Social Interaction

Define Social Interaction

Its day to day routines that gives structure and form to actions

Define Social Status

A persons standing in social structure, roles depend on this classification

Define Ascribed Status

Status assigned from birth 

Define Achievement Status

you attain this, it is earned 

Define Status Set

The collection of all social positions an individual holds. Student, daughter, sister

Define Master Status

A single social identity that overshadows any other statuses

Define Roles Set

Are roles that are attached to a single status

Define Role Strain

Stress that is experienced by an individual where there are conflicting expectations that are associated with a single status 

Define Role Conflict

Stress when an individual has to fulfill two or more social roles at once

Define Ethnomethodology 

A method that analyzes how people use everyday gestures and conversation to construct common-sense view of the world

What is Shared Understanding 

is a mutually shared social order in which we live

What is Civil Inattention

Indicates recognition of others presence but avoids any gesture that might be taken as too intrusive. Like when you see that someone wants to sit on a seat next to you and you realize your coat is in the way, you then move your coat so the person can sit but you don’t verbally express the need for you to move your coat its just a subtle action.

What is Breaching experiments

Are method to disrupt everyday social norms to then observe how people may react to them. Can be deliberate or out of ignorance

What is a Response Cries

Are muttered exclamations, oops or ah, reflect how we have continuous control of our appearance and actions which also demonstrate competence.

What is Dramaturgy

Its the study of seeing social life/interactions played out by actors on a stage or many stages

Define Impression management

The process in which individuals attempt to influence the way others perceive them through conscious or unconscious behaviors

Explain what front, back stage regions, audience and embarrassment/tact are

In front stages its about social encounters, ‘act out formal roles’ you are performing

In back stage its about assembling props, preparing yourselves for interactions, such as things we do in bathrooms

Audience are those who observe the performance, they don’t view back stage but can take measures to ensure this 

Embarrassment in this topic means discomfort following a spoiled performance, losing face

Tact is the sensitivity that someone does to help them, saving face

Define Total institutions (Goffman)

Its a setting in which people are isolated from society, manipulated by administrative staff

Example: mental hospitals, prisons, military barracks

What are characteristics of total institutions

• staff members, few in numbers, supervising all aspects of life

• life is controlled and standardized

• formal roles dictate when/where/how to perform daily routine

Resocialization in total institutions 

• build a new self through rewards and punishments

• control

• limited access to phone, mail, visitors

• give up privacy 

• there are fences, barred windows, locked door

Break down Identity in total institutions

• give up personal possessions, clothes, loss of name

• loss of safety 

• degradation ceremony