Parker’s Neighborhood

So, as in my previous post I mentioned that I have been thinking about awkward silence during conversations. I was wondering what exactly causes these awkward pauses during our conversations. My theory is that it is one of two things:

1. There is an error in communication of the transition relevance place. This means that there is a misunderstanding of who's turn it is to talk. Perhaps the speaker did not get the point across and the hearer is waiting for more information to be relayed, thus, making the entire conversation irrelevant and uncomfortable.

2. There is a element of inappropiateness within the context of the speaker's utterance. Our converstaions (her in the U.S.) have been shaped by what we call social norms. In other words, society trains us to socially operate within a certian appropriateness and when this boundary is breached, we are unable to normally function while outside the area that contains these social norms.

After reading the article about Japanese conversation, I have noticed the role that silence plays in my conversations. Instead of being comfortable and "cool" with it, I tend to freak out and go directly into awkward mode. I will end up saying things that don't make sense or things that are cmpletely random. Perhaps the most damaging is when I attempt to be funny to fill the awkward silence and fail miserably. This proves to me that if there are any backchannels during these awkward conversations, they are not positive ones. Americans are simply not comfortable with silence in a conversational/social setting.

  I'm sorry I couldn't find the exact quote for this, but I saw a real-life example yesterday of why we typically use more language to politely refuse an offer. While watching Scrubs, like I often am, I couldn't help but laugh when J.D. asked a new doctor out on a date, with a lengthy, pathetic longwinded request. He was probably attempting to  invoke lots of feelings of guilt and sympathy from her, strengthening his chances of getting a "yes." However, once he was done asking, she replied with a simple 'No." Stunned, J.D. asks "Would you care to elaborate?" But once again all he gets in response is "No." Clearly this was not J.D.'s preffered response to his request. While this made for an uncomfortable moment in conversation, it made me realize that we can flout those rules as well for effect. By choosing a dispreferred answer, we are also capable of being funny, or making an indirect point.

I know it's been awhile since we discussed this concept in class, but I have been thinking about it alot this week. With proper names, it can be difficult to distinguish between several people assigned to the same name. We went around the class and discussed different ways of differentiating between, for example, two friends with the same first name. I think it was a really interesting class discussion about how people choose to distinguish one from another. Like most other people, I have the same situation which causes a great deal of confusion from time to time. See, my roommate and best friend is named Amanda. My good friend's girlfriend, and incidentally my coworker, is also named Amanda. So when my good friend Adam and I are spending time together there is bound to be talk of the Amandas. How do we make sure to keep confusion to a minimum? My roommate is MY Amanda and Adam's girlfriend is HIS Amanda. I'm not quite sure how we came up with this horribly possessive way of monickering our Amandas, but it definitely works. How do you distinguish between to friends with the same first name??

A few days ago I was riding in a car with an apartment owner in Lexington and my fiance.  The owner was driving us from one location that he owned to another.  It was a beautiful day but it was getting hot in the car so I asked my fiance if he would roll down the window. He tried and could not get it to roll down.  He asked the owner if he would roll down the window and he said "I'll turn on the air".  Again, it was beautiful and I just wanted some fresh air so I told him that the window would be fine, we just couldn't get it to roll down.  Again he replied with "I'll turn on the air." 

This was an interesting and not very effective reply in my opinion because the manner of his response was flouted.  He did not respond preferably to my request and instead of replying to it , he made his own suggestion.  His window had been rolled down and this was a fairly old car so the implicature was that this particular window was broken.  Instead of just telling us that however, he made his own suggestion and because I did not realize the implicature the first time, it led to me asking again and made the conversation much more confusing!!

This commercial was a great example of implications.  In the beginning of the commercial the first man, let's call him ONE, went to speak with the other about ONE's girlfriend being in TWO's fave five.  He's implying that he thinks that TWO is trying to hit on ONE's girlfriend.  TWO denies that anything is going on and says that ONE is just paranoid and then the phone rings.  There are no words needed at this point because the implicature of the phone ring is that it ONE's girlfriend calling and that ONE's girlfriend and TWO are definitely seeing each other.  I thought this was a funny and interesting view of an instance of implicatures :) Enjoy!

 Language evolves almost too quickly to keep up with. I was in a class discussion today about what English is the "right" English. It seems that new forms of the English language are popping up and they seem to get further and further away from the English we're used to. Some of these conversational and politeness maxims are becoming obsolete, making way for a less traditional language. With so many modern catchphrases like "your mom is so fat.." or "that's what she said," it seems that we are starting to value the opposite of what these maxims are proposing. Do we need to revise these maxims, or push to keep language centered around politeness and effective conversation? Just something to think about...

  I really got stumped on the question of "regret" as a performative verb. When we discussed it in class today, it seemed to be the general concensus that saying you regret something isn't actually regretting something. What about "I'm really regretting that last piece of pizza right now!" Isn't that regretting it? I couldn't understand why that didn't count as a performative verb. Can someone clear this up for me, please? Thanks!

I thought the topics of positive versus negative methods of politeness were very interesting this week!  I had never put much thought into how a request was worded and if conveyed distance or closeness.  Upon consideration I realized that I almost or always use the negative form for a request.  Even with my closest friends I will say "hey is there any way you could come pick me up from class if you're not busy?" or "would you mind loaning me a dollar and I'll pay you back tomorrow?". I would never say "hey give me a dollar" even to my parents or brother, who I am very comfortable wtih or even my best friends.  I do have several friends who are more than comfortable with using the positive forms with me :)  but I just found it interesting that I don't do that with anyone. It seems strange to me considering the fact that I feel like I'm a very informal person in general.

So this week I overheard a disagreement between two of my friends who are dating.  We were in his room and they were going through his desk together and found a picture of him and his ex-girlfriend.  She jokingly told him to throw it away and he said that he didn't want to.  She replied with "Well, if it means something to you, then keep it," with a semi accusatory tone because obviously she wouldn't want it to have much meaning to him.  He then became defensive about her comment and when she realized that she had assumed that it had meaning to him solely because it had his exgirlfriend in it and didn't consider the only people in the picture she apologized.  But instead of exactly apologizing she said "I shouldn't have worded it that way."  This is flouting the maxim of manner because she was sort of saying I'm sorry in a roundabout way but not directly.  But the most interesting thing was that after she said this he replied with "No, it's not that you should've worded it differently, it's that you should've said it more nicely."   ......This got me thinking.  It seems to me that they were both saying the same thing.  She was saying that she should have worded it differently so that it wouldn't sound so harsh or rude and he was saying she should've said it more nicely...so that it wouldn't sound so harsh or rude.  Maybe I'm missing something, and maybe this is a guy/girl difference, but I just found it interesting!!!