ABSTRACT
Indirection, diplomacy and intention frame a vast area that can be approached from a number of different directions. The approach I use here begins with the obvious point that indirection and diplomacy are means of communicating one’s intentions to others in a relatively persuasive way. Such communication requires a language, which is to say, a social product that forms the bridge between speakers and their intentions on the one hand, and on the other, listeners and their responses. If you will, my approach to languages of indirection and diplomacy stresses the general term, that they are languages, rather than the specific, that they are indirect and diplomatic. One of the things that will concern me especially is the ways that this social bridge, this language, is not socially neutral, but can be a medium through which authority and, ultimately, power are claimed and exercised. Again, if you will, while language certainly can be seen in cultural terms as a system or way of conveying meaning, my approach is relatively social, concerned with the ways that language can structure communication, and so be a device of power and constraint. Such a social approach leaves much out, but it has the virtue of taking us beyond a perspective that sees the language of indirection and diplomacy as merely an ‘ensemble of texts’ (Geertz 1973: 5, 452) or the webs of meaning on which we stand, for it helps remind us that some are better able than others to spin those webs, just as some are more likely than others to become ensnared in them.
