I decided I needed to consider the meaning of ambiguity.  Which led me to consider vagueness as it seems to be used interchangeably with being ambiguous.  The two words are far afield from one another.

At the end of this, I'll give the link to the story so that if you wish to read it you may.

Through our years of travel and interaction with others and particularly in writing we tend to understand the meaning of things without having to explain the meaning.  I immediately understood that the reader meant open-ended.  But, was that right?  I'm not so sure.  Initially, my operating notion of ambiguity placed the ending of my story at vague, not ambiguous.

I don't know what the commenter had in mind other than what was written.  I thought perhaps it was me that didn't understand.  To some degree it was. 

Ambiguity is a statement that has several different meanings.  All of which, the reader has the option to pick the one they like based on the narrative surrounding it.  The author can only hope the correct meaning is accepted.   Vague means no one has a clue as to what the statement means other than the author.

For example, Ambiguous - "The villain got what he deserved by Joe, Sue or John using a knife or gun."  Vague -"A bad way came to the villain." 

In the first with ambiguous, you can pick.  The villain was punished by one or more of three people with one of two weapons.  The narrative before and after clues the right answer.  Naturally, we don't want to write that way.  But, it happens.

In the second example, vagueness lends itself to all kinds of questions.  What is bad?  A rather subjective word.  It, whatever it is, came to the villain.  Does that mean the villain is dead, wounded, feelings hurt or something else?  We just don't know.  For the author to purposefully write vagueness into his story he or she has to be especially skilled to pull it off.  Must of us write vagueness accidentally.  Here are a few examples of vague words that even context has a hard time overcoming.

He was rich.  Okay, my notion of rich and your notion vary, perhaps a lot.
The man was bald.  What is your notion of bald?  How little hair must a man have to be considered bald?  Is your definition of bald the same as mine?  Probably not.
Middle-aged,
Inspiring,
Beautiful,
Great,
Elegant -  and so on.  These are vague.  Clauses can help but the vagueness prevails.

As I came to refresh my understanding of the difference between the words, I decided my story didn't have a vague ending.  Nor was it ambiguous.  In fact, I wouldn't even call it open-ended.  The climax was reached and it ended.  The reader could infer more about what might follow.  But, the story was over.

That takes me back to the top.  The commenter was just being kind and was not satisfied with the ending.  That gives me a whole different thing to think about.

Thanks for reading.

E.J. Hall


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