Cultures and Language

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The differences in the ways cultures use language was what was discussed this week.

The Australian culture has a tendency to use a lot of slang and colloquial metaphors within our language. We do not pick up on this as it is the way we talk everyday but its not until we really look closely that we realize how greatly affected our language is by our culture. As a society we shorten our words constantly and say many metaphors in a way to explain what we mean (EG- blind as a bat). In our context these metaphors/ phrases are easy to understand and we know that what is being said is not what it literally means. For someone from another culture, however, this is not the case.

I have had persona experience with this confusion when my Aunty came over from Canada with her new husband. My grandfather said “she stood out like a lily on a dirt tin” – we knew that that statement meant simply that the women simply stood out in the crowd yet to my Aunties new husband he had no idea what this women had to do with lilies being on dirt tins. Once explained he understood but it is not until this explanation is given that the cultural differences can be understood.

Semiotics is always going to be something that separates cultures within language, as it is inevitable that each culture takes different meanings on words within each context it is presented.

There is one language, however, that is enabling people cross-cultures to understand regardless of the culture is coming from- online. The use of terms (ROFL, LOL, LMFAO) are all, due to the internet (and its ability to connect people from different parts of the word within a few seconds) and as a result of this has formed a globally accepted language.

Social and Moral Codes

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In relation to everyday interaction within society we must look at social and moral codes. These codes are present in every interaction we have as human beings whether we recognise it or not. These are subconscious things that we perform everyday to ensure that we do not violate the ‘unwritten’ laws of society.

These codes are all around us everyday in every situation we are ever in. From being in a tutorial or lecture to being out for lunch with friends; society has strict codes that we must follow to not diminish face. As stated in other blog posts, as a society being accepted or feeling like we belong, is apart of our natural basic human needs. Thus, the reasoning for the fear, of diminishing face and therefore abiding, by these social and moral codes.

Every society has a different ‘set’ of social and moral codes due to their context. The convict code example was used within the reading and is one that I believe explains this point quite well. The reason our society does not fully understand or are unable to relate to is because their context does not match ours.
This example can also be linked to our schooling. Within my primary school the saying “dibber-dobbers wear nappies” was chanted at any person who would state they were telling the teacher on another student. The ‘rule’ that you didn’t ‘dob’ on another student was quite strong within our year and fear of isolation was present if you did ‘dob’. In this situation there was an ‘unwritten’ law amongst the students that you didn’t not tell on other students and if you did that was diminishing face. What I am trying to establish by using these two examples is that even though they are completely different contexts and these contexts affect what is the social and moral code- these codes are present in all different walks of life at any age.

Wieder, D. Laurence. 1974. “Telling the Code.” Pp. 144-172 in Ethnomethodology, edited by

Roy Turner. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Jimerson, Jason B., and Matthew K. Oware. 2006. Telling the Code of the Street: An Ethnomethodological Ethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 35, no. 1: pp. 24-50.

Ethnomethodology

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The issues of ‘un-written social laws’ in relation to everyday interaction an interested topic that really made me assess my own everyday interaction. I found that until looking at this I never really considered the fact that as a society we do actually have social rules and regulations in relation to interaction between individuals.

An example that I thought of that gave me a relation between the reading and my own understanding of the topic was an incident that happened within the tutorial during the group presentations. Whilst one of the group members presenting was explaining and presenting her section of the information- the other member walked from the front of the room and sat back in the ‘audience’. He chose a seat directly in front of another student and continued to move seats until it was his time to present his section of the information. Even though it was later pointed out to the class that this was intentional to express what they were trying to convey about the breaking of these codes, the class were given the opportunity to express how this situation made them feel. It was unanimous that the class didn’t (at the time) understand why he would do that and thought it quite rude that he left his partner at the front of the class alone (whilst presenting) and he went and sat back down. This was simply because it is not following the ‘law’ of everyday interaction especially in relation to presentation ‘decorum’.

Garfinkel’s idea of contextualization cues is something that I really could relate to. Basically its where you are presented with a particular situation in a social environment and your brain automatically processes an appropriate response. Obviously sometimes this idea isn’t really put into practice, when people have a ‘foot-in-mouth’ moment and say something that really wasn’t appropriate for the situation. As a whole, however, this concept is really something genius and happens constantly.

Heritage, John. 1984. “The Morality of Cognition.” Pp. 75-102 in Garfinkel and

Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. 

Dramaturgy

Week 5 Reading: Goffman, E 1971, ‘Performances”, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp28-82

Actual self, performance of self, audience, frontstage and backstage were all aspects that were addressed this week when looking at Dramaturgy.

When looking at Dramaturgy I found it unable to completely understand the issues of frontstage and backstage from just the reading and lecture. After completing the tutorial though and being able to talk about these theories in greater detail with the rest of the class I was able to gain a more complete understanding. When seeing others examples of their foreground and background experiences it became a lot easier to see my own examples and attach these to further my understanding.

The group presentation split us up into groups and gave us questions to consider then report what we came up with back to the rest of the class. One of the questions that I was given was addressing presentation of self and the actual self. What we found was that before you can look at presentation of self you first have to address what is actual self. This is then contradicted with the fact that, how can you actually consider something to be ‘actual’ self. Is it defined by a common set of characteristic that we have on a variety of different performances? Do we even have an actual self because in one way or another (no matter how small) we are always performing for different audiences?

After this week I started assessing my own life. I started looking at: how I act around different groups of people; the similarities or differences that, each ‘performance’ contains and how others act around me in those different situations. Who knew everyday life was so layered?