#6 — Ambiguity in Communication
Aoki & Woodruff argue that ambiguity is a very useful thing in communication, as it allows flexibility in "accepted explanations" for face-maintaining maneuvers. For Aoki & Woodruff, what's important in potentially awkward situations is not the truth of the participants' intentions, but what they can claim their intentions are. For example, if person A decides they no longer wish to talk to person B online, they can simply ignore B's messages and claim they were away from their desk (if they just don't want to talk to them at a particular time), or block the person permanently, and claim they've stopped using AIM or aren't online much anymore (since people on your block list cannot see if you're online). If the cause of a delayed, lapsed, or nonexistent response to communication attempts is ambiguous, that ambiguity can be used by either or both initiator and receiver to avoid an embarrassing situation.
Earlier this year, the NOC revamped it's power infrastructure, so all of CIT's servers were powered down and taken offline for a few hours while the switchover of the infrastructure was done. My boss asked me to help out by being awake to check on all the server's when they came back up to make sure all of our services and applications were okay. Unfortunately, the servers were coming back online at 7 am on a Saturday morning. Halfway through checking out our servers, I fell asleep in front of my computer, which of course would be just about when my boss called me to report one problem he had found. The call woke me up, but I took a few seconds to really regain consciousness, so I called him back and told him I missed his call because I'd been in the bathroom to avoid admitting I'd fallen asleep when I was supposed to be doing work.
I have also used the standard avoidance strategies described in Aoki & Woodruff numerous times, both with cell phones and with AIM. If somebody ims me who I do not want to talk to, I will simply ignore their message and claim absence if I run into them later, or claim being busy if I neglect to pick up the phone or call someone back.
posted by will @ 8:02 PM
1 Comments:
I think it's convenient that there are so many "avoidance strategies" out there for us to use on someone whom we do not wish to speak to at a particular time. However, it's important to note that ambiguity is not always preserved because there are ways to get around most of these strategies. For example, if you block someone on AIM because you no longer wish to speak to that person, they can get around that by making another screen name (if they do not already have one) and sign on and add your screen name to his/her buddy list. And if you are, they will know that you have blocked them, which is not very good because now they might take offense in what you did. Of course there's a way to get around that too. There's an option in AIM that, if checked, will only allow the people on your buddylist to see whether you are online or not. So, if the person you blocked made up a new screen name, that screen name won't be on your buddylist. So it doesn't matter if he/she adds you, because on his/her buddylist, you'll still appear as being offline.
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