Independent Research Project - Ablisa - SOC250:

Ablisa:

By Mitchell Neave, 4056449. Tute 1:30-3:30 Thursdays, Katie Freund.

When the social norms of a society are breached by members of that society, it becomes apparent both why and where the boundaries of social conduct are. Similar social boundaries are constructed in small and large institutions and indeed in television shows. The audition by the contestants ‘Ablisa’ on one such television show, the X Factor, presents an interesting piece of data for analysing the power dynamics and violations of social expectancies. The reception the contestants receive from both the judges and the audience is atypical and the audition quickly descends into a chaotic scene.  Amongst the chaos there is however evidence for numerous sociological concepts at work including dramaturgy, sociocultural identity in talk, institutional talk, rudeness and presentation of the self. This essay endeavours to link these key sociological concepts with the interactions in the audition from the clip below.

The times considered in this exposition are 0:00 – 2:50 and 4:00 – 5:56. (4 minutes 46 seconds in total.)

 

The X Factor UK 2010:

 

The nature of this clip, being that it is post-edit from a television show does present potential issues for my treatment of the clip as raw ‘naturally-occurring data’. Whilst this clip is clearly edited the breaching of the social norms during the audition which is ultimately the primary focus of my analysis, is clearly naturally-occurring data. The clip may have been edited to flow better for television however the tantrums and attitudes of the contestants and in particular the on stage interactions in the clip are clearly raw and not scripted or staged. Even this requirement for the validation of the legitimacy of the clip demonstrates just how atypical the behaviour of the contestants are and how clearly they breach the expectations we have of people on television and as contestants as we attempt to attribute their behaviour to merely the editing. There is enough raw data from this scene to justify analysis and it is for these reasons this clip has been chosen.  

The first half of the clip, prior to the audition, involves an introduction of the contestants self-dubbed ‘Ablisa’. The name ‘Ablisa’ is simply an amalgamation of the individual’s names Abby and Lisa. Their choice of name in conjunction with their accents both contribute to the audience’s initial judgement of the contestants. These aspects of interaction are part of their sociocultural identity. As explained by Donna and Kerry (2011) nicknames have huge implications on the identity of the individual. The naming of their contestant group reflects both their internal perception and influence other’s perception of them. In this case the simplicity of the name could imply some simplicity to the characters and a lack of dedication and earnestness in their audition. The accents they share also reflect a lower class background similarly influencing the audience’s perception.

Ablisa’s name and accents influence the audience’s initial perception of the contestants, however it is the content of what they are saying in the introduction that lead the audience to perceive them negatively. In the introduction the things they say are atypical of serious contestants and make them appear childish; “I’ve slept at her house the whole week, how cool is that?” for instance. Goffman (1967) presents a concept of the presentation of self which comprises of the various roles that make up who we are. If we fulfil our expected roles in order to achieve social order and others around us do the same. One of the ways in which Ablisa damage the audience’s perception of them is through an inability to play the role of a contestant. Unlike other contestants who have a heart-wrenching back story and endeavour to demonstrate some musical know-how, Ablisa present incoherent stories and make musically ill-informed comments such as ‘I think my voice is like, higher than hers’. This comment demonstrates that they are not taking their role as contestants seriously and is also an example of hedging, “like” another aspect of their sociocultural identity present in their speech. The inability to effectively play their roles as contestants in conjunction with these aspects of interaction are part of what results in a negative audience perception.

The world and indeed social order is nothing without perception. Charon (2009) argues that it is one of the key principles in interaction that people must not only sense the world around them but ‘define’ or perceive and interpret it. It is the way in which we interpret the world around us that informs our behaviour and helps us to understand where social boundaries are and allows us to act in accordance with the expectations of our society. This is a concept key to Goffman’s metaphor of Dramaturgy (Goffman, 1971). Dramaturgy postulates that humans are merely actors on a stage. Interaction is about conveying appropriate personas, acting, with use of relevant props and stage. Dramaturgy is about impression management and presenting your self as you wish to be seen. It has been shown to have practical applications in such areas as public relations (Johansson, 2007) and consumer research (Schulz, 2012), allowing people to be studied as actors. It is clear that Ablisa’s inability to recognise the appropriate persona and to act in accordance with the audience’s expectations that contribute to their negative reception.

Goffman (1971) differentiates between front and back stage personas, clearly Ablisa cannot. A front stage persona is the persona you present in front of other people and particularly when in the spotlight. In an endeavour to effectively ‘impression manage’ one must act in accordance with social boundaries and present positively. Back stage personas are more relaxed and occur when you think you are by yourself, less impression management is necessary as there is no-one to judge you upon your behaviours. Immediately following their onstage greetings, Ablisa squeal ‘Oh my god it’s Cheryl’ clearly inappropriate for the setting. They continue to communicate with the judges in a manner that is extremely informal with a lack of respect and humility. They treat the judges as if they are just friends at a party in a less formal, more backstage setting. This inability to present an appropriate front stage persona demonstrates a lack of respect for the show, the audiences and the judges. The judges in particular are expected to be shown respect as logically one wants to effectively impression manage and have the judges think well of you. This is however another social expectation that is broken by Ablisa.      

The audience’s reaction to the contestant’s actions can further be justified through Blumer’s (1969) first premise of symbolic interactionism, that human’s act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things. Ablisa have little or no respect for the judges or audience as confessed bluntly after their performance that ‘at the end of the day we don’t really care what you think’. This lack of respect is clearly shown not only through their exchanges with the judges, but also through their stage presence, which involves them facing each other and away from the audience, the demand for the music to begin quicker and perhaps most significantly, through telling the audience to “shut up”. This lack of respect is reciprocated by the audience who respond with loud booing during the performance and whilst they’re on stage. This is because the meaning they’ve ascribed to these contestants is disrespect and so they act in accordance.     

Another key sociological concept at play in this clip is that of face work also suggested by Goffman. Face could be defined as one’s own need to be accepted within a society or social dignity. A loss of face occurs when an event damages or threatens your autonomy and causes you to appear to lose this acceptance and dignity. Similarly social death is an event which completely tarnishes your concept of face.  Once the contestants are on stage their inability to recognise front and backstage persona’s leads to Ablisa saying things that again break the expectancies of our society and their role as contestants. As Brown and Levinson (1987) suggests, face work largely accounts for our reason for politeness, two concepts Ablisa display minimal acknowledgement of. Initially they threaten one of the judges faces, Louis Walsh by commenting on their contrasting perceptions of his ‘fitness’ or attractiveness. Not only is this disrespectful and inappropriate for the front stage persona, it damages and threatens the judge’s face. Fellow judge Simon Cowell negates Louis’s attempt to respond and as the girls continue to answer the judge’s questions, the audience begins to boo. This threatens Ablisa and causes a loss of face which leads the girls to lash out at the audience. From there the scene descends from the unappreciated performance into Abby hitting Lisa in frustration for her disrespectful comments towards ‘one of the star judges’ Natalie Imbruglia. Again the reason for this vented frustration is a perceived loss of face from the inappropriateness of the behaviour compounded by further rude gestures at the audience and judges. As Ablisa’s face is threatened the girls act more inappropriately and out of frustration which add to the negative reception from the judges and audience.

As in every institution there is an expected schema for which interaction should follow, as previously demonstrated Ablisa have clearly broken these rules for the show the X Factor. As detailed by Lelićanin and Šuvaković (2011), interaction generally follows a simple procedure such as opening, denoting the problem, solving and closing with a clear turn taking organisation. In this instance it can be adapted to be opening and questioning of the contestant, performing and closing. The performance answers the questions of the opening and the closing about whether they will be good enough to progress in the competition. Ablisa disrupt the asymmetrical power balance between the judges (who should have power) and the contestant (Ablisa who take control by generally being overbearing). The interaction does not follow the typical judges/contestant interacting procedure and thus again breaks the social expectations. After Natalie’s feedback is received Lisa begs the question ‘Sorry, but who are you?’ resulting in uproar from the crowd and eventuating into the physically abusive second tantrum between the contestants. Despite Lisa defending herself backstage suggesting she simply didn’t who the judge was in this context the question was another display of an absence of understanding of front and back stage personas and appropriate observations of institutional norms and power dynamic interactions.

There are numerous errors in standardised interaction that contribute to this audition descending into complete chaos. A combination of an inability to recognise front and back stage personas, inappropriate talk within an institution as well as sociocultural and identity all lead to a negative reception from the audience and judges towards these contestants. This negative reception results in a social death and a loss of face creating further anarchy as the contestants turn on each other. Whilst it is difficult to justify giving Ablisa further attention let alone warranting analysis it is in situations such as these that sociological constructs and rules are most evident. When social norms and rules comprising of what seems like basic common sense appear to be broken through the behaviour of the contestants it is clear to see why there is a universally negative reception for these two girls.

                                                                                                                                   By Mitchell Neave.

References:

Benwell, B. &  Stokoe, E. (2002) Constructing discussion tasks in university tutorials:

shifting dynamics and identities. Discourse Studies, 4(4), 429-453.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness: some universals in language usage. Social Anthropology, 8.

Charon, J. M. (2009). Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, an Interpretation, an Integration. Northwestern University: Prentice Hall.

Lelićanin, M. K. & Šuvaković, A. (2011) Linguistic aspects in asymmetrical institutional interaction – Call center case, http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0861/2011/0350-08611102191K.pdf.

Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 301/50

Starks, D., Taylor-Leech, K. (2011) A research project on nicknames and adolescent identities. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 17(2), 87-97.

Johansson, C. (2007) Goffman's sociology: An inspiring resource for developing public relations theory. Public Relations Review, 33(3), 275-280.

Goffman, E. (1967) The nature of deference and demeanour in Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 47-95.

Goffman, E. (1971) Performances.The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 28-82.

Schulz, H. M. (2012) Exploring dramaturgy in consumer research. Journal of Research for Consumers, 21, 1-19.

 

By Mitchell Neave, 4056449.

Presentation slides!

Final final final post!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/110410429/Soc250-Presentation-Finalz

Just the presentation slides from our group presentation on Talk in institutions today!

Cheers see you bye blog!

xoxo Gossip Mitch.

Comments;

In order to conserve the minimal words I have left for this assignment, I will post links to my comments below and say no more;

http://interactionalscience.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/the-code.html?showComment=1350472164814

http://caitlinwestsoc250.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/train-guards-more-creeps-and.html?showComment=1350473785559

http://chloessociologythoughts.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/talk-is-so-much-more-than-talk.html

Xoxo Gossip Mitch.

Talk in institutional settings:

The final blog post hoorah! Also my week for group presentation!

In this week’s lecture Andrew made a rather outlandish claim that “this is the part which kind of like gave rise to microsociology” and after studying it for the purpose of this week’s presentation, I kind of ‘like’ get what he means! 

Institutions whether of social, financial, sporting or whatever background all share one thing in common, people. Regardless of whether they have a headquarters in a big office building or are more or less social constructions such as gender roles, without the people within the institutions and their actions and interactions, the institutions are nothing. It is extremely difficult to argue against microsociology when institutions are thought of as merely a product of everyday interaction.

“Humans do not sense their environment directly; instead, humans define the situation they are in.”

This quote from Charon (2009) presented an interesting concept to me when I was working on my presentation this week. Whilst it’s on the central ideas of symbolic interactionism, it links to institutional talk and really helped me adopt a sociologists perspective for thinking about the topic. It’s about perspective, interpretation and action and ultimately these ideas underpin micro sociology. It also really hammers home the point made above that institutions are products of people. If people didn’t perceive them, they wouldn’t be. If not for microsociology, macro couldn’t be.

And on that note,  that is me.

Xoxo Gossip Mitch.

P.S still have comment to do though whoops. Bye

Charon, J. M. (2009). Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, an Interpretation, an Integration. Northwestern University: Prentice Hall.

Rudeness and Profanities:

Due to the stupid fucking 2000 word limit imposed on this shit of an assignment my blog post for this week will be kept brief - is an example of rudeness utilising profanities for hyperbole. Turns out there are numerous uses for expletives in establishing sociocultural identity and in terms of coding as well. I was looking for a source to help illustrate uses of swearing in everyday interaction, but I found something even cooler.

Stephens and Umland (2011) have extended on 2009 work by Stephens which actually demonstrated that swearing is beneficial for dealing with a painful stimulus. They conclude that the less you swear in daily life the more power swearing has in evoking an emotional reaction which works to override the pain! It’s all about a concept of habituation, whereby the more you are exposed to something, the less effect it has. Honestly worth a read and also worth a read is a cited article on the benefits of swearing in sex in western culture.

The point of this is to demonstrate that swearing is an aspect of our daily life and is present in much of everyday interaction. It has many aforementioned uses in society and it should not be undervalued by bloody fuckin’ old prunes. Cheers.

Xoxo Gossip Mitch.

P.S. My article comes from the journal of pain. Definitely worth noting.

Stephens, R. & Umland, C. (2011) Swearing as a response to pain - Effect of daily swearing frequency. The Journal of Pain, 12(12), 1274-1281.

Accomplishing Sociocultural Identity in Talk;

Like, umm… you know, yeah? Isn't it funny how Australians, or maybe just my friends, seem to call their friends insulting names and yet call complete strangers ‘mate’? Even when things get heated between complete strangers at clubs or anywhere, it’s “what the bloody hell is your problem mate?” I think Australians are clearly and proudly identifiable by the way they speak. We seem to have our own vernacular and rules of speech my favourite being ‘yeah nah’ which is just a prefix for a sentence, a form of hedging, rather than a completely ambivalent response to a question. Hedging are the unnecessary conjunctives in a sentence used to continue the flow of speech, for example umm, like or ‘you know’. It’s funny to think that I do this every day and only now have learnt there is an actual term for it.

More to the point (or any point at all) one of the most prominent examples of sociocultural identity in language I think is nicknaming. Donna and Kerry (2011) distinguishes between personal naming, over which the named has little control and their identity is not overly affected over the long term and nicknaming which is a long term name which helps themselves and others in identifying a certain aspect or aspects of an individual. Often nicknames in Australia are just extensions of the first or last name (‘Neavey’ or ‘Neaveo’ for Neave). However, for nicknames focussed on a sociocultural or indeed physical characteristic of an individual there can be significant implications for the identity of that person, in either defining or reshaping their self perception and the way they are perceived. The focussed study of Donna and Kerry (2011) provides a useful insight into this specific area of sociocultural identity in talk and was an interesting and relevant read to me.  

Reference:

Starks, D., Taylor-Leech, K. (2011) A research project on nicknames and adolescent identities. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 17(2), 87-97.

xoxo Gossip Mitch

The Social and Moral Order in Talk;

The documentary method of interpretation was my assigned definition in the tutorial and it’s almost paradoxical nature is lending me to write about it for this week’s blog. I managed to grasp the analogy towards the end of the lesson, but seeing as I had difficulty I wanted to alter the analogy and explain it in my own words here for others that struggled with the concept!

Think of the people you know as draws in the (hopefully large) filing cabinet that is your brain. When you think about a person you know, you open that person’s draw and view the files or documents associated with that person. They may be memories, ideas or labels you have for this person. Each person’s files will be different and each person’s filing cabinet will be different. The documents in each person’s draw are constructed on the basis of your experience with them.

You have an idea about who a person is every time you make a draw for them. If you meet someone new and they’re particularly friendly to you, the documents in their draw will reflect that you feel they are a nice person. Once this hypothesis is made, each subsequent file/document (meeting/experience) you have for a person will alter their draw or your overall opinion about that person.

Your documenting system works in a cyclic fashion. You meet a person and develop an understanding within yourself of who they are. You put the file in their draw and future experiences dictate the future direction of the documents in the draw. If the next time you see the friendly person you just met they are helping an old lady cross the street you will attribute this to their friendliness and this is the interpretation aspect of the documenting system.

Having written this out, I don’t know it makes it any simpler than the documentary analogy, but in my head, the documenting system seems to make more sense.

xoxo Gossip Mitch

p.s. At some point in the future I might try and justify the completely irrelevant gossip girl reference/signature because right now I just don't know...