Train Guards, More Creeps And Institutional Talk

Last year on my way home via train, a friend and I encountered a man who was creepily taking pictures of us and other women in the train carriage with his mobile phone. As we both felt quite uncomfortable with the situation we decided to pay a visit to the train guard and find out what we could do about the whole super creepy situation. Once we were let in the guard’s compartment, the guard asked us a lot of questions in regard to the man’s actions, which carriage we were in, and our own personal details, such as name, address and phone number.

My friend and I did not question the actions of the guard because we recognised that his position of authority allowed for such a pattern of talk, and that the pattern of talk was used to accomplish certain tasks (Benwell & Stokoe 2002). The guard questioning us also reflected an example of a standardised communication situation (Coulmas 1981, p2) whereby we answered in an almost automatic fashion. Essentially as an authority figure questioned us, we knew to provide them with the best answers we could.  The information collected was then able to be used to notify other Cityrail officials and security staff to attempt to resolve the very uncomfortable situation.

Reflecting on the event, when first approaching the guard’s compartment, we recognised, in a similar fashion to the way that Schegloff (1986) proposes that a mutual understanding of features of an interaction may develop, that the interaction that we may have with them could take a reasonable amount of time and that the conversation would primarily consist of my friend and I recounting our experience whilst the guard collected relevant information.

I couldn't actually find a relevant, yet funny picture or .gif, so here's some dancing Nigel Thornberrys...

Benwell, B and Stokoe, E 2002, “Constructing discussion tasks in university tutorials: shifting dynamics and identities”, Discourse Studies, vol.4, no. 4, pp429-453, accessed 11/10/2012, http://dis.sagepub.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/content/4/4/429.full.pdf+html

Coulmas, F 1981, Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, Walter de Gruyter, The Netherlands, accessed 15/10/2012,  http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8iHl-HOlhhQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Conversational+routine:+Explorations+in+standardized+communication+situations+and+prepatterned+speech&ots=sRM1WkSRiJ&sig=yG3ksOL_nTQ0KYmrMvp04yWDLac#v=onepage&q=Conversational%20routine%3A%20Explorations%20in%20standardized%20communication%20situations%20and%20prepatterned%20speech&f=false

Schegloff, E A 1986, “The routine as achievement”, Human Studies, vol.9, no.2/3, pp111-151, accessed 15/10/2012, http://ey9ff7jb6l.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=The+Routine+as+Achievement&rft.jtitle=Human+Studies&rft.au=Schegloff%2C+Emanuel+A&rft.date=1986-01-01&rft.pub=Springer&rft.issn=0163-8548&rft.volume=9&rft.issue=2/3&rft.spage=111&rft.epage=151&rft.externalDocID=10_2307_20008964

Annnd, that's all the blog posts and comments done! 

Comment #3

This week I commented on Liam's blog post entitled "Swearing, profanity, expletives and all that shit".

Follow the link below to check it out if you feel the need:

Comment #3

Now for an obligatory cat .gif!

Whinging, Stressed Friends And Difficult Exams

Living in a university college, I've come to recognise that some people can become overly stressed in regards to things like assignments and exams, and one way in which people choose to cope with this stress is not to get on and do the assignments, or study, but rather have a good, old whinge. As Daly et al. (2004, p953) describe them, whinges provide “a means of off-loading negative feelings in a safe environment, and since they typically elicit sympathy, they function to build rapport with others”.  Essentially, a good whinge can make someone feel better about themself, the situation they are in, and if vocalised in an appropriate setting, provide an opportunity for the fostering of camaraderie from similarities of thought.

On one particular occasion, a friend received a low mark in an exam that she hadn’t studied for. Instead of blaming herself, she chose to blame the exam paper instead, explaining to me that it was too difficult and poorly structured. This situation followed the notion set out by Edwards that a whinge “locates the reason for the complaint not in its object, but in the complainer” (Edwards 2005, p20). Instead of recognising that she had caused her own problem, she chose the exam as an outlet to vent her frustration. Whilst all these events unfolded, the only thing I could do was appear to agree with her views and be as sympathetic as I could, in an attempt to prevent her from losing face and experiencing embarrassment.

I really found the topic of whinging interesting. As with most topics in SOC250, it occurs so commonly but a focus is never really placed upon it. Daly et al. (2004) cover the topic of whinging well, with the examples used not only explaining the concept well, but also addressing the use of expletives in conjunction with whining.

Daly, N, Holmes, J, Newton, J and Stubbe, M 2004, “Expletives as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor”, Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 36, no.5, pp.945-964, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0378216604000396/1-s2.0-S0378216604000396-main.pdf?_tid=e6281a4e-13a0-11e2-97df-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1349959435_e9253b83f76210c13290f660ffdbc488

Edwards, D 2005, “Moaning, whinging and laughing: the subjective side of complaints”, Discourse Studies, vol.7, no.5, pp.5-29, http://dis.sagepub.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/content/7/1/5.full.pdf+html

Group Presentation Link

If you want to check out the slides from the presentation I gave with Taylor and Cassie, follow the link below:

Presentation Slides

Internet Identities And Facebook-based Assumptions

Within Robinson’s article (2007), I found the notion of constructing identities online very interesting. However, Robinson’s use of primarily gaming based examples is not particularly engaging, personally. I think a greater focus on the creation of identity on social networking sites would make the article appealing to a wider audience.

The ways in which people use language, images, and the information they choose to freely provide or deny others, to construct identity (Robinson 2007) was an aspect of life online that I had never really thought of before. The construction of identities online is yet another concept that incorporates multiple sociological theories including symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, and the presentation of self. People use documentary evidence, such as the information used to construct an identity online, to gain an understanding of others and how they intend to present themselves to particular people, groups, or the wider online community.

I experienced the use of documentary evidence recently, when I clicked on the Facebook profile of a friend of a friend. I did not know this person but everything on their profile was publicly accessible, and I decided at the time to try and get an idea of what kind of person she was with the information on hand, because I’m a massive creeper. The main thing I noticed was that photos from nights out and with skimpy outfits were very prominent. To me, it seemed as though she was attempting to position herself as a person who was fun and loved to party in both an explicit and implicit manner through the images, confirming Zhao, Grasmuck and Martin’s (2008) central ideas about identity creation through the use of certain types of information, such as images and statuses, in online settings.

When it comes to people who provide all their personal information on sites like Facebook, 

I'm with honey badger...

Robinson, L 2007, “The cyberself: the self-ing project goes online, symbolic interaction in the digital age”, New Media and Society, vol.9, no.1, pp93-110, http://nms.sagepub.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/content/9/1/93.full.pdf+html

Zhao, S, Grasmuck, S, and Martin, J 2008, “Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relations”, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol.24,  no.5, pp1816-1836, http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0747563208000204