Assignment #6 - Option 1

Due to the passive effects of mediation, ambiguities in non-FtF conversation naturally exist. Aoki and Woodruff argue that people today deliberately use these properties for their own purposes, creating active effects of mediation. This is just one of the "measures people take to preserve face for themselves and for others", which is one of the critical components of social interaction.

In my experience, I think even children are able to understand this concept in order to exploit the medium of the telephone for their own purposes. When I was in fifth grade, a boy in my class would call my house often. When I did not wish to speak to him, I would hang up the phone after my mother handed the phone to me. He would call back and ask what had happened, and I would tell him that I did not know. For older people, this action would be suspicious, but he did not question my intent at the time.

Nowadays, I think the ambiguity of a medium like the cell phone is so well understood that we automatically assume others will use this ambiguity for their own active effects. This can be illustrated in the following interaction between my friend and me:

Friend: [talks loudly on his cell phone while others around him are studying quietly]
Me: [playfully grabs his cell phone and hangs up]
Friend: "Hey! I was on the phone! [laughs] That's ok, I'll just tell him it got cut off."

In this instance, I assumed that my friend would not be offended if I hung up his cell phone, because I knew he would use the ambiguity of this medium to pretend that bad reception caused his call to stop abruptly. If I had known that it would appear as if my friend had hung up on his friend intentionally, then I would not have taken his phone.
However, since calls often end in this way because of bad reception, I knew his friend would accept this excuse.