Rejection in a Gay Chat Room

This paper examines how the practice of rejection is interactionally accomplished and understood in the context of a gay chat room used by men to search for sexual partners. Using analytical tools from conversation analysis and politeness theory, it explores the various strategies participants use to issue rejections, the points in the negotiations at which rejections typically occur, and the tactics participants use to avoid being rejected, Though a systematic account of the way in which rejections are constructed and interpreted by participants in this particular context, I explore larger issues of how chat systems can affect norms of politeness in communities that make use of them and propose a framework for understanding the factors affecting rejection in mediated communication.