Lexical Ambiguity
Did you know....?
The use of a specialized vocabulary with a novice in a domain creates a "mystique" about the subject (Lemke, 1990). Furthermore, the use of specialized language that is unfamiliar to the student portrays the subject as more difficult than it is, a subject that can only be mastered by geniuses.
People connect what they hear to what they have heard and experienced in the past (Lemke, 1990; Konold, 1995) so if a commonly used English word is used differently by a technical domain, the students hearing the word for the first time in class may incorporate the technical usage as a new facet of the features of the word they already know.
Domain-specific words that are similar to commonly used English words but have different meanings in statistics are said to have lexical ambiguity (Barwell, 2005).
Lexical ambiguity and the acquisition of a linguistic register associated with a field has been shown to create problems for learners in science (Garvin-Doxas & Klymkowsky, 2008; Lemke, 1990), mathematics (Durkin & Shire, 1991b; Shultz & Pilon, 1973), and statistics (Kaplan et al., 2009, 2014; Lesser et al., 2009, 2013; Makar & Confrey, 2005).
There are some easy ways to address lexical ambiguity in the classroom . Instructors can
- preempt difficulties by careful use of language in their teaching (Albert, 2003; Lesser et al., 2009; Rangecroft, 2002).
- be aware of students’ everyday use of lexically ambiguous words and address the differences in meaning explicitly in the classroom (Lavy & Mashiach-Eizenberg, 2009: Rangecroft, 2002), through the use of multiples modes and representations (Lesser et al., 2009, 2013) and by exploiting the differences between the uses (Adams et al., 2005).
- help students to build their voices in the technical domain (Adams et al., 2005, Durkin & Shire, 1991a, Lemke, 1990), through vocabulary activities and writing assignments (Adams et al., 2005; Durkin & Shire, 1991a; Lesser et al., 2009, 2013).
Some words that have been shown to be lexically ambiguous are random, spread, association, independence, normal, average, and bias.