Bloody Hell!

The first thing that came to mind when listening to the lecture of this topic was my experiences at WYD08 in Sydney. One of the things my friends and I did was eavesdrop on people’s conversations (in a non-weird way) to see where they were from to determine whether we would strike up conversation with them. It so happened that the group of people we ended up spending majority of the week with were from the US. What I noticed throughout the week was not only how blatantly Bogan I was, but there was just so many things that got lost in translation even though we both speak English. I remember my friend trying to trick other Australians into believing she was also from the US. The funny thing was, everyone was completely convinced…until she called McDonald’s Macca’s. The illusion was completely shattered because everyone automatically knew she was in fact Australian (and she still is). And everyone now saw her as a bogan, much like these foxy ladies....

To accompany this, I found an article that talks about slang and how we find that having just simply a language is not enough for us, that we somehow want to make our ways of talking even more specific to our subculture, for example, not just Australian, but Australian surfie's. Interestingly this article says that it takes a slang word about ten years to become a part of the Oxford dictionary. There are some words I am curious if they will ever make it. Reid, R. (2006). Setting the Slang. Campaigns and Elections 27(1). 10. 

I also found the concept of hedging interesting. I do it all the time and didn’t actually think there was a name for it. I find it so difficult to say a whole story without saying um…I never understood that the purpose of me doing so was just so people would know not to interrupt me. But when I think about it, I do generally assume when someone says ah….or stutters that there not actually finished talking. All these topics make me so self conscious when I speak and now I pay attention to what I say so much and I hate it!

Lastly, the reading just made the word bloody lose all meaning, I read it that many times, the word just started to sound weird. But I did find it interesting the different connotations placed upon it across different cultures. I didn't think it right to talk about the word bloody without including this gem

Group Presentation Nat, Nick and Kye

#Slidesharefail So I had to upload a print screen of my group presentatoin slides

Social and Moral Order in Talk

If you’re a girl, you’ve probably been angry at a friend if she’s ever put ‘dicks before chicks’ or if you’re a guy, if your mate put ‘hoes before bro’s’. Why is that? Is there some law that says you can’t do that? No, there isn’t, it is simply what one would refer to as either girl code or bro code. That is, whilst these ‘rules’ are not specifically written down anywhere, if they are broken, the person that broke them is going to be somewhat frowned upon. That has to do with this week’s topic, The Social and Moral Order in talk. I’m doing my group presentation on this topic, so I actually spent some time delving into in a little more depth.

In the reading, Weilman refers to the convict code and how the convicts had these unwritten rules, the most important one being ‘don’t snitch’. What I found interesting is that clearly these people had difficulty abiding by actual laws; however, they didn’t have as much of a hard time following the rules of a social code. I was always aware there were these social codes, but never really understood that there was so many different social codes that I clearly am not involved in. I found this article that talks about the technical code and how we behave on the internet. Flanagin, (2009) says that with the emergence of things like the internet, our codes become different to what they are in face to face interaction. I find this interesting because there seems to be two separate social codes for face to face and over a screen. I’m hoping this information may be consolidated with the stuff we learn in the mediated identity topic. My group and I found this video that shows someone not knowing the social code.  It’s Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory being is awkward, socially inept self. Enjoy

I also found the concept of method of interpretation quite interesting. Every time I’ve always thought “that doesn’t make sense”, I have somehow tried to twist around in my head to make it make sense. When someone has done something that seems out of the norm, I have never personally just said “that was just not normal”, I have always tried to justify what they did. I don’t know if this is going into unchartered and gross ground, but every time a female around me is snappy, I always think in my head “it must be that time of the month”, because she doesn’t normally interact like that.  And I am often met with that same response when I am a little bit snappy. Because it wouldn’t make sense for someone to JUST BE snappy, would it?

Wieder, DL 1974, 'Telling the code', in Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings, Penguin Education, Hardmondsworth, pp. 144-172

Flanagin, A., Flanagin, C., & Flanagin, J. (2009) Technical code and the social construction of the internet, New Media and Society, 12(2), 179-196. 

I made a comment this week

Ethnometh-a-what-a?

When discussing the topics at the beginning of the semester, this was the topic that looked the most daunting to me. At first glance of the word I was like WHAA!?!

Upon actually learning about it though, it doesn’t seem so confusing.  Quite surprisingly I actually found it a little bit interesting. So basically this Garfinkel guy conducted what he called breaching experiments, where he essentially broke those rules that aren’t necessarily explicit but are those that help situations make sense. Unlike someone like me, who would do something like that just for shits and giggs, he actually had a pretty valid reason for doing so. Reason being was to see how people would react to these unwritten rules being broken. Turns out majority of the people at least made some acknowledgement of it, whether it be adjusting what they themselves were doing or blatantly asking him something along the lines of “Like, what the heck are you doing bro?” This experiment was based on a game and not a real life situation and Garfinkel acknowledged that the results of this experiment don’t necessarily parallel exactly to regular human life. This is because breaking the rules in human life, could possibly lead to more consequences. Despite this, it’s still a rather interesting thing to think about.

I found this little gem that basically hates the whole ethnomethedology concept. Though I don’t agree with it, I found it interesting the points it brought up. Gordon (1976) (so yeah, a little bit outdated) basically says that the concepts underlying ethnomethedology are created based on misinterpreted information and more specifically the ‘mistaken’ reliance on phenomology. Also according to him it is based too much on subjectivity. But I think subjectivity is the case with a lot of things regarding micro sociology, because in a sense that is one of the features that make it micro. Don’t mind me casually undermining a scholar. Badass over here.

My final thoughts are that whilst ethnomethedology looks like some scary word that makes you want to throw up when thinking about writing about it, it’s actually rather simple (I think, if I understood it right) and interesting. 

Also felt the need to share the love this week with a comment at http://eyeonpeople.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/breaking-rules-of-reality.html?showComment=1346833044419#c8701815932147228822

Heritage, John. 1984. “The Morality of Cognition.” Pp. 75-102 in Garfinkel and Ethnomethedology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gordon, R. (1976). Ethnomethedology: A Radical Critique. Human Relations, 29(2), 193-202. Doi 10.1177/001872677602900208