Assignment #6

A relationship between individuals extends beyond intermittent exchanges and extends to the mental representations which they keep of each other. Preserving face is a practice that entails purposeful manipulation of what another sees in order to alter the composited makeup of a representational model of oneself as held by another. Different actions may or may not be consciously acknowledged; the use of euphemism in one circumstance but not in another is probably an example of a face-preserving practice that is not fully conscious.

Ambiguity is important in exchanges because it provides a basis for plausible mistruths about one's behavior. These can be used to obfuscate motivations and the "actual" meaning of actions when to explain in full detail would be detrimental to the relationship. There is an implicit element of trust involved: to say, "I did not return your call because I was busy," asks that the one being spoken to trust that whatever the speaker was busy with was, indeed, important. There is an appreciable difference between, "My cell phone battery died" and, "I had a hangover and didn't want to hear your nasal voice." Using the former explanation in place of the latter as an excuse as to why someone couldn't get through to you one morning ostensibly places the onus on equipment failure. While it is still the user's responsibility to keep a cell phone's battery charged, the focus of fault is shifted onto the phone, and there is maintained an element of ambiguity such that it is conceivable that it was through happenstance or circumstances beyond reasonable expectation that the call did not go through.

I have utilized situational ambiguity to avoid contact with someone recently by leaving up an away message in my AIM client that claimed I was doing laundry. At the outset, I was, but I left it up while playing a game with my brother in order to keep from having to speak with some people who would otherwise be able to demand my attention and whom I could not brush off with the excuse that I was playing a game. By leaving up an away message that I had set some thirty minutes before while performing a mundane chore, someone trying to contact me would not be able to determine if I was still engaged in the chore, away from the computer for an otherwise legitimate reason, purposely leaving the message up to avoid communicating, or simply not engaged in chatting and leaving the message up because I hadn't checked to take it down yet.

It is also possible to utilize ambiguity with regards to the technical status of a communication channel to avoid communication. I have claimed difficulty in understanding someone through interference on my end in a cell phone conversation in order to force a finish to a call that I didn't want to spend my time on.