Cultural Identity in Talk

So, who else found this week’s reading bloody repetitive with the bloody word bloody!? Hopefully what you all understood from the Wiezerbicka reading is how OUR ways of everyday interactions may not transcend the same meaning in other parts of the world. Words, phrases and slang in general that may seem so natural for us to say may be misinterpreted within different cultures. An experience that pops into my mind when thinking of cultural identity in talk was when I went on a Contiki trip to the United States. As we were sitting on the bus anxious to leave for our first day of sightseeing our tour manager got all serious and began listing things that we SHOULDN’T say because American’s just aren’t as awesome as us Australians and probably wouldn’t get it. This list included things like Maccas, aircon, “you ‘right?” and vodka lemonade. Apparently, if you asked a bartender for vodka lemonade they would actually give you vodka….and freshly squeezed lemonade. Not saying Maccas when asking for directions to it, would probably have to be the hardest thing not to say throughout the entire trip. I also never knew that “you ‘right” was so Australian. It’s such an automatic phrase I go too when I want to ask if somebody’s physically/emotionally okay. The bogan accent that’s put on while saying it probably makes the problem of not understanding worse!

What I found interesting about an article written by Thomas Pack (2006) was how slang words came about and how different groups created these words and phrases making them relevant to their culture. Just like my experience in America, slang words and phrases could have no meaning whatsoever to a different culture or they could also be considered offensive in a different country. Also words which have double meanings (heteroglossia, I think is the correct term), for example the “rubber” means “condom” in Canada according to awesomely Canadian tutor Katie! So if you have any interest in checking out different slang words, definitely check out the article that also links you to different sites such as urbandictionary.com.

 Comment for this week!

Reference:

Pack, T. (2006). LinkUp@Home. Information Today, 23(5), 41. 

Social and Moral Order in Talk

Let me start off by telling you a story that happened to me the other day. On my way to uni I got on the usual train and carriage that I usually do. It happened to be one of those days where there were no seats that were completely available, some had bags on the seat, people were stretched out lying across seats and of course the one seat that has a spare spot but the guy on it looks heaps shady so you try and avoid it. Anyway, I decided to politely ask a lady if she could move her papers off a seat so I could turn it (avoiding sitting directly across from her) so my friend and I could sit down. She hesitantly moved her papers, whilst giving me a vicious look and then the most unexpected thing happens. I hadn’t even finished turning the seat when a lady barged into me out of nowhere sarcastically saying “thank you” and steals our seat!!! In shock, I just stood there thinking “WHAT THE HECK!?”, but in order to not make a scene I didn’t directly say anything to her.

Apart from me wanting to vent, why did I bother telling you this story? Well, it reminded me of this week’s topic of Social and Moral Order in Talk. I found it to be very similar to the previous topic of ethnomethodology, but somewhat a little more interesting through Weilman and his perspective on codes. Codes are the unwritten laws that seem just as important as federal laws, just that you can’t physically get thrown in jail if you break them. Referring back to my little scenario, I was quite dumbfounded by how the lady behaved in order to get the last remaining seat. Like, who does that?! Does she not know that it’s NOT NORMAL to push strangers out of the way when they were CLEARLY about to sit down. Especially making that sarcastic comment! I tried to stick to the social and moral order in talk by not telling her off right there and then, but it took a lot of restraining! Also, the lady who had her papers spread out obeyed the social codes by not arguing with me, when she clearly didn't want to move her stuff, but giving me that dirty look was a code where I could clearly get the message to what she was thinking.

A paper that I found interesting by Leeson & Coyne (2012), talks about how these social codes reflects the behaviours of society today and that yes, they are alterable, but it is highly recommended to not even go there! *nudge - lady who barged into me - nudge* Leeson & Coyne (2012) also talks about the various interpretations that society may have on these social codes, which Weilman also refers to. I am still in the process of interpreting what that lady was thinking when she thought it was okay ruin someone’s morning!

Here's a funny picture I found of the Social Codes of Men using the bathroom :)

My Comment for this Week!!!

Leeson, P. T., & Coyne, C. J. (2012). Wisdom, Altherability & Social Rules, Managerial & Decisional Economics, 33(5), 441-451.

Data Discussion

This is the data that I will use for my data discussion this week. Let me know what you think of it. Enjoy :)

Lil Mama Radio Interview Gone Bad

Ethnomethodology

So the title of this weeks topic is “ethnomethodology”, a mouthful of a word that I have to constantly say in a caveman voice to fully get it out. This topic ended up being more interesting than the name suggests through the work of Grafinkel. It’s a topic of discussion that explores the meanings of the ‘rules’ of everyday interaction. Grafinkel does this so by producing an experiment that meddles with these rules of conduct and records how this disrupts the interaction presented.

As I was reading I was thinking about situations I’ve been in where rules of interaction have been meddled with and how I felt during those situations….one word…AWKWARD!  For example, there have been times where I’m on a bus and then suddenly some I know gets on, but I don’t know well enough to hold a conversation with, I always try and smile at them anyway out of respect. When they don’t reciprocate the smile is when I feel awkward and I begin to wonder if they didn’t recognise me or if they were just being plain rude. Then I proceed by putting in my headphones and looking like I’m texting someone. I’m sure all of you have been in situations like this where someone doesn’t reciprocate your friendly gesture and you automatically think they’ve “changed” in a negatively way since you last saw them.

The example above is what Grafinkel was determined to investigate. He wanted to discover how people reacted to the disruption of the unwritten rules of society. In the reading “contextualization cues” are brought up. What this basically talks about are hints on how someone should act depending on the interaction. So Grafinkel’s experiment pretty much attempted to mess up this idea of “contextualization cues”, by disrupting the rules of interaction that we usually take for granted.

In the end I found ethnomethodology to be a lot more interesting and simple to understand, once you get past learning how to say the actual word! While you’re here you should check out a comment I made on a great post about this weeks topic. I found her example to be quite relevant and interesting on the unwritten rules of interaction

Ethnomethodology Comment

I thought I would leave you with a gif of an interaction that doesn't usually happen with a police officer, enjoy :)