Chapter 30 [Case Analysis] <Bad mouth and nothing at the moment>

There is a folktale called "Smart Mouth Matchmaker", which tells about a matchmaker who only cheats people with sweet words. A certain girl has been unable to get married because she lacks a lip, and she has been unable to marry; a certain young man has no nose, and cannot marry a wife.But both sides put forward one condition: no disabled people.The Qiaozui matchmaker actually made the marriage a success. She said to the man: This girl has nothing wrong with her except her bad mouth. The man thought that bad mouth meant talking too much and chattering, so he said: bad mouth is not a big problem, just slowly persuade her to change it!

The matchmaker said to the woman again: The young man is fine in everything else, but there is nothing right now. The woman thought it meant that the man’s family was poor and had no property.He said: There is nothing to be afraid of right now!I just need to accompany you. Later, when the girl and the boy met, they realized that they had been cheated. Both of them accused the matchmaker of deceiving people. Qiaozui matchmaker argued: How is this a lie?Didn't I tell you a long time ago that the girl has a bad mouth and the young man has nothing to do right now? There is a kind of ambiguous sentence in the sentence, that is, the meaning of the same sentence, people can have different understandings of it and make different interpretations.For example, he doesn't even know me.For this sentence, people may have two completely different understandings: one is that he does not know me, that is, he does not even know me as a famous person (or close relatives, close neighbors); the other is that I do not know him.Even I, who has a lot of friends and is most familiar with the situation, don't know him.

From the perspective of logic, the so-called ambiguous sentence means that the same sentence can express different judgments.Ambiguities often cause disputes among people who have different understandings of them, and sophists try to use ambiguities to confuse others or justify their own mistakes.In the above story, the girl has a bad mouth and the boy has nothing at the moment are two ambiguous sentences.They can be interpreted in a general sense, like a girl and a young man, or in another sense, like a sweet-talking matchmaker.Therefore, when we find that what someone said is ambiguous, we should ask the other party: What is the exact meaning of what you said?So as not to misunderstand or be deceived.