One of my favorite articles is something called "TheMyth of the Rule of Law" by John Hasnas. In it he discusses the idea that "there is no such thing as a normatively neutral interpretation [of law]".
I think this can also be readily applied to language in general. I think ambiguity in written and spoken language is a direct result of our ability to think in abstract terms. The more "ideas", "things" and/or "abstractions" there are, the more words there are and the more difficult communication tends to become.
Now, I can't help but thinking about that movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and the bushmen of the Kalahari.
They never saw an "airplane", so it was just a big, loud bird. Never saw an "automobile", so it was just an animal one could sit in, which had round legs. Never saw a "white" man, so they were perceived as "Gods" and oddly enough, because the white man's language lacked the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the "clicking sound" of the language of the bushmen, the Gods "couldn't speak."
And when the little bushman was jailed for killing a goat in order to stay alive in his quest to throw the "evil thing" (the coke bottle) off the edge of the earth ... "He never seen a wall in his life. He gonna die, for sure."
Having never seen a wall, it's likely the bushmen don't have a word for "wall" in their language either.
I also vaguely remember a quote, allegedly credited to Confucious that went something like, "The single greatest solution to the world's problems would be if every word had a specific meaning."
Fortunately, we usually don't have these problems with mathematics. Its symbolism and syntax is clearly defined, as is the language of symbolic logic. A nice melding of these two might make for a highly definitive form of communication of even th most abstract thoughts and ideas, but I don't know for sure.
I'm not even sure if my response helped or addressed anything you were looking for, but one thing I do know is that if anyone is going to be successful in a conversation or debate one must define his terms. Stef is pretty good about doing that himself and he's also really good when talking to others in getting them to define their terms in podcasts & convos when he says things like, "Okay, I get that, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by [X], can you elaborate or ..."
“If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.”
How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the
disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega
of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in
serious discourse shall be subjected to the strictest scrutiny and
definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once
done it is half of any task. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (Chapter 2, Aristotle and Greek Science, Part 3, The Foundation of Logic). -- Darrell Anderson, SimpleLiberty.org
Hope this helps ...
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.