Strategies of ambiguity / / edited by Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker.

• Superior document: Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature
• TeilnehmendeR: Bauer, Matthias, 1958-; Zirker, Angelika,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, New York : : Routledge,, 2023.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Routledge studies in twentieth-century literature.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xiv, 358 pages) :; illustrations.

"There has been a growing awareness that ambiguity is not just a necessary evil of the language system resulting, for instance, from its need for economy, or, by contrast, a blessing that allows writers to involve readers in endless games of assigning meaning to a literary text. The present volume contributes to overcoming this alternative by focusing on strategies of ambiguity (and the strategic avoidance of ambiguity) both at the production and the reception end of communication. The authors examine ways in which speakers and hearers may use ambiguous words, structures, references, and situations to pursue communicative ends. For example, the question is asked what it actually means when a listener strategically perceives ambiguity, which may happen both synchronically (e.g. in conversations) as well as diachronically (e.g. when strategically ambiguating biblical texts in order to make them applicable to moral lessons). Another example is the question whether ambiguity awareness increases the strategic use of ambiguity in prosody. Moreover, the authors not only enquire into effects of ambiguous meanings but also into the strategic use of ambiguity as such, for example, as a response to censorship or as a means of provoking irritation. This volume brings together several contributions from linguistics, literary studies, rhetoric, psychology and theology, and aims at providing a systematic approach to the strategic production and perception of ambiguity in a variety of texts and contexts"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Strategy Meets Ambiguity Matthias Bauer and Angelika ZirkerI. -- Textual StrategiesEnduring AmbiguityVeronika Ehrich -- The (Strategic) Ambiguity of Poem Titles Matthias Bauer and Martina Bross -- The Strategic Use of Ambiguous Images in Multisemiotic Textures Nicolas Potysch-- Radical Text Theory and Textual Ambiguity: With Two Analyses of Dadaist Anti-Text Strategies Joachim Knape -- The Case of Epistemic Ambiguity and Its Strategic Production: Connecting Text and CognitionFlorian Rohmann, Lisa Ebert, Elias-Jason Güthlein and Carolin Munderich-- Political Ambivalence and Dramatic Ambiguity: Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstück Die Maßnahme (1930/31)Sebastian Meixner -- II. Productive Perception(Non)Strategic Production Planning and Ambiguity: Experimental EvidenceBettina Remmele, Sophia Schopper, Robin Hörnig and Susanne Winkler -- Reading Aloud Strategic Ambiguities in Poetic TextsDavid Fishelov-- Does Reanalysis Need Ambiguity?Ulrich DetgesAre Hearer Strategies Strategic? Relevance Theory and the Strategicness of Hearer Action in Everyday Language and Language ChangeGesa Schole and Carolin Munderich-- Ambiguation as Rhetorical Strategy in Sermo 38 by Maurice of SullyNikolai Kohler and Mirjam Sigmund-- "To Define Is to Distrust": Intertextual Ambiguity in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and James Joyce's Ulysses-- Leona TokerSacred Drama, the Law, and Ambiguities of Form in Nineteenth-Century EnglandJan-Melissa Schramm-- Annotating Ambiguity across Disciplines: The Tübingen Interdisciplinary Corpus of Ambiguity Phenomena (TInCAP)Jutta Hartmann, Lisa Ebert, Gesa Schole, Wiltrud Wagner and Susanne Winkler.