ONLINE INTERACTION BETWEEN OMANI MEN AND WOMEN

Indirect Message -Less Face Threatening Than a Direct Message in Online Interaction between Omani Men and Women

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

Face threatening acts3

Indirectness3

Aims and objectives4

Research questions4

LITERATURE REVIEW5

METHODOLOGY6

Online Chat Entry8

Observer's Paradox8

REFERENCES10

APPENDICES12

INTRODUCTION

English enjoys the status of second language in Oman and is also a preferred lingua franca like the rest of the world.

The Arabic society is quite different from the European or Asian society. The society is conservative in nature and English is considered as a second language, after Arabic (Nitko 2003 12). Online chatting is however quite popular and have become a common form of communication today. They are being used as a convenient method for online social interactions.

Face threatening acts

Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory distinguishes two types of face threats. A negative face threat is made when the sender of a message violates the freedom of action of the receiver (Brown & Levinson, 1987), From level of face threat via reactance to perceived persuasiveness. A face threatening act in a message can easily lead to rejection of the message or even reactance. Reactance is a term introduced by Brehm (1966) which in short means 'doing exactly the opposite from that which was suggested'.

Indirectness

One of the possibilities to reduce the level of perceived face threat is that instead of expressing one's opinion directly - or baldy on record as Brown and Levinson call it - one can put the same message in indirect terms (go off record). Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that the off record message is less face threatening because the receiver is given the possibility to believe the message The downside is that such an indirect, off record message will usually be less persuasive than a direct one (Steehouder, 2005).

Aims and objectives

To analyse the application of politeness theory specifically face threats in online interaction between Omani men and women

Research questions

The study aims to answer the following research questions:

Is indirect message in online interaction between men and women in Oman less face threatening than a direct message?

LITERATURE REVIEW

English is popular and the preferred medium of communication not only in the English-speaking countries but the rest of the world as well. (Crystal, 2003).

Our theoretical framework states that both role sets and indirectness will influence the perceived face threat. The perceived face threat is believed to have a positive effect on the mediating variable reactance towards the message. Reactance towards the message is believed to increase when an individual has a higher inclination to reactance. A high level of reactance towards the message is believed to have a negative influence on the perceived persuasiveness of the message. (Mosteller 200 432)

METHODOLOGY

The research will be a qualitative grounded ethnographically-informed discourse study.

The research sources will include a pre-survey questionnaire, e-mails, e-journals and e-interviews. In faze one, the participants' personal background information will be gathered. They will also have a web-based informed-consent form, pre-survey questionnaire and a Discourse-Completion Test (it was called the situated scenario in the research ...