13-04-2016, 10:32 PM
Getting into the quicksand is easiest to do when you wade right in and don't watch where your going. It's even easier if you're walking on a marked path you assume is safe because everyone else is walking it too. (They aren't all shorter than you, some of them have just been in the quicksand longer.) You path is made of assumptions and each one needs to be tested before you make the next one if you don't want to get in over your head.
Examine even your most basic assumptions. "In order to communicate covertly, it is necessary to use some sort of hidden system. In order to communicate clearly the system itself needs to be rigid and unambiguous. Too many linguistic interpretations have problems with ambiguity."
In order to communicate covertly you only need to keep the message hidden. Passing notes in school is an example of this. You only need a system when you don't trust the people passing the notes of they might be intercepted by a hostile entity. And even then the system is only hidden from the hostile entity, the recipient of the message needs to be able to decode it.
In order to communicate clearly the system needs to take your definition of clearly into account. Prior to standardized spelling Shakespeare's name had a number of spellings, but anyone familiar with his works understood the reference when reading his name. You can have ambiguity and variation in encoding without a loss of semantic clarity. Whether you are looking for a linguistic interpretation or not the problem is not ambiguity. The problem is a lack of context. You may be able to interpret something without context, even if all you have is a string of characters. In order to make the correct interpretation reliably you need context.
If you want out of the quicksand back up and look for a different path.
Examine even your most basic assumptions. "In order to communicate covertly, it is necessary to use some sort of hidden system. In order to communicate clearly the system itself needs to be rigid and unambiguous. Too many linguistic interpretations have problems with ambiguity."
In order to communicate covertly you only need to keep the message hidden. Passing notes in school is an example of this. You only need a system when you don't trust the people passing the notes of they might be intercepted by a hostile entity. And even then the system is only hidden from the hostile entity, the recipient of the message needs to be able to decode it.
In order to communicate clearly the system needs to take your definition of clearly into account. Prior to standardized spelling Shakespeare's name had a number of spellings, but anyone familiar with his works understood the reference when reading his name. You can have ambiguity and variation in encoding without a loss of semantic clarity. Whether you are looking for a linguistic interpretation or not the problem is not ambiguity. The problem is a lack of context. You may be able to interpret something without context, even if all you have is a string of characters. In order to make the correct interpretation reliably you need context.
If you want out of the quicksand back up and look for a different path.