Ambiguity in Sentences - How to Solve this Problem?

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find out that some sentences in English are clearly ambiguous, whether in its entirety or temporary ambiguity. This leads to some sentences having double meanings, such as "he gave her cat food" and this is not beneficial to the reader as the reader would like to be able to understand what the writer is trying to express immediately after reading it.

As this problem can be quite pertinent to us since it affects the way we communicate, I would like to suggest one method to solve the problem. I believe that the writer must be able to view his/her statement in different perspectives and think about how the reader might understand the statement in a visual way for example. For example, in the sentence above, "he gave her cat food", the writer must be able to think whether the reader would view it as (he)(gave)(her)(cat food) or (he)(gave)(her cat)(food). If necessary some rearrangement of the sentence would be easily able to solve the problem. If the writer means the former meaning he/she should rearrange the sentence to become "he gave cat food to her" or the latter, "he gave food to her cat". As such there is no ambiguity in the sentence since the reader is able to picture a person feeding a cat in the latter version.

Alternatively, if the sentence is spoken, no rearrangement of the sentence is necessary but there must be obvious breaks in the phrasing of the sentence, clearly showing the writer's treatment of the two words "her cat".

Why I am even discussing this topic to start with is because I believe language affects the way how we think. Clearly, the above is one example of this, since the way we express the sentence could give us different interpretations of it. To allow people to clearly understand what one wants to express, one should be able to manipulate language to express one's point of view with no ambiguity at all.

Should Singlish be discouraged in Singapore?

Should Singlish be discouraged in Singapore? I do not think so. I believe Singlish reflects the culture and way of life of Singaporeans through its absorption of words from many languages such as the Chinese dialects, Malay, and to a smaller extent the Indian and European languages other than English. As we can see, Singlish reflects our multi-cultural society. Also, it is a common language that all Singaporeans share and are comfortable with, promoting to some extent cohesiveness within society.

Singlish is said to hinder the proper learning of English in Singaporean schools, and thus is discouraged. However, I believe that Singlish in schools is inevitable since it is the main form of verbal communication between teachers and students. Also, many Singaporeans are able to easily code-switch between Singlish and English to suit the occasion, and thus there is no need to discourage Singlish in Singapore.

However, Singlish should still be discouraged in Singapore in certain situations such as job interviews and other formal occasions since it is inappropriate for the situation to converse in Singlish and leave behind an unsavoury impression.

Will Newspeak work in curbing unwanted views?

Will Newspeak work in curbing unwanted views? In my opinion, it will work. Firstly, what does it mean by unwanted views? Unwanted views refer to views critical of the authorities which they do not want and therefore deem unwanted.

By removing the meanings of words as concepts, people gradually cannot describe these conditions as words in their minds, and would cease to even think about them. When people cease to think about these 'unwanted' concepts, it will never become an expressed view and thus Newspeak would have been said to have succeeded in curbing unwanted views.

Of course there is the argument of concepts being expressed as pictures in one's mind, but still for a person to express this concept to others for them to understand would require him to express in words, something he cannot do, thus being unable to spread unwanted views in society. How can it be possible to talk about something that does not exist? As such, I believe Newspeak will work in curbing unwanted views.