#6: Ambiguity

Aoki and Woodruff discuss ambiguity in communication as a face-saving mechanism and social necessity. Specifically, they focus on how communication technologies provide a great amount of flexibility in terms of interpreting unresponsiveness. They believe that ambiguity is an important part of preserving self-image and that communication systems should incorporate it into their designs.

In face-to-face conversation, A’s actions are directly observable by B. A cannot ignore B without an acceptable reason and still expect to save face. On the other hand, unresponsiveness over mediated (i.e., technology based) communication does not have to be explained. During a telephone conversation, for example, B is not privy to all of A’s actions. As a result, B is prone to respond to unresponsiveness in the most face-saving manner possible. For example, if B is talking to A on the phone and the connection is suddenly broken, B can respond by either blaming A or the connection. Whatever B actually believes, he is likely to act as though he thinks the connection was at fault. By doing this, he saves face by avoiding direct confrontation with A and maintains harmony between them.

One example involves a conversation I had using instant messaging. A friend sent me a link that I was not particularly interested in visiting at the time. Since, as discussed above, my friend could not directly observe my actions, I was free to use a white lie and say that I was working on a project and did not have time to click the link. My friend was free to believe – or even explicitly state – that I was lying. However, to maintain social harmony, he decided to ostensibly accept my assertion. To further preserve face by convincing him that I was not ignoring him, I told him that I would look at the link when I had time.

Another time, I received a text message from my friend that I did not feel like answering. When I met him later, he confronted me; I told him that my phone was accidentally set to silent mode, and I did not realize that I had received any messages. As in the above example, my friend was prone to accept my explanation in order to preserve our harmonious social relationship.