Assignment 3: Is being ambiguous considered lying?

For assignment three, I chose option number two seeing as how I had some difficulty finding PG rated chat rooms for the second assignment. When doing this assignment, however, I wanted to select a lean channel and a rich channel so that I could determine how each media affected my self-presentational tactics. After going back and looking at the media I chose, I found myself following O’Sullivan’s model,

The first media I chose was face to face. One of my best friends asked me if I wanted to live with her and nine other girls next year in a house in collegetown because they were already looking for a house. Seeing as how I was in the process of making plans to live with a few other girls from my sorority, I was not sure what to say to her. I decided that face to face communication was the best way to go about saying no to living with her. It allowed for “more effective ‘damage control’” (O’Sullivan 408) and gave her the respect she deserved as one of my closest friends (a positive locus). In relation to the privacy boundary management theory, I was not seeking to control my privacy boundary, worrying about what information to disclose, or concerning myself over my self-presentation (as long as I remained positive) in this situation because she already knows my personality and almost everything else about me.

The second media I chose was a much leaner model. I needed to inform my sorority that I will not be able to attend one of the mandatory events next weekend so, although it was a little early to do so, I emailed the appropriate member about my upcoming absence and the reason I will not be able to attend. I did not give her all the details of why I would be absent because it is not one of the reasons we are allowed to miss the event; therefore, I was trying to be as equivocal as possible. As long as I presented a decent excuse, enough information, and appeared confident about the situation, then she wouldn’t ask me any questions and would just accept that I would not be there next weekend. This was highly efficient and an attempt to appear unambiguous by picking this media channel.

By maintaining a level of ambiguity in the email to my sorority, I protected my own self-presentation. It was more beneficial to me to use this mode of communication as opposed to face to face. However, when I was responding to my friend about next year’s living situation, it was more beneficial to use face to face communication to support both of our self-presentations.