Bloody Byewdiful Straya

It's interesting to think that we use particular language in our everyday social interactions but we never really have to think about the identity that the language we are taught are 'normal' to use.
Consider everyone in SOC250's favourite word this week: "Bloody". Wiezerbicka refers to the word as "the great Australian adjective" (Wiezerbicka 2002) but after doing the reading and comparing "bloody" to some of the more popular adjectives used by Australian's in the present day I was starting to question "bloody"'s integrity.

I thought back to a conversation I had with my Mum earlier last week. I am currently really enjoying the Channel 10 TV show production of the movie "Puberty Blues". Set in the 70s, the show is based around teenagers growing up like my parents did. Talking to Mum about the language used back then in comparison to now and really opened me eyes to how much the vernacular individuals use can give insight into their social and cultural identity. One thing that really interested me was the emphasis my mother told me was put on insults and adjectives such as "bloody". Where as today, youth in particular prefer more offensive expressions.

Personally, I don't consider "bloody" offensive, like some other generations would. It is really interesting to see the process of "gentrification" in language and how it is just another process that allows individuals to identify with social and cultural statuses through language.

Wierzbicka, A 2002, ‘Australian cultural scripts –bloody revisited’, Journal of Pragmatics, vol.34, no.1, pp1167-1209.

Ethnomethowhatnow?

Ethnomethodology - what a mouthful! Let's not kid ourselves, I'm betting that this was the reaction of most of us when we tried to pronounce this word (let alone write a blog post about it):

 

 Well I know that it was mine... Just like the word, understanding the concept of ethnomethodology can be challenging. To me, the whole concept of unconsciously making sense of everything around me is really interesting. Before this week, I had never considered how uncomfortable situations that seem to have to 'sense' attached to them are for us as individuals.

We are brought up to assign some sort of sense to every situation we encounter, or as Garfinkel puts it, to "treat social facts as interactional accomplishments" and we are able to do this by applying haeccaity (thing-ness), documentary methods of interpretation (the reinforcement of ideas, and thus 'sense', through unscripted actions) and congruency of the system of relevances (being on the same page as the person with who you're interacting) to situations and appropriate them to our lives. 

Another particularly interesting (well to me anyway) aspect of ethnomethodology is the idea of breaching experiments and strategically putting other individuals in social situations that they can't make sense of in order to view their reactions. It made me think back to all the times I have encountered people on public transport who were acting "nonsensically". I'm sure everyone has a CityRail (or Gong free shuttle bus?) weirdo story and can relate to how uncomfortable not knowing why a particular individual is doing or saying something can be. This interested me immensely and made me think back to all the uncomfortable interactive times had on public transport. 

Who knew that the guy wearing a Chicken Twisties packet as a beanie on the South Coast line had such an important part to play in ethnomethodology?

"Do a SOC250 blog" they said... "It'll be fun" they said...

Oh, I'm just joking!

Moving on, to presentation of the self!
Week five saw us discussing the topic of self presentation as how we present ourselves in keeping with the social interactions we are 'faced' with (too early to be punny? Perhaps...) and the social scenes in which these interactions are set.
We all interact in certain "appropriate" ways and do (or do not do) certain things in order to have a known common courtesy. But how do we know these unspoken rules? Through social integration with those around us, especially parents and other older formative figures, we learn from an early age what is acceptable interaction and what is not.
Throughout the reading, Goffman refers to individuals as having 'face' (refer to my earlier, ridiculously lame pun) which, basically refers to a persons social dignity. Having good face is part and parcel with complying with the unwritten laws, moralities and ethics within social interaction. Our face becomes so important to us that, according to Goffman, losing face is the equivalent to "social death".

Goffman sees our daily lives and the interactions between individuals as performances that are consistently changing over time with the changing roles undertaken in our everyday lives.
This reading really interested me and got me thinking about when I've had a severely face damaging situation happen to me and how I overcame it. What about you? How do you reincarnate after a slight social death? Are we taught how to socially recuperate after a severe face-ruining incident?

Food for though... Or face... I'm hungry so we will leave it here!
Till next week!