On semantic and pragmatic ambiguity

Abstract The topic of this paper is an analysis of different realizations of indirect and ambiguous language usage. The paper starts out with a short survey of two varying concepts of direct and indirect communication, i.e. Grice's theory of conversational implicature and Kierkegaard's concept of indirect communication . Based on examples, different combinations of semantic and pragmatic unequivocality and ambiguity are described and explained, mainly by means of the above mentioned philosophers.