Does social competition within a family affect conversational tone and features within a Family meal.

INTRODUCTIONThroughout any family there is a constant hierarchal system. As mentioned by Psychologist Erika Krull every family has their own “Financial Structure, Social Structure and Hierarchal Structure” within, something that thus means everyone knows their place. A typical family hierarchy would be for instance the Parents at the top, followed by the children, with age, experience and money all playing a role, with the “Financial Structure”, stemming from the fact the children are most likely reliant on the parents for money to be able to enjoy hobbies they may undertake. However, the embedded social hierarchy within family life consequently causes power struggles, equivalent to a “Government Coup.” Children look to dominate their parents to be able to control certain aspects of their life, in order to defy the “Hierarchal Structure”. They could do this by insulting them, or by threatening there positive or negative Face. Erving Goffman describes Face as “How everyone is concerned with how other perceive them.” Positive face is especially useful for this investigation due to threatening that being potentially insulting someone in order to try show dominance Therefore looking at the studies of Brown and Levinson is useful when studying this investigation, as it looks at FTA’S or Face Threatening Acts , which “intentionally or unintentionally threaten someone’s face” . Thus, this could play a key role in my investigation, due to the Children potentially utilising this to gain power as to insult or ignore a parent is defying the Hierarchal structure embedded in the Social Norm.On a personal level, as one of 4 children with 2 married parents, this investigation is something that is very interesting to me, as it something that has been going on throughout my family life, with all four children competing for control. Therefore, I want to analyse if competition within a family affects family meals and whether there is ulterior motive within conversations to assert dominance and power or not. Thus, I am going to put this to the test, by recording my family having a meal together. In this I will be able to analyse firstly who is in control of the conversation, and who is setting down discourse markers to dictate the direction, and if there is competition, with events such as dispreffered responses or insults to try damage someone’s face.METHODOLGYI will be recording a conversation at a family meal. Due to consent reasons the family has to know that this conversation will be occurring, however they will not be told the specific timings of it, purely being told they will be being recorded at one stage in the week. I recorded the conversation on my Phone and then typed up the transcript later.HYPOTHESISI believe that Social Competition within a family does affect conversational tone and features, and consequently will play a big part on our meal. There a numerous reason for this, but predominantly it is due to the want of power in the conversion, and throughout our meal this will play a significant factor. As part of this the Father and the Mother will be the ones using the discourse markers and controlling the direction of the conversation, thus leaving the children to try and change this in certain elements, for instance they may break the maxim of relation which could see them change the direction of the conversation, thus usurping the person who was setting the conversation. Another event that is likely to happen is that the children will attempt to control the conversation. This could happen through flouting maxims to assert dominance. This will happen due to as stated by Kroll due to the wish to create a “government coup” situation. On top of this this will lead to the Children being more competitive and not just challenging the parents but also their siblings, due to the fact all share similar stature and weight within the discussion. This could happen through damaging the other participants face or through dispreffered response or an unwanted response to an interrogative or a command, which theorist Levinson remarks could be a “declination component”, thus damaging power of the previous speakers. Therefore, within the transcript I expect these to play a significant factor due to the likelihood that social competition will affect conversational features at a family meal.
DISPREFFERED RESPONSE TO QUESTIONSSocial competition can be shown within the transcript by analysing the usage of discourse markers by `Dad. ` To be able to shape the direction of the conversation; throughout he has changed the topic for instance by stating at the start “How’s everyone’s day been.” By doing this there is an unequal shift within the power throughout the whole family, as throughout the transcript it the topic is always created by Dad asking interrogatives such as this aimed at Kate asking if she “roasted the potatoes differently.” The personalisation of this interrogative and the fact they are always initiated by Dad thus shows power and unequal social levels in the conversation. Thus, this links to Fairclough’s theory on Spoken discoursewhere he states that unequal encounters between a powerful participant can happen due to occupation or in this sense being head of the family. Therefore, this links back to one of the themes of the hypothesis which states that the parents are indeed the ones directing the conversational flow. On top of that this supports another element of the hypothesis which suggests that the Children would be competitive with their language use. This is proven when looking at the transcript with `Tom` responding to Dads question about his day with one-word adjective utterance of “Fine”, breaking the maxim of quantity. This response lacks detail, thus meaning `Dad` needs to change the topic. Therefore, this shows Tom is trying to escape from the social constrains applied on him by `Dad` by rejecting his hierarchal superiority. This shows social competition is therefore affecting how language is used, as Tom has arguably given such a blunt response to the interrogative asked by Dad that it has in fact changed the topic of the conversation. It shows a struggle in power as it has damaged the positive face of the Dad, and overall therefore agrees with the Hypothesis due to Tom using Dispreffered responses to reject Hierarchal` dominance, thus showing how Social Competition affects a family meal.INTERROGATIVE SENTANCESAnother way in which it could be argued that that social competition is shown within the transcript is by looking at the roles of people who are less high up in the social hierarchal system. For instance, ‘Annie’ asks ‘Mum’ the closed interrogative of “Did you get me the pens for tomorrow?” which damaged the negative face of Mum. This is because it means she must respond in this context to continue conversation. Although not a provocative interrogative; without a doubt this does constrain power and give ‘Annie’ a position of authority since ‘Mum’ is constrained in what she can respond with. The fact the question is closed as well highlights this even more, thus consequently limiting the amount of conversational power held by Mum, with the personalisation of second person pronoun “You” adding to this. She must respond in an adjacency pair in order to keep to Grices maxim of quantity . The fact that throughout the transcript interrogatives are used by `Dad` instead, a person at the top of the family hierarchal chain , such as with “Have you roasted the potatoes differently”, with auxiliary verb “Have” used as a discourse marker to shift the topic of the conversation. Therefore, this could lead to the argument that interrogative questions have not been used to affect conversational tone throughout the transcript as they are clearly used within this context to change the subject from the head of the family and although these questions undoubtedly limit the power of `Mum` they are not used to grab power. MAXIMS OF RELEVENCE.Throughout the transcript it can be noted that there are obvious attempts to continue flows of conversation or keep to the Maxim of Relevance. Theorist Grice, believes to continue conversation you need to stick to 4 key maxims, with the 3rd one being the Maxims of relevance or that ` where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion. `There are undoubted attempts to stick with this from different family members throughout the transcript for instance when `Dad` is talking about how the Potatoes are “Roasted”, `Jack` responds with the interrogative “So basically we are eating pure fat”, with base adjective “pure” exaggerating the negative connotation of fat. Although there is a clear negative tone throughout this in which arguably affects `Dads` face, the lexical field is still the same with there being a reference to `Fat` which links in with the style in which the potatoes are roasted. Therefore, `Jack` sustains relevance in the conversation arguably showing that social competition is not a factor. One of the key ideas in the hypothesis was that the children would look to flout maxims to break hierarchal structure. This is because if there was to be a dispreffered reply, or one which broke the maxim of relevance it shows that the Children are respecting the conversation by keeping within the lexical field. It could be argued however that the arguing throughout the transcript such as Jack stating to Tom “No, you are weird”, counteracts this, with the insult of base adjective “Weird” damaging negative face and showing no relevance to the current conversation. However, both share similar hierarchal status, thus not dramatically affecting hierarchal order, consequently showing that for the most part throughout the transcript the maxim of relevance is kept too.FACE THRETENING.Social competition can be shown however due to attempts throughout the transcript to undermine others to up the power of the individual. Everyone having a language face is a concept created by theorist Ervine Goffman. Committing a FTA or a face threatening act without politeness is a way to undermine someone and examples of this can be seen throughout the transcript. An example of this could be found with Tom stating, “Jack you are weird” with personal pronoun “You” making this a direct attack on the individuals positive face. Consequently, this shows social competition within as adjective “Weird” is used in an insulting way proven by the negative connotations of `Weird`. The inferences of “Weird” also are used to ostracise such individuals from the social norm, and consequently separates `Jack` from the rest of the family. Thus, by insulting Jack it could be perceived that this gives power to Tom and the rest of the family. By damaging face in this manner this reveals that social competition does exist within this family situation. Consequently, this overall suggests that the hypothesis is correct to state that Social competition affects conversational tone in this family, as there is a clear shift in language by Tom to gain power in the exchange.CONCLUSIONOverall when comparing the evidence found in the transcript to my original hypothesis, it can be found that social competition without doubt did affect the conversational tone throughout the transcript. There is no doubt that there is slight limitations to this evidence due to the fact that there was pre-held knowledge that there would be recording in order to have consent, but due to the fact that the time the conversation would be recorded was not specified, there is clearly natural elements towards this discourse, thus overall showing that this is an accurate representation of a familys conversation for the most part. The three areas that the hypothesis focused on that the parents would be in control; the children would look assert dominance and the children would also be competitive with each other. When looking at the first two questions, dispreffered responses proves this to be the case for instance when Tom flouted the Maxim of Quantity by stating one-word answer to Dads interrogative stating “Fine”, thus showing a want to assert dominance against `Dad` who clearly has the conversational power. On top of that the third point can be proven when analysing the usage of Face Threatening acts, with Tom seeking to ostracise Jack with the usage of base adjective `Weird` which is done to damage his Positive Face , in order to give Tom increased status at the meal. It could be argued however the efforts to stick to the Maxims of Relevance could disprove that with throughout the Transcript for the main part this being stick too for instance Jack responding to Dads declarative on the `Potato’s` by asking interrogative “So basically we are eating pure fat”. Although this does show that there were efforts to stick to the conversation, there is undoubtedly an insulative nature within this phrase for instance using adjective “pure” to exaggerate the meaning of “Fat”, arguably shows competitiveness, one of the features looked at in the hypothesis. Therefore, overall when looking at these four distinct aspects, it can be found that Social Competition did affect conversational Tone and Features at a Family Meal.