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 :)

Dramaturgy

This week’s topic is Dramaturgy, which happens to be the topic my group will be presenting on during this weeks tutorial. I did at first dread the idea of attempting to read the 50 page Goffman reading, but the further I read the more interested I became! Dramaturgy was a term I had never come across before, but through Goffman’s reading and Andy’s lecture I realised how much of our world is revolved around dramaturgy. The concept of social life being a drama and game explains that every interaction is a performance and that life is a massive stage.

Both Andy and Goffman mention that the deliverer of the interaction bases its response on how they expect the audience to receive and understand the performance. This suggests that the performer of every interaction considers what is the ‘norm’ ways of communicating and therefore individuals perform in a way to leave a good impression. Thinking about my own interactions with people, I definitely alter the way I speak to fit certain situations in order to leave a lasting good impression. Throughout an interaction I find myself alternating from what Goffman calls “backstage” to “frontstage”, where in backstage I prepare myself for the delivery of my performance onto the frontstage. Every time an interaction begins to drift into a different direction, I can recall myself going backstage in order to regroup my thoughts so that I can perform and keep face frontstage.

Goffman also mentions two types of performances, “cynical” and “sincere”. A "cynical" performer is one who does not believe in their delivery but performs the way they do in order to save face and conform to the ideal ways of society. A "sincere" performer is one who truly believes in the actions that they are performing. An example to explain this that I came up with for our presentation was The Truman Show. The actors within the tv show were all cynical performers, whereas Truman himself (who was oblivious to his life being an actual drama) was a sincere performer.

Overall, I found Dramaturgy an interesting topic to cover and found it a great topic to do our group presentation on. Also, here is the link to the powerpoint slides that Zac, Lee and myself prepared for our presentation:

SOC250: Dramaturgy; Zac, Lee & Julia

Presentation of Self

As we all should know this week we’re talking about the presentation of self. We dabbled into the topic through the two readings by Goffman as well as Andy’s lecture. From what I gathered was that the presentation of self involved various ways we portray ourselves depending on the type of social interaction. I found that Goffman’s “The nature of Deference and Demeanor” seemed to ramble on, which made it difficult to actually understand the point to his theory. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that Deference relates to the unwritten laws within society which influences our behaviour towards superiors while Demeanor allows the individual to present themselves in a way they want to be perceived.

What I found interesting was the idea of how the rules of society were created. The way in which the world’s population has somehow developed these procedures through observation and behaviours is mind boggling. Also, how these rules of conduct seem to just come to us naturally without needing to think about it, which in the end dictates how we want to present ourselves within society.

Facework was also an aspect of Goffman’s theory that grabbed my attention. Andy’s attempt at explaining “losing face” and “saving face” really opened my eyes to how cautious we are about keeping our dignity intact when interacting with other people. The first thing that came to mind when thinking of facework is an example from one of the greatest movies of all time…MEAN GIRLS! When Cady wants to join the Mathletes, her overly flamboyant friend Damian attempts to save Cady’s face by blurting out “you can’t join Mathletes, that’s social suicide!” I think it’s funny that not only do we feel the need to save our own faces but the faces of our friends as well, in order for their embarrassing moment not to reflect upon how we want to present ourselves. So in other words, Goffman has kind of made me realise how conceited we can be sometimes!

Anyway, to wrap this up I thought I would leave you with an insight into Gretchen Wieners’  code of conduct. 

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