"If only we could capture all speech events in a culture, we could understand it entirely" How fascinating an idea. I never thought it is possible to fully understand a whole classroom of people, let alone an entire culture. But here, its an idea worth giving some thought.
If this could be done, I would observe how differently people buy things, all over the world. Aha! Best way to find out bargaining techniques in every country. What else.. Things people would say or do during social, business gatherings, when they engage in small talk, see a doctor.. I would love to know them all!
The 10 different components of a speech event helped in breaking down each one of these. The 10 components are namely, genre, topic, purpose, setting, key, participants, message form, act sequences, rules of interaction and norms of interpretations. Sound complicated? Not so after each component is looked into.
Here's an example. I met with my girlfriends on sunday for some icecream and chat.
1) Genre: Gathering
2) Topic: School life, latest gossips about old classmates
3) Purpose: Catch up with each other and engage in mindless chats
4) Setting: McDonalds' Restaurant
5) Key: Casual
6) Participants: JC friends
7) Message form: Verbal (English and Chinese) - chats, laughter. Non-verbal - exaggerating gestures, tearing from excessive laughter, smiles
8) Act Sequence: (typical gossip scene)
A: I saw *** in the canteen that day. She was wearing a spaghetti top revealing her fatty arms and eating Ba Chor Mee (Minced meat noodle.)
The rest: Oh my goodness! So obscene.
A: Yeah. I think maybe next time she could offer some of her own flesh for the uncle to make the minced meat. Then she may be able to lunch for free!
The rest: *Choking from the ice cream*
9) Rules for Interaction: Listen when someone is sharing. Anyone who disagrees with the gossip is considered a retard.
10) Norms of Interpretation: People in this group gossip for leisure and do not take their conversations very seriously. These girls have known each other for 4years by now and can chat about almost anything.
There you go. A typical all girls outing.
Most people who do a case study on this speech event with components 1 to 9 would conclude that this group of girls are brainless and superficial. This is when component 10 would come in to enlighten these sanctimonious people.
Its a situation very similar to the 'lip service' phenomenon mentioned in class. Most of the time people don't actually mean what they say and this can create a lot of confusion. This is especially prevalent in the chinese community. People ask whether if you have eaten when they actually don't wish to know. They use self-effacing words while receiving praise, when they are actually beaming inside. All these add on to the difficulty in understanding the chinese people.
So now, chinese people are complex. Girls' way of thinking is hard to grasp. So chinese girls are the hardest to comprehend. Now I know exactly how to answer anyone who asks me to explain myself. "The complexity of my speech is unfathomable for an imbecile like you. I would explain in the amateur version, for a fee. :)"
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6 comments:
An interesting extension. You know, many studies have been done on women's gossips, but more from the turn-taking perspective.
chinese are taught to be modest and not be big-headed, that's why we have to be polite?
for me, in my case, sometimes i think its just not to avoid embarrassment if I see those friends who are not that close; like in a class gathering, if i'm sitting beside a friend who is not that close to me and we have little contact and the other party praises me, i cannot be seen as too big-headed, that's why i have to be modest? haha...
Im a girl and I don't gossip much!! I generally like to keep my mean thoughts to myself and laugh about it in secret. But one thing I know for sure, most girls make secret thoughts in their heads! Heh! Most would like to share it...
Girls are indeed complex. This usually stems from the emphasis which girls put on emotions and sense of intimacy. That is perhaps the reason which most girls behave differently in speech events towards people that they are close to and people that that are not so close to. Personally, the way I behave in speech events depend on how I rank the people involved. So if i'm nice to you, you rank high on my scale =)
Girls are seriously complex. Especially chinese girls. I so agree with you!
I think how this speech event goes really depends on how close the friends are to one another. For a group of girls who aren't so close, the structure could be really different! There probably wouldn't be so much crapping. =)
It all comes from the culture developed within the group, and that culture is formed from all the past experiences they've had. For an outsider who wants to join the group, she'd need to blend into that culture. That would take quite some effort for a person who's totally foreign to this culture, or had a whole new different experience in the past during similar gatherings of friends.
To Deng
I think the reason why women choose to take turns while sharing gossip is pretty obvious. They want the speaker to finish the entire story so that they know all the details of it, even though at the same time, they are dying to add on to the speaker's gossip.
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