This thesis will talk about ambiguity by classifying it into sound ambiguity and meaning ambiguity. In the first part, the author will discuss the theories in ambiguity namely the Q-and R-principle and IC-analysis which are the most basic and important in the analysis of ambiguity. In the following part, the author will analyze the sound ambiguity and meaning ambiguity in detail. Polysemy and homonymy are the main causes of sound ambiguity. Culture and context are the main causes of meaning ambiguity. And in the last part the author will discuss the advantage and disadvantage of ambiguity. Ambiguity can be seen as a sword that has two blades. The positive side should be studied to make the language becomes more interesting and vivid. The negative side should be avoided to make the writing or speech more accurate.

This paper describes some basic concepts in contrastive linguistics, and discusses its function in language teaching. And it compares the English proverbs containing the animal word horse with the equivalent Chinese proverbs. It aims to find the correspondence of the animal word horse in English and Chinese languages and illustrate the cultural phenomenon behind the translation. This paper finds out that the correspondence is very important and can help to understand the languages and the cultures and contribute to the teaching of language. Relevant study should be based on the cooperation and effort of both linguistics and teachers.