All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was doing my folkway project! for my project, I went into random places, mainly restaurants, and talked into my hands instead of to a person's face. When i was at places like McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts, I would order my food while mumbling into my hands and I got the funniest reactions from people! It was really funny to see some people's reactions to me breaking a folkway like this, but it was also embarrassing. Some people either got aggravated by my awkward ways, extremely confused, or laughed at me like I was a circus clown.
When I did this project, I thought about everything we had been learning in class like norms, folkways, mores, taboos, and laws. During my project, I broke a folkways, which is basically a socially accepted norm that keep people from feeling uncomfortable. Usually when people go to places like McDonald's and order, they speak loud, clear, and directly to the worker. When I ordered my food however, I softly mumbled into my hands in an incomprehensible tone. Since this was unexpected and unusual, I got several weird looks, annoyed comments, and had several awkward moments. It was funny for me because I was acting in this manner on purpose, but to someone outside of the project, I was simply weird. Doing this experiment showed me that acting against social norms in today's society will often confuse and irritate people and that norms are set into societies in order to keep people more balanced and comfortable. In the end, I really enjoyed this experiment and I laughed about it a lot in the end!
You discussed folkways perfectly here...what would this situation look like if you had broken a more instead?
ReplyDelete