I think we could all agree
that the internet has changed the way we communicate pretty dramatically
compared to 50 years ago. I mean you
have to agree, you’re on a blog!
According to Richard
Miller, the internet has brought on “the greatest change in human communication
in human history” (2010, p. 143), which has some pretty huge implications for
the way we interact with each other and understand the world. One big thing the internet has changed is
that we can interact with others away from the identity ascribed to us in “real
life”. I have generally thought of this
as a good thing, for example a recently read an article where a young deaf
woman described that that social media was a gateway to interacting with people
without prejudice (Hollier 2012).
As it turns out
though, there are issues linked with online anonymity. I particularly like the
explanation by Randy Foster, managing editor of the New Bern
Sun Journal, that “[anonymous] online commenting is the literary
equivalent to road rage” (Kabay 2011).
It does make sense, when people are protected by not having to link
their actions to their real life identity; they have a lot more confidence, and
are often quite mean.
Long-established research in social
psychology pointed out that anonymity increases anti-social behaviour. In a 2008 experiment in Japan, 70 undergraduate
students were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions (Anonymous,
Nonidentifiable, Nonaccountable, and Nonanonymous) to examine whether they
would violate game rules to obtain the monetary reward through anonymity. Only
participants in the Anonymous condition violated the rules to obtain the reward"
(Kaybay 2011).
In light of recent nasty comments on
Twitter people are more upset about the online issue (Jones & Byrnes 2012). Some newspaper websites have taken to not
allowing anonymous comments on their posts (Rosenberry 2011, p. 6). I completely get where these people are
coming from, no-one likes trolls, BUT the internet is a separate place to real
life and it allows us to be anyone. I
like the freedom of it, but as the internet is increasingly becoming an
integral part of real life it is inevitable it will have to change. We can’t have trolls roaming the streets, but
if we shoo them offline, where will they go next?
Language is a
hugely important part of forming identity. As linguist Anna Wierzbicka states,
“the way we speak reflects the way we think” (2002, p. 1167). I remember when I
started learning German I started to feel a real affiliation with that culture
and when I was living in Canada I would either emphasise my Australian accent
to assert my identity or would pick up Canadian slang like "eh?' (which
they really do say) to fit in with my new friends (convergence and divergence
bells ringing anyone?)
After doing
some research I confirmed something I already knew. I speak Standard
Australian English, which is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast
majority of speakers in Australia. It is a salient marker of national identity,
and is used in broadcasting and in public life. In addition to that Wierzbicka argues that we
use the adjective “bloody” a lot. The
Aboriginal and Ethnocultural varieties are minority dialects allowing speakers
to express their cultural identity within the multicultural Australian context
(Cox & Palethorpe 2007). I would agree
that it is a bit of a quirk of standard Australian English to chuck bloody in a
conversation to show you’re not stuck up, because everyone knows Australians do
not like tall poppies (Peeters 2004).
The importance of language as a link
to and even form of identity can be more obvious when you don’t have it. In a speech about the importance of Kiah
Perry explains that his native language is almost lost and is fighting to save
it because language is a part of culture and knowledge as a means of empowering
people (Perry 2012, p. 60). He argues it contributes to the well-being of
Aboriginal communities, strengthens ties between Elders and young people and
gives a sense of identity (Perry 2010, p. 62).
The Department of Aboriginal affairs recognises that “to Aboriginal
people, language is much more than just words. It is a direct link to land and
country. It holds traditional songs and stories. It is about spirituality and
deep meaning, and it reflects unique cultural concepts and ways of looking at
the world” (Department of Aboriginal Affairs 2004, p. 1).
Language is such an important part of
identity it would be very painful to lose.
It doesn’t just need to be a national language either (I once heard a
great quite that said a language is just a dialect with an army), as regional
dialects, accents or even argot can be valued markers of identity.
Peeters, B 2004, ‘‘‘Thou shalt not be
a tall poppy’’: Describing an Australian communicative (and behavioral) norm’, Intercultural Pragmatics, vol. 1, no. 1,
pp71–92, accessed 27/08/2012, doi: 1612-295X/04/0001–0071
I commented on Ashleigh Morton's post Idenity Talk. I'm just posting it here as well in case something terrible happens on this big scary internet.
"I think this topic of codes, semantics and pragmatics is really
interesting and I like how your post explores it through a few different
areas. It’s so true that our language is overpopulated with the
intentions of others and not hard to see why miscommunications can occur
in conversations. Everyone brings their own codes to an interaction,
so it’s clear to see why communication across any kind of culture (even
subcultures like people in jail or who like a certain type of music) can
be very tricky! I found your post really helpful in relating this idea
of telling to code to a gender-based situation, which is something that
always interests me. I have always thought Judith Butler’s ideas about
gender as performative have been disturbingly true. I’m only disturbed
because there are so many gender-based issues now and throughout history
and if it’s all based on talk it’s kind of upsetting! The whole idea
that the way we act in any persona we adopt (even for an evening) is
informed by the code of the activity and expectations of others. You
say that it seems strange that people don’t notice that they’re
constantly engaged in this image maintenance, but what happens if we do
notice? How would we even deal with that?"
Last Wednesday Ben, Danni and I gave a presentation dressed as a ninja, clown and pirate to explain what is going on with Garinkel, ethnomethodology and breach experiments. Here it is:
The way
we interpret the world around us is a pretty interesting topic. Our good
friend Garfinkel states that we have a documentary method of interpretation,
which “consists of treating an actual appearance as ‘the document of’, as
‘pointing to’, as ‘standing on behalf of’ a presupposed underlying pattern. Not
only is the underlying pattern derived from its individual documentary
evidences, but the individual documentary evidences, in their turn, are
interpreted on the basis of what is known about the underlying pattern. Each is
used to elaborate the other” (2002, p. 78).
This was
a little bit difficult to wrap your head around, so I went trawling through
some blogs to see who could explain it.I found that Mitch SOC250’s blogpost The Social and MoralOrder in Talk used a helpful analogy to explain this concept.He says that the people we know can be
thought of as draws in the filing cabinet that is the brain. When we think
about a person e know, that draw is opened and we view the file associated with
that person. These files might be memories,
ideas or labels we connect with this person and are based on our experiences
with them.
I think
that is easy enough to understand.We
build up a repository of information about people (or things) we know, but it
is the next part of the analogy that gets interesting.
The
documenting system works in a cyclic fashion, yes that’s right.We develop an image of who people are, and so
this image dictates how we perceive that person.For example if we think that someone is an intelligent
person, if we see them silent when faced with a question we might assume they
are pondering an eloquent answer or giving silence as a clever response rather
than not knowing the answer.We try to
fit things into to our understanding of the world rather than change it. So
essentially individual evidences are interpreted on the basis of what is
already known about the underlying pattern (Heritage 1984, p. 86).
To
illustrate this I thought it would be fun to fill this post with as many
duck-rabbits as I could find.If what is
known about the following images is that they are ducks, then all information
that does not support their duckness is treated as irrelevant.Now watch what happens when you think they’re rabbits…
Garfinkel's breaching experiments are pretty famous in the sociology world, but what exactly are these “breaching experiments”? Essentially, Harold Garfinkel was a pretty cool sociologist guy who developed endomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology. Garfinkel was interested in how
social structures are ordinarily and routinely maintained, which most sociologists would
examine by selecting some set of stable features of an organisation of activities and look
for variables that contribute to their stability. Garfinkel thought it would be more economical
to start with a situation of stable features and ask what can be done to make
for trouble (Heritage 1984, p. 78).
Garfinkel decided to conduct a series of breaching
experiments, where he broke the normal rules of a situation and wanted to see
create a senseless situation. The
simplest experiment was where the experimenter played a game of ticktaktoe (noughts and crosses) with a subject. The subject made the first move, and then the
experimenter erased the subjects first move, moved it to another cell and
marked his own, without ever indicating this was unusual behaviour. There were 253 experimental trials and in 95%
of these, the subjects reacted to this action in some way. 75% of subjects objected or demanded an
explanation and the rest assumed there was some sort of new game in progress
and adapted to the new “rules” or assumed it was a practical joke. Essentially, the subjects abandoned the
“noughts and crosses” framework and adopted a new interpretive framework to
make sense of the situation. In
contrast, people who held on to the idea that noughts and crosses was still in
play were pretty disturbed.
From this experiment Garfinkel made two significant
conclusions; one that when there were behaviours that didn’t comply with the
basic rules of the game people tried to treat it as a legally possible
event. The other conclusion he made is
that disturbance was increased if people tried to keep the original set of
rules.
So this is pretty interesting, and Garfinkel though so too,
but he didn’t think he could take his experiments into real life
situations. Games have obvious rules
that can be followed or broken, and life is a lot more complicated. Also, breaking rules in real life might have
more serious consequences.
So he didn’t get his hands dirty, Garfinkel got
his students to do the experiments. The
most famous experiments, and the ones mentioned in the reading, are when
Garfinkel requested his students engage an acquaintance or friend in an
ordinary conversation and, without indicating what the experimenter was saying
was in any way out of the ordinary, to insist that the personal clarify the
sense of his commonplace remarks (Garfinkel 1963, p. 221).
One of my favourite examples is when an experimenter was in
a carpool and the subject said they had a flat tyre. With the simple question of, “What do you
mean a flat tyre?” The subject got really upset, saying “What do you mean? What
do you mean? A flat tyre is a flat tyre.
That is what I meant. Nothing
special. What a crazy question!”
Just looking at this experiment it is clear that the
interaction broke down incredibly quickly, apparently even Garfinkel was
surprised and how rapid and complete the breakdowns were (Heritage 1984, p. 81). This breakdown was not just because the
subject didn’t want to answer the experimenter’s question; it was because if we
can’t bring background knowledge to a situation and obey conversational rules,
then mutual understanding and the entire shared experience of life could
collapse at any moment (Heritage 1984, p. 95)!
As much as people were very upset at the slightest breaking
of perceived normality, Garfinkel couldn’t create a situation that was utterly
senseless. People seemed to be less
distressed, indignant and less likely to demand an explanation if they could
make sense of the situation in some way (Heritage 1984, p. 83). So Garfinkel found that all actions, whether
in a simple game or a social interaction, are perceived to have a constitutive
structure and a threat to the normal order of these events is upsetting because
if we don’t behave according to the rules social organisation simply
disintegrates (Garfinkel 1963, p. 198).
After some YouTube searching, it seems like performing
breaching experiments is a pretty common task for sociology students and people
who enjoy creating a little chaos. So
I’ll show you two examples that I thought illustrated the idea of what a
breaching experiment is quite nicely.
In this clip it’s interesting that the lecturer and the
audience respond by laughing, which suggests they adopted a framework of
thinking that this person is doing flips for their entertainment. They don’t descend into chaos or assume that
it was normal lecture behaviour.
This clip is a fantastic breach of normal behaviour as it’s
almost as simple as the noughts and crosses example. Instead of going down the escalator, the
person runs up it. You probably noticed
in this clip too that people didn’t all start running up or go crazy, they just
moved to the side and probably assumed the girl was playing a joke of some kind
rather than believe a world eists where the down escalator wasn’t down any
more.
Another famous breaching experiment was conducted by Stanley
Milgram in the 1970s. Milgram instructed
students to ride the New York Subway and ask people to give them their
seats. This experiment was interesting,
because not only did many people give up their seats when someone asked with no
justification, the students experimenting found the task emotionally very
difficult (Luo 2004). In an article on
the experiment in the New York Times,
interviews with the students many years later show that they found the
experiment traumatic and some were physically sick at the idea of violating the
rules of behaviour expected on the subway.
This is very interesting as it suggests that breaking the perceived
normality is very distressing even when you do have the framework to know what
is going on. It’s important to note that
although both experimenters and subjects in the breaching experiments got
upset, angry or even felt sick, there was never a situation where people just
decided, “OK, this makes no sense and I can’t comprehend this.”
Reference List:
Garfinkel, H. 1963 ‘A Conception of and Experiments with
‘Trust’ as a Condition of Concerted Stable Actions’ in O’Brien, J (ed.) The Production of Reality: Essays and
Readings on Social Interaction, vol. 4, California, Pine Forge Press, pp370-81
Heritage, J. 1984, ‘The Morality of Cognition’, in Garfinkel and ethnomethodology, Polity
Press, Cambridge, pp75-102.
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