Mastering the “Term of Art”: Linguistic Avoidance in David Mamet’s Oleanna

Many critics have read David Mamet’s (1993) Oleanna as a locale for issues of gender, misogyny, and sexual harassment. Another group, however, believe that it is the potentials of language and its manipulation which are central to the play, which need to be delved into. In line with the latter view, the present article assumes that the interactions of both John and Carol in this two-character play exemplify an interview in which they constantly attempt to preserve their faces through adopting a number of linguistic avoidance strategies. Therefore, by drawing upon linguistic avoidance frameworks suggested by Janney (1999) and Anchimbe (2009), the present article links up linguistic avoidance to Spencer-Oatey’s (2000) notion of rapport management and shows to what extent John and Carol adopt these strategies to attend to their personal and professional face needs at the cost of further alienation and frustration. The findings of this paper are also an affirmation of Žegarac and Spencer-Oatey (2013) who argue that participants’ self-oriented perspective due to face concerns may cause difficulties within joint projects, which is a barricade to spirit of cooperation and reciprocity.