ABSTRACT
This paper examines some of the ways in which ambiguity is used as a vehicle of indirect communication in diplomatic culture. It also looks at the importance of sometimes using indirect tactics to secure advantage or to eschew the overt meanings contained in words or gestures within diplomacy. Following some general observations and a discussion of the British Foreign Service, I shall relate the points raised to the experiences of those who marry officers within the profession. The question of spouses was the original focus of my research, and raises a set of interesting questions in itself. Diplomacy, more than many other walks of life, still tends to involve a high degree of behavioural and structural incorporation of spouses into the institutions within which their partners work. Yet, for all the effort that they often put in, spouses are of course in the main excluded from the central operations of diplomacy. Their relationship to foreign ministries and their hierarchies is obviously contingent, and this is reflected in the fact that their attitudes towards their position are often laden with ambiguity and the resort to indirect communication.
