SOCIAL INTERACTION Sociology 1301: Introduction to Sociology Week Seven

Who Are You? 1. When someone asks you “who are you,” what are all the possible ways you could respond? 2. Which of these are ascribed statuses? Which of these are achieved status? 3. Which is your master status? 4. What roles come into play under your master status? 5. Do you have role strain? 6. Do you have role conflict?

The Language of Social Interaction  Status: a recognizable social position that an individual occupies  Roles: the duties and behaviors expected of someone who holds a particular status

Multiple Statuses  Status Set: All the statuses one holds simultaneously  Ascribed Status: a status into which one is born  Achieved Status: a status into which one enters  Master Status: the one status that stands out most to you or that will always trump other statuses

Who Are You? 1. When someone asks you “who are you,” what are all the possible ways you could respond? 2. Which of these are ascribed statuses? Which of these are achieved status? 3. Which is your master status? 4. What roles come into play under your master status? 5. Do you have role strain? 6. Do you have role conflict?

Multiple Roles  Role Strain: the incompatibility among roles within a single status  Role Conflict: the tension between competing demands as the result of multiple statuses

Who Are You? 1. When someone asks you “who are you,” what are all the possible ways you could respond? 2. Which of these are ascribed statuses? Which of these are achieved status? 3. Which is your master status? 4. What roles come into play under your master status? 5. Do you have role strain? 6. Do you have role conflict?

Social Construction of Reality – what do you see?

Social Construction of Reality

The Social Construction of Reality  Symbolic Interactionism  Ethnomethodology  Dramaturgical Theory

Dramaturgical Theory  Face: the positive social value a person effectively claims for him/herself  Have/Be In/Maintain Face  Be In Wrong/Out of Face  Breaches: mistakes in roles, scripts, lines, costumes, and sets  Lines: a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which the individual expresses their view of a situation  Poise: the capacity to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters with others

Face-Work  Avoidance Process  Corrective Process

Works Cited  Conley, D. (2008). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.  Massey, G. (Ed.) (2006). Readings for sociology (5 th Ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.