THE AMBIGUITY OF “AH, SOLDIER!”

THE AMBIGUITY OF “AH, SOLDIER!” William Empson in SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY says that “The fundamental situation, whether it deserves to be called ambiguous or not, is that a word or a grammatical structure is effective in several ways at once.” The phrase “Ah, Soldier!” presents a special case of ambiguity because it is relatively unconfined by the specific meaning of a word or words or by a grammatical structure. A sigh introduces multiple meanings, implicating all that has gone before.