Communication Strategies

Explain 1-3 instances of how the participants show sequential understanding of one another. AND Explain 1-3 instances of how the participants show understandings about social membership.

Introduction
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis are important tools for identifying and understanding social behavior by observing conversations.

According to Pomerhantz and Fehr (1997), to carry out a conversation analysis, five steps, as illustrated in Figure 1, must be implemented.

Using the method described above, this paper will analyze a transcript to demonstrate a social behavior  how participants show sequential understanding of one another and demonstrate an understanding of social memberships. Sequential understanding is knowing that some things go together and understanding how they go with each other (OConnell  Gerard, 661). Social memberships are realizing which types of people go together socially.

Analysis  Sequential Understanding
In the following transcript portion, Kay and Des demonstrate a sequential understanding of one another. In line 190, Des is narrating the story with specks of laughter, laughs a little and tells more of the story. When she continues telling the story (in line 191) after having laughed, Kay automatically smiles at this (line 192).

He smiles when she has stopped laughing but is still telling the story. The fact that he smiles while she is telling the story without laughing (lines 191 and 192) shows that Kay understood the hilarity in Dess story. Kay understood that smiling was important because it went with Dess story at the moment, regardless of what Dess action was laughing or not laughing.

Assuming, Des telling the story without laughing is event 1 and Kay laughing is event 2. Kay demonstrated sequential understanding by knowing that event 2 goes together with event 1.

In the following excerpt, more sequential understanding between Des and Kay is set off. Des is still telling the story she tells Kay how she told the lifeguard what her apartment number is. Kay, however, gets confused for a bit, cuts her laughter and instead of laughing with her, asks her a question (line 204). Des is still going on (line 205) until she hears what Kay is saying and immediately answers his question without putting much effort into it. She knows exactly what the question referred to. She confirms it with such easiness that it shows the sequential understanding between the two participants.

When Kay interrupts Des, she just knows which part of her story Kays question was related to, even though she had moved on from that part and there was no explicit mention by Kay as to what part his question referred to.

Assuming that Des telling story about the apartment number is event 1, Kay asking a question about the apartment number is event 2, and Des answering the question is event 3. When event 2 occurs, Des understands that it sequentially goes together with event 1.

Another example of sequential understanding is shown in the following excerpt. Des is telling a story when suddenly something goes wrong with their connection. Des does not know that her voice is breaking up, so she goes on with her story. When it starts to break up, Kay signals it out. She takes a pause to understand what is going on and asks Kay (line 223). As soon as Kay starts telling her the part that he missed out. She mentally calculates where her voice must have started breaking up and immediately recognizes the point where it did. She looks for a confirmation by asking Kay but before he can answer (line 226), she continues with the story (line 227).

This shows that she understood what Kay was saying and knew exactly what to relate it with. Dess understanding of how the two things were related demonstrated sequential understanding.

Analysis  Understanding Social Memberships
In the following excerpt, Des and Kay both show an understanding of social memberships that is knowing and understanding how people are grouped together in a social context.
They demonstrate this understanding when Des is talking about John, another lifeguard that Ann had worked with in the past. She knows John from somewhere else. While she is talking to Ann, Lizzie is on the phone with John.

This is when Des sees the connection between the two people. She sees that they are both in the same profession lifeguards. She also realizes the requirements in order to make the connection work, a single relationship status and preferably a high income.

She tries to group them together socially by informing Anna about all of Johns such traits (lines 231and 232). Therefore, Des has a concept of social memberships.

Kay, on the other hand, laughs as soon as Des narrates about how she mentioned Johns income to Ann (line 233). He, therefore, understands this to be a more important requirement for a social membership. Thus, he also has an understanding about social memberships, only (probably) in a slightly different context that Dess understanding.

Another excerpt where only hints of social membership were set off is as follows. This is
when Kay expresses how he expected Des to have quietly got into the pool instead of having a conversation with the lifeguard. Des responds to this by saying that she started talking to her because she thought that Ann was funny. Therefore, Des acted differently because she thought that she would socially go together with Ann. She demonstrates an understanding of her social membership circle by hinting that she hangs out and gets along well with people who hve  asense of humor and who are friendly by nature.

Had this not been the case, had Ann been a stern old lifeguard, des would have stayed on the low. However, she acted differently socially because of her impression of her own social membership domain.