Where the is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete.

Just look at the word “communication” for a moment. Its root is related to the word “common”. We speak of a community as a group of people who have something in common. Communication is an effort on the part of one person to share something with another person (or with an animal or a machine): his knowledge, his decisions, his sentiments. It suceeds only when it results in a common something, such as an item of information or knowledge that two parties share.

When there is ambiguity in the communication of knowledge, all that is in common are the words that one person speaks or writes and another hears or reads. So long as ambiguity persists, there is no meaning in common between between writer and reader. For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings —in short, to come to terms. When that happens, communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a single thought.

Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren — How to Read a Book