Week 3 post 3

Pick one concept from the assigned reading that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.

An ethnography of communication is interesting for me because I did something similar when I took anthropology classes.

Now, I want to try this model with my job at a small cake shop.

Contexts for Observing Communication
Speech community: part-time workers at a cake shop
Speech situations: chatting
Speech events: When there are no customers

Elements of Communication
Situation: at a small cake shop; whenever there are no customers and boss around; there are no seats to sit down so we are always standing up

Participants: part-time workers (18 yrs old-30 yrs old);our goal is to kill a time and get along

Act sequences: We start talking when there are no customers, and nothing to do. We often talk about which cakes we like, what movies or songs we like, school lives, families, and so on. We stop talking when we see a customer came into the shop.

Key: smiling; explaining

Instrumentalities: verbal

Norms: No chatting when there are customers or a boss

Genre: Chatting



I didn’t really observe the situation at my job, so this report is not as accurate or detail as it should be. However, just by writing these down into small categories, I could be able to notice something that I never thought about.
For example, I realized that a topic we choose is very easy and short to answer. We don’t talk about something serious, such as our deep concerns. Probably, we don’t choose this kind of topic since we really cannot “got into a deep conversation” because of customers who come in to a shop randomly.

I believe this model will help us to understand complex communications. By carefully observing communication, we will be able to see a "tacit consent" of the community that we haven’t noticed before.
It might be fun to observe our daily conversations from a "communication researcher" perspective.