Cracking the code of my friends

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon between two of my friends, let’s call them Julie Hamdy and Natalia Lombit, that can help me explain this week’s topic. They have this kind of unspoken connection with each other, where they both appear to know what the other is thinking. For instance, I will be chatting to them on the train home from uni, and one of them will start to make a funny comment. But before she finishes, the other starts laughing hysterically at the joke she has yet to finish. They both have a good laugh at the joke that is obviously hilarious to them, while I am left in the dark as to what the punch line is.

The only way I can explain this phenomenon is through social and moral order in talk. Since Julie and Natalia have spent so much time together since first year, they have started to become the one mindset. It helps that they have very similar interests and have the same general thought process. But it gets to the point where they assume that every around them knows exactly what they are talking about, when really we don’t have a clue. They have their own separate ‘code’ that nobody else seems to understand. I have spent a reasonable amount of time with them in the last year, but I am still only just beginning to crack the code.

This is a prime example of the social and moral order in talk, which as far as I can tell, is mostly about telling the code. It seems to be very similar to ethnomethodology though, to the point where I have trouble distinguishing the two. It is possible that the social and moral order in talk is just a subset of ethnomethodolgy, rather than them being two completely separate topics. Maybe someone can enlighten me (*hint, hint*).

Endometho-ethnomentho-ethnomethodethdeth-whatever!

         

Anyway, Garfinkel is the genius behind this breathtaking concept. Since I know you’re probably dying to know what it means, I’ll spell it out for you. Garfinkel believed that all social interaction is held together by certain ‘rules’. These rules act as a script to how we are allowed react in particular situations. The reading, which thoroughly unpacks the whole social exchange blow-by-blow, calls these rules “contextualization cues”. In other words, in every social encounter we are presented with, our mind automatically deciphers it and spits out an appropriate response.

An example of this is the idea of politeness. It is a general rule that we are polite to those around us. I found an interesting article on the need for politeness in society, and how it makes up the scaffolding for our whole culture (Brunet et al. 2010). Without manners, social settings would be absolute mayhem. Here’s a link to this scholarly reference, but I’ll reference it at the bottom just in case:

Politeness and Social Signals

Even though everyone knows these rules, there isn’t an actual rulebook that we can follow. But here’s a video to help illustrate some of these unspoken rules and attempt to put a couple on rules record:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrFs-dCXXk8&feature=related

Now Garfinkel was especially interested in situations when these rules are broken or violated. He conducted “breaching experiments” to find out how people react when others don’t follow the rules.

A classic example of this is when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs (which is what I based my data discussion presentation on). Kanye obviously was not following the rules, and the response went from utter shock to complete outrage, demonstrating that the general population don’t like it when you break the rules.

Brunet, P, Cowie, R, Donnan, H & Douglas-Cowie, E 2010, ‘Politeness and social signals’, Cognitive Processing.