Since any show of involvement is a threat to independence, and any show of independence is a threat to involvement, indirectness is the life raft of communication, a way to float on top of a situation instead of plunging in with nose pinched and coming up blinking.

The payoffs of indirectness in rapport and self-defense correspond to the two basic dynamics that motivate communication: the coexisting and conflicting human needs for involvement and independence.

Many researchers have focused on the defensive or power benefit of indirectness and ignored the payoff in rapport or solidarity. The rapport benefit of indirectness results from the pleasant experience of getting one's way not because one demanded it (power) but because the other person wanted the same thing (solidarity). Defensiveness refers to a speaker's preference not to go on record with an idea in order to be able to disclaim, rescind, or modify it if it does not meet with a positive response.

Deborah Tannen Lakoff identifies two benefits of indirectness: defensiveness and rapport.

Women appear to internalize male constructions of their performances and describe their communication strategies in business settings as 'unclear,' and 'vague' and say that they 'don't get to the point' (Peck 2005b). For instance, a female manager in banking who modalizes and uses inclusiveness strategies, beginning a proposal with 'I think maybe we should consider.' is challenged by a man saying 'Do you know or don't you?' Another woman commences her recommendation in an academic meeting with 'Perhaps it would be a good idea if we thought about doing.' and is interrupted by a man who says 'Can you get to the point? Is it possible for you to do that?' (Peck, 2005b). These features, however, are routinely denigrated in many workplace and business settings. Indirectness strategies are common in all-female talk when the talk encodes meanings of collaboration and cooperation.

Directness involves egocentric pronouns ('I,' 'me'), and absence of modalizers.

Some linguistic forms that encode inclusiveness and collaboration are inclusive pronouns ('we,' 'us,' let's,' 'shall we'), modal verbs ('could,' 'might,' 'may'), and modalizers ('perhaps,' 'maybe'). Indirectness strategies encode collaboration and their use encourages others' voices into the discourse. Men tend to use more features associated with directness, which inhibits contributions from other speakers. Gender Issues: Directness and Indirectness in the Workplaceĭirectness and indirectness are encoded by linguistic features and enact competitive and cooperative meanings respectively. A speaker can use the very same sentence to convey quite different messages depending on the context. In the latter circumstance, the hearer (the police officer) would certainly not take the speaker's words as a request to fix the tire. In contrast, if a police officer asks why a motorist's car is illegally parked, a simple report of a flat tire would be a contextually appropriate response. In the above case, it would be contextually inappropriate to be only reporting a flat tire at a gas station. How does a hearer know if a speaker is speaking indirectly as well as directly? he answer is contextual appropriateness.

For example, it would be quite natural to say My car has a flat tire to a gas station attendant, with the intention that he repair the tire: in this case we are requesting the hearer to do something. Adrian Akmaijan We sometimes speak indirectly that is, we sometimes intend to perform one communicative act by means of performing another communicative act.

First suggestion problem indirection