The Continuum of Ambiguity

The continuum I have referenced above was a key part of my doctoral thesis. I’ll spare you the details, but the simplified version is below. ¹

This continuum of ambiguity builds not only upon the work of Empson (1930), but also later thinkers such as Robinson (1941) and Abbott (1997). Empson’s formulations of the seven types of ambiguity are probably the most accessible. ²

I will argue in subsequent chapters that definitions of digital literacies are plural, context-dependent and need to be co-constructed to have power. It’s important to note here that when you’re attempting to frame a definition of digital literacies the aim should not be to make it completely unambiguous. Doing so would be merely to re-arrange Rorty’s ‘dead metaphors’ in an unproductive way. Instead, it is more useful to embrace the ambiguous nature of language. Within the setting of an educational institution you could do this by charting a course through the continuum of ambiguity, beginning with Generative ambiguity and ending with Productive ambiguity. For example:

1. The senior leadership or small steering group generate a vision for the ‘digital direction’ of the institution.
2. A group of interested people (wider steering group) think about what this would mean in practice. They use the Essential Elements (see Ch.5) to map out the vision into eight different areas.
3. The wider steering group invite input from the rest of the institution (staff, students, parents, governors, anybody who’s interested!) and talk about how this would work in practice. The temptation to limit the conversation to senior and middle managers should be avoided wherever possible. You never know where innovative ideas will come from!

The result of this three-step process would be a definition of digital literacies that is productive in that particular context. Over time, the definition may become either more or less ambiguous depending on changes within the community and wider society. That’s why it’s useful to revisit strategies and definitions on a regular basis to ensure they’re still useful and productive.

¹. At the time of writing, I’m working on a potentially better ‘volcano’ metaphor. See http://dougbelshaw.com/wiki/Ambiguity for more on this as I develop the idea. ↩

². For a deeper dive into the types of ambiguity discussed by these three thinkers, have a look at Chapter 5 of my doctoral thesis at http://neverendingthesis.com. ↩