What if we identify an ambiguous phrase but can tell its intended meaning from context?
If you do this, you ll have learned something important the fact that there s another possible meaning that could be used. Because you don t truly have an ambiguous phrase, you thus understand the claim and can proceed to evaluate its truth and relevance. In addition, you may decide to challenge the definition assumed by the communicator as part of your evaluation. In essence, by recognizing that the communicator has selected one definition from multiple possibilities, you may have identified an important definitional assumption, a critical thinking skill that you will read more about in subsequent chapters. Q8. We have been encouraged to paraphrase reasons when outlining a communicator s reasoning structure, and different people end up with different paraphrasings. Doesn t that mean that different people will find different terms in the reasoning ambiguous. A: Because that possibility exists, it s important that when you do identify the reasoning structure and paraphrase reasons and c
