Ethnomethodology Essay

958 Words4 Pages
Ethnomethodology Introduction Sociologist Harold Garnfinkel developed ethnomethodology in the 1960s. Ethnomethodology studies “the way people make sense of their everyday surrounding” (Macionis 2011:131). Basically, it is the study of how people understand reality and how they interact in their society. Ethnomethodology deals with common social concepts and norms that are widely understood in society. In my experiments, I question the unspoken societal norms that when broken, may be interpreted as rude or lead to awkwardness. I was curious to observe the way that people would react if someone where to ‘unintentionally’ interrupt a private conversation between two people. I predicted that if one was to disrupt a conversation by walking through a ‘talk line’ unintentionally, that the reaction would subtle, maybe a short pause as the person passed by. I also wanted to see how people would react to an honest answer when asked a question out of mere politeness. I predicted that people would react in a puzzled manner and maybe act a bit more distant. I work as a hostess at the Cheesecake Factory, and used my constant interaction with strangers to my advantage. Because people, namely strangers, walk in and out at almost a constant rate, the restaurant proved to be a perfect place to test my ethnomethodology hypothesis. Procedures My first experiment was actually unplanned. I was in the middle of talking with one of the servers in our restaurant, when a guest walked directly in between our talk line abruptly interrupting our conversation. I almost automatically took a step back and rudely gazed at the passing guest. She was a nicely dressed African American lady, probably around 40 years old. Clearly the server and I had been in the middle of speaking. My second experiment was one I conducted on my own. As a hostess, part of my job requires me to be kind and

More about Ethnomethodology Essay

Open Document