The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills "The Dinner Party From Hell"

(Between 5:25-7:30 in the video)

According to Chaika, greetings are an excellent example of style as communication (Chaika, 58). In most greetings, the words tend to be ignored and it is the style of the greeting that stands out. In this video of Bravo’s reality series, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” double-cheek air kissing and high class gestures clearly take precedence over what is actually said between the women as they greet each other. In other words, what someone says takes a back seat to how it is said.

The series offers a glimpse inside the world of luxurious wealth and pampered privilege, where being seen and who you know is everything. These women are in the center of it all and they have the mansions, the cars, and the diamonds to prove it.

In chapter 3, Chaika indicates that it is inappropriate to state one’s “real” feelings in words. If responders are not happy or satisfied, they still must use words that indicate good feelings (Chaika, 59). We can apply this to the point in the clip (5:25) where the women hug and kiss each other even though most of them don’t get along. By watching their private interviews, we are exposed to what they are truly feeling at the time of the greeting. It was also interesting to hear their interpretations of how they were greeted by one another.

The rules for greeting and other social routines are typically unspoken. I think it is the culture or setting that has a hand in determining how certain social groups interact. I wonder, would the greetings between these women be any different if they were in a different setting? Does culture really play that big of a role in the way we communicate with others?

"The Newscaster"

Blog Entry #2:

(Click on the link below to watch the video clip)

Baron Vaughn - Special Expose

(The language in this clip may be a little inappropriate so I apologize.)

In this hilarious video clip, stand-up comedian Baron Vaughn jokes that the voice of a newscaster is consistent in all languages, accents, and dialects.

When I first watched this clip, I actually found some truth in his joke.  What’s funny is that newscasters do, in fact, seem to speak in a similar tone, across all cultures.

According to our textbook, dialects are varieties of a language, usually but not always mutually intelligible to their speakers.  Dialects encompass differences in grammar as well as word choice; whereas, accents refers only to differences in the way words are pronounced (Chaika, 2).

If you think about it, the voice of a newscaster doesn’t change, no matter what language he is speaking, what dialect is being used, or what way he pronounces his words.  What Vaughn suggests, is that the voice of a newscaster is consistent in each of these aspects of language whether it comes from domestic of foreign broadcast media.

(Baron Vaughn beginning at 00:25 in the video):  “America’s an amazing country.  There’s so many voices, accents, dialects, languages, things like that, but there’s one voice that you hear no matter where you go, and that’s the way newscasters talk...”  (He then speaks like a newscaster in English, Spanish, and Norwegian to give examples.)  

I chose this clip because it was a funny and lighthearted way of elaborating on some of the key concepts in Chapter 1 of our textbook.

This post has me wondering, what else seems to remain consistent in all languages, across all cultures?  Is there anything?