LANGUAGE AMBIGUITY IN EFL LEARNERS’ NARRATIVE TEXTS: A SEMANTIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates the ambiguity in five EFL learners’ narrative texts. This study reveals that the narrative texts contain lexical and syntactic ambiguities. Lexical ambiguity can happen because of polysemy and homonymy. In terms of syntactic ambiguity, ambiguous languages occur in the surface and deep structure of the sentences for various reasons, such as coordinator, gerund, and adjectives followed by an infinitive. Luckily, the lexical and syntactic ambiguities do not give the readers much trouble comprehending the texts if the context is clear. The context, particularly the preceding and following sentences, helps the readers understand the text. Sentences with ambiguous words or ambiguous structures can be clearly delivered as long as the writers are able to provide a clear context. Additionally, the writers in this present study tend to intentionally use ambiguous words in their sentences in order to use the words metaphorically and to tell the story in a more artistic way since the purpose of the narrative text is to entertain the readers.

Keywords

• language ambiguity
• lexical ambiguity
• syntactic ambiguity