Bibliometric Analysis of Ambiguity Tolerance: Unearthing Its Role in Sustainable Language Education

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 post-pandemic era, ambiguity tolerance has been the subject of extensive research and scholarship. While ambiguity tolerance has long been a hot topic across multiple disciplines, scant attention has been given to its role in language education via bibliometric analysis. Two authors adopt an integrative study on ambiguity tolerance in sustainable language education to fill this void. Through a general review and visualization analysis, this study seeks to explore the various influential factors that are associated with ambiguity tolerance in language education. Author co-citation analysis (ACA) and the mapping knowledge domain (MKD) are the underlying theoretical frameworks for bibliographic visualization. VOSviewer and CitNetExplorer are two analytical software utilized to visualize bibliographic data. It is concluded that multilingualism, motivation, self-efficacy, and engagement are positively correlated with ambiguity tolerance and collectively contribute to improving language learning outcomes. Future research could further discuss ambiguity tolerance in the application of emerging technologies in the new decade.