Blog 9

The United States has the most difficult language/culture to interpret or understand. Many researches would argue the same, especially Clifford Geetz. He was known for his studies on ethnography, which is the scientific study of the customs or individual peoples and cultures.

Within our reading Geetz gave an example of how we as U.S citizens express non verbal communication. For example, winking. Winking can be considered a form of nonverbal communication. Geetz explains, "contracting your eyelids on purpose where there exists a public code in which doing so counts as a conspiratorial signal." Winking is also considered a communicative gesture or as Geetz believes a "voila." We have numerous gestures in the United States. It is important to note that to the foreign eye a wink could be seen as a simple blink of the eye. This is Geetz's main focus, is the different cultural communication styles.

On page 289 Geetz gives a great example of the usage of ethnography concerning facial expressions. He explains, "Ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without which they would not (not even the zero-form twitches, which, as a cultural category, are as much non-winks as winks are non-twitches) in fact exist, no matter what anyone did or didn't do with his eyelids." This explains how cultural gestures could be interpreted in many different ways and how confusing they could be. A wink is seen in a different cultural perspective to be an eye twitch, even though there was a purposeful meaning behind it. On the other hand, even U.S individuals could interpret non verbal communication incorrectly. This is the structure of sociology in Clifford's eye. To understand cultures and different norms we must understand and study the broad communication styles.

This clip is a funny yet applicable example of how different communication styles are in play. Even individuals in the same culture interpret non verbal cues differently. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWedkk3K2Q4