Exploiting Ambiguity

Although we typically aim at disambiguating between the possible meanings or contents of our expressions, we are often quite happy with ambiguities: we tolerate them and even exploit them for various purposes. This paper explores the often overlooked phenomenon of ambiguity exploitation in communication, and the plural semantic intentions it involves. We argue that the phenomenon calls for a semantic explanation, and we motivate a multipropositionalist view of ambiguity exploitation that provides a natural description of the phenomena we present.