Unpacking the Ambiguities in Republic Act No. 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 of the Philippines

This paper analyzes and focuses on disambiguating the ambiguities in Republic Act (R.A.) 11479, An Act to Prevent, Prohibit, and Penalize Terrorism, thereby Repealing Republic Act No. 9372. Ambiguities in legal texts arise due to technical jargon, complex sentence structures, and a lack of specificity in the application and scope of the law, especially when the language is open to multiple interpretations. This study unravels the ambiguities in various categories, primarily lexical, referential, syntactic, cross-textual, and pragmatic ambiguity, as found in R.A. 11479. The research employed a qualitative design, utilizing forensic discourse analysis, and analyzed the data using the Types of Ambiguities framework by Bernardo and Albaña-Garrido (2023). The findings revealed five ambiguities in the legal text, and the interaction of these ambiguities leads to the conclusion that the language employed in this legal document may be misunderstood, giving rise to conflicting interpretations.