INTRODUCTION

Ambiguity happens in everyday’s life. An utterance can be interpreted in so many different

ways. As asserted by Hurford et.al. (2007), a word or sentence is ambiguous when it has more

than one sense while a sentence is ambiguous if it has two or more paraphrases which are not

themselves paraphrases of each other. In other word, ambiguity is a statement which has two

or more possible meanings; a statement whose meaning is unclear depending on the

circumstances. Ambiguity can be divided into lexical and structural ambiguity. Ambiguity can

be negative leading to confusion or even disaster. According to Empson (1966), there are

seven types of ambiguity and it arises when:

i. A detail is effective in several ways at once

ii. Two or more alternative meanings are fully resolved into one

iii. Two apparently unconnected meanings are given simultaneously

iv. The alternative meanings combine to make clear a complicated state of mind of the

author

v. The author is discovering his idea in the act of writing or not holding it in act of

mind at once

vi. What is said is contradictory or irrelevant and the reader is forced to invent

interpretations

vii. Full of contradiction, marking a division in the author’s mind

Some of these types of ambiguity are applicable in cartoon strips. Cartoon strip is a drawing

or sequence of drawings telling a story in a newspapers or comic book (WordNet, 2013). In

order to deliver the message of humour, sarcasm or advice, ambiguity is commonly used in

cartoon strips. Writers often use it to achieve special effects, for instance, to reflect the
complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility of determining

truth.

As Green (1996) asserts:

“The literature on natural language understanding contains numerous demonstrations

that the determination of how an ambiguous or vague term is intended to be

understood depends on identifying the most likely model of the speaker’s beliefs and

intention about the interaction.”

Therefore, further analysis of ambiguity in cartoon strips has been chose to be discussed.

ANALYSIS

To analyse further down on the ambiguity, six cartoon strips has been chosen. The first

cartoon strip is shown below:

Figure 1
In the context of this cartoon strip, the word “house” is very crucial. In this case, “house” is

homonymous word because it has different senses which are far apart from each other and not

obviously related to each other in any way with respect to the native speaker’s intuition. From

the cartoon strip above, it can be seen from the images of the house. Both houses are not

related in any way as the house on our left-hand side is the President residential and the other

at right-hand side is the house of a commoner. Therefore, Hurford et.al. (2007) said, case of

homonymy seem very definitely to be matters of mere accident or coincidence.

Figure 2

In Figure 2, the phrase “poker face” has more than one interpretation. “Charlie has his poker

face on” can be defined as his face shows no emotion or intention. He is showing a face

without any interpretable expression. It may be because he is not really interested to play

poker on that day so he showing up his poker face. On the other hand, “Charlie has his poker

face on” can also be interpreted as an impassive facial expression that he cultivated to prevent

other players from determining whether his actions in the game are the result of a quality hand

or of bluffing. Hence, “poker face” in Figure 2 caused ambiguity because in that particular

situation of playing cards “poker face” can be interpreted in many ways.

 Figure 3

As a bird, there is nothing interested of being online because birds get used to it almost every

day. However, “online” means a lot to human beings. That is one of the reason that ambiguity

relates to the speaker’s intuition. For human beings, online means connected to a particular

network. Usually it is used to indicate whether a person is on the internet or not. On the other

hand, birds do not go online as human did. The act of being online for birds is the situations

when its stand on a string of line such as electric cable as shown in the figure. Therefore, the

bird is wondering about the idea of being online and it is humorous for readers.
 Figure 4

Figure 4 plays with the word “buck”. As we all know, dollar also known as “buck” in

America. Usually, in informal conversation, Americans use “buck” to refer to US Dollar. At

the same time, “buck” also refers to the adult male of some animals such as deer, antelope and

rabbit. The image of the animal buck and the signboard “Closed: Out of Money” are quiet

confusing because when readers read the line “The buck stop here”, they might think which is

which. There are two conditions whether the California State Parks is closed because they run

out of money; US Dollar (buck) or the buck (animal) has been stopped from passing out the

California State Parks. Other than that, both interpretations can be true in this context where

the Governor meant to keep all the bucks in California State Park and the park is closed due to

running out of money.

 Figure 5

Literally, “beat” means hitting or striking repeatedly and the meaning is commonly used in

our daily life. However it depends on the situation that we’re in. In Figure 5, the word “beat”

itself is ambiguous and it shows that the character gets the wrong idea of “beat two eggs” by

hitting the eggs repeatedly and harshly. What is the character supposed to do is mixed the

eggs rapidly using utensil such as mixer or whisk. This is how ambiguity creates humour in

cartoon strips.

Figure 6

Based on figure 6, the sentence “take the cake” is ambiguous because it has two different

interpretations. It can be either really good or really bad that can be taken as an insult or a

compliment by the man. This cartoon strip has a very sarcastic tone. In regards to the figure
above, the first meaning can be interpreted as the woman had been dated a lot of man but this

man is the worst, egregious and objectionable. Thus, it is an insult to the man. Ironically,

“take the cake” could be meant so pleasant and can be taken as a compliment, if what she

meant is he’s the best and the most outstanding man among all the men she met.

DISCUSSION

Trough out all the analysis on ambiguity in those six cartoon strips, it can be said that

ambiguous situation happens almost in all our daily conversation. It is about how we

understand each other so it keeps both speaker and hearer in line when conversing. A word or

a sentence conveys a humorous, sarcasm and playful messages behind the line.

In Van Deemter and Peters (1996), Green comes out with the ideas of ambiguity resolution.

First, depending on how much the relevant information is salient in the context in which the

utterance is being interpreted. For example, identifying sarcastic intent is similar to

understanding the reference of an expression in that it depends on attributing to the speaker

intent to be sarcastic. When language users fail to recognize ambiguities in the first place, it is

surely because beliefs about the speaker’s beliefs and intention in the context at hand which

support alternative interpretations are not salient. Generally, readers get the salient idea when

reading through any cartoon strips because they will at least smile when they read and it

proves that they understand the whole cartoon strips.

Raskin (1985) claims that humour crucially relies on ambiguity (as cited in Van Deemter and

Peters, 1996, p.165) and therefore the ambiguity in cartoon strips can be classified as

perceived ambiguity. Cartoon strips are not really semantic ambiguity. This is because

semantic ambiguity is part of specification of the grammar of a language and most of the

sentences are semantically ambiguous but their ambiguity needs not to be noticed by

listeners/readers/hearers. In fact, it is typically discovered only by linguistic research.

Perceived ambiguity is a result of interpretation process that is defeasible in nature and may

therefore result in one or more than one interpretation in cases of miscommunication or when

the speaker constructs the context appropriately to serve a rhetorical purpose (Poesio, 1996).

In the context of cartoon strips, ambiguity is like a pun. A pun means the humorous use of a

word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word

similar in sound. Hence, cartoon strip is a type of visual humour that has been manipulated.

The captions and the dialogues that follow the images are ambiguous thus it expresses

different understandings that people might have of the so-called actual meaning. However,

ambiguity is cartoon strips are not about humorous because there’s some kind of sarcasm and

warning lies behind the humour.

CONCLUSION

In the analysis of ambiguity in cartoon strips, ambiguous word, sentence or situation are not

uncommon in our daily conversation. The meaning of an utterance does not necessarily rely

on every single word that being spoke because it also depends on the hearer and how the

utterance being interpreted. Cartoon strips emphasized a lot on humour, joke, sarcastic and

motivation.

Truthfully, it appears extremely puzzling that natural languages are so ambiguous. English

can be very ambiguous by having no way to mark who did what to whom and languages are

also systems that constantly change. One would expect that at least some of the changes

languages undergo would be functionally driven. If ambiguity significantly complicates the

task facing the language comprehender, languages should evolve so as to reduce ambiguity.

As a matter of fact, ambiguities are a source of real and potentially costly confusion in

communication. There is no study which systematically evaluates the degree to which

theoretically present ambiguities cause confusion or otherwise hamper the process of

communication. What we do know is that in our own experience, ambiguities present

challenges to speakers, listeners, writers and readers (Warsow et. al, 2005). Kempson (1977),

suggests a helpful way to distinguish between ambiguous sentences by turn to anaphoric

processes; processes which refer back to an earlier part of the sentences. The same thing

happens in analysing the ambiguity in cartoon strips. The actual meaning intended by the

writer could not completely reach the reader as the images and sentences can be interpreted is

so many ways. Ambiguity can be reduced but its existence can be resisted. Hence, ambiguity

actually serves some useful function in language especially how it has been used in cartoon

strip in order to create and deliver creative and brilliant ideas.

REFERENCES

Books

Empson, W. (1966). Seven Types of Ambiguity. New York. New Directions.

Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B. & Smith, M. B. (2007). Semantics: A Coursebook (Second

Edition). UK. Cambridge University Press.

Kempson, R. M. (1977). Semantic Theory. United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press.

Van Deemter, K. & Peters, S. (1996). Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification.United

States. CSLI Publications.

Book chapters

Green, M.G. (1966). Ambiguity resolution and discourse interpretation. In Van Deemter, K.

& Peters, S. (Eds.), Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification.United States. CSLI

Publications.
Poesio, M. (1966). Semantic ambiguity and perceived ambiguity. In In Van Deemter, K. &

Peters, S. (Eds.), Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification.United States. CSLI

Publications.

Internet references

Wasow, T., Perfors, A. & Beaver, D. (2005). The Puzzle of Ambiguity. Retrieved from

http://www.stanford.edu/~wasow/Lapointe.pdf

WordNet Search. (2013). WordNet: A Lexical Database for English. Retrieved from

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/