we can haz blog?

So, for my comp, I was trying to think of some kind of language process I use often, would be interesting to comp on, and would generate a research question. I've landed on the idea of sarcasm.

I, as I assume most others, am definitely not settled on a topic for my senior comp and am still a little nervous about even narrowing it down. All I have started to look at then, are topics that are of interest to me and my studying, topics that may lead into something that I someday want to continue to work with. With that being said, most of my research interests deal with the development and well-being of children. Some specific developmental disorders that deal with language development and of interest to me are specific language impairment (SLI), dyslexia, autism and mental retardation. SLI and dyslexia are impairments that have to do with reading and language but are accompanied by normal development in other areas. Autism and mental retardation syndromes are more complex and deal with abnormal abilities in other areas of development. According to Charvy Narain who was the editor of the Nature Neuroscience article on http://www.nature.com/neuro/index.html, these two different categories of developmental disorders can be looked at together in order to compare abnormal vs. normal childhood development of language.

An average Internet user was exposed to about 950 banner ads in 2005. Most of these banner ads do not receive much attention, as is apparent from the .5% click-through rate. (Yaveroglu & Donthu, 2008)

I am a double major in Psychology and Art & Technology. For my comp, I am interested in focusing on some kind of visual advertising. While searching for studies to read for Exploring the Field I found this one, "Advertising Repetition and Placement Issues in On-Line Environments".

Although it does not deal directly with what I am planning to do, I don't know if singular studies actually will, and I was curious about it so I thought it was a good place to start. It also reminded me of something I spoke to Prof. Knupsky about briefly for comp ideas as far as volume... how effective something is depending on how often it is repeated.

Note: The girl was doing the worm when you moused over the ad. She looks a little weird in this screenshot.

In the article: HOW SARCASTIC ARE YOU?Individual Differences and Verbal Irony, the researchers bring up an interesting point: How can any one theory about sarcasm explain all the reasons if they don't take into account individual differences?

For my Exploring the Field entry, I figured I'd be practical and take a look at things that were related to my interests. When you think of a PSA that could be related to college life, alcohol is one that always comes up. I thought I'd look at responsible alcohol consumption and where research was developed, which types of studies have been done, and how the type of media (non-profit or commercial) affects it all.

On the continued quest to come up with a topic for my senior comp, I have switched topics completely and am now focusing on spoken language differences in gender. Understanding differences in our everyday communication with others is a relatively new field of study that continues to gain a lot of focus. When searching for articles, I found a meta-analysis of research done looking specifically at how talkative a person was, assertiveness, and affiliation. The researchers predicted that men would be both more talkative to women and assertive where as women would make more affiliative speech when communicating. The previous studies that the researchers looked at where based off of 1.) studies testing gender effect's on adult's language behavior 2.) only studies using quantitative observational measures and 3.) studies in research journals or books. In attempting to explain potential gender differences, Leaper and Ayres focused on three explanations for gender differences. The first is socialization which accounts for the stress on children to participate in gender-typed activities and groups. The second is social constructionist which considers social power and status given to men. The last is biological which says that women and men differ in brain organization. The results of looking at the research done on these areas of communication showed that men actually talk more than women, particularily in mixed-gender interactions agreeing with the social constructionist model that men tend to dominate and overpower women. Men were also more assertive especially in same-sex interactions proving the socialization model that men compete for dominance with other men. Lastly, women had more affiliative speech in same-sex groups also following the socialization model.

A huge part of sarcasm in research is something called common ground. Common ground is the shared belief, ideals, and past situations shared by two or more persons that create a relationship between the people. This common ground helps irony be correctly interpreted. In the article "Does Irony Go Better with Friends," the researchers are focusing on common ground shared by, you guessed it people who have a "close, familiar, supportive, and liking relationship" or friends (144). In the study, participants were presented with a scenario between two people with either a friendship or a nonfriendship setting that finished off with a statement that was the focal point of the example. The participants were then asked questions such as "Is the speaker being ironic?" and "How certain are you that you correctly interpreted the speaker's intent?" (151). It was found that there was a positive correlation between the use of irony and certainty it would be understood. As the researchers expected, the ironic statements made to someone who was a friend was considered to be funnier and more appropriate than ironic comments made to someone who was not a friend.

"marijuana is a gateway drug." Not a very strong or convincing argument against doing drugs, is it? A. Lang & N. Yegiyan didn't think so, either.

The 2008 study, "Understanding the Interactive Effects of Emotional Appeal & Clain Strength in Health Messages", looks at how an audience perceives anti-drug PSAs (what are referred to as health messages). This plays right into what I want to do for my comp which will focus on creating effective PSAs.

Lang & Yegiyan investigate how PSAs can be effective and what makes them fail or even "boomerang". In this case, when a PSA boomerangs, it means that instead of decreasing or discouraging drug use, it encourages teens to try them. Not exactly worth spending large amounts of money on, which the government has been known to do. (see video)

Stop Government Spending on Anti-marijuana Propaganda

As I continue this journey into the topic of interruptions for my senior comp, I have found alot of different articles that have allowed me to have a better understanding of power dynamics and the ways in which we communicate with one another. Although I have initially looked at interruptions in general, I have found specific situational context for interruptive behavior that is very interesting and can help set up ideas for my comp. This article by Menz and Al-Roubaie looks at interruptions in doctor-patient interruptions. They are analyzing three specific ideas. One is to see if interruptions correlate with a person's gender. The second is to see the relationship between interruptions and the doctor's level of training (as either intern or senior). The last is if the length of the interview led to more interruptions. Both supportive and non-supportive interruptions were evaluated. Supportive interruptions were coded as signals of interest in what was being said, described as "physicians maintenance and co-construction of patient-initiated topics" (649). Non-supportive interruptions included violating speaker and are described as "overlapping sequences as violation to speaker's rights" (650).

Results show that doctors of either status (senior or intern) were involved in more non-supportive interruptive behavior than patients. Patients interrupt interns more than senior status doctors. Overall females in general initiated supporting interruptions more than males.

This article is important in understanding status and the role that status plays in interruptive behavior. Also, in terms of gender, this experiment shows different ways in which people interrupt and what type of interruptions occur. I like the ideas that Menz and Al-Roubaie lay out in their study and think that understanding status difference is an important factor to consider when thinking about conversational behavior in two person or group conversations. The only thing to consider is that in these interviews doctors in a hospital setting are typically not going to bring up issues in which cause argument among patients and therefore non-supportive interruptions are not going to be aggressive power displays.

As I continue my comp research, I am interested in looking into more situational context in which elicit interruptions or that look at status differences among individuals in conversation.

Menz, F. & Al-Roubaie, A. (2008). Interruptions, status, and gender in medical interviews:The harder you brake, the longer it takes. Discourse & Society, 19(5), 645-66.

The article that I focus on for this Exploring the Field talks about the difference in interruptive behavior and status differences in group conversations. Because men are viewed as being in positions of dominance, Smith-Lovin & Brody hypothesized that men will interrupt most often, regardless of who they are talking to. Researchers found that interruptions were not as common as they had expected. They found that males interrupt females but not other males. Females were found to interrupt equally for both males and females. The results show that men may interrupt more often due to expectation states framework which suggests that males use their status as a status diffentiation and therefore attempt to dominate men. Women, on the other hand, are inferior to men and therefore interrupt equally, knowing that they hold this position.

Although this article looks specifically at group conversations, I believe that it will extend to my experiment even between 2-person conversations. I am still in the process of deciding on a clear topic however I am interested in extending a previous comp by looking just at male participants (the previous, just female). After filling out a questionairre related to gender, I will see a range of gender associations within men and will be able to see behaviors across gender. So this article will help me in the process by understanding the role that sex plays in language behavior. I will look at gender specifically to see if the same is true across gender. If this is the case I would find that men who identify as more masculine will interrupt men who identify as more feminine.

Another aspect of my project that I need to consider is the situation I am going to present to the participants. As this article has said, interruptions are not as common in conversations as one might think. Because of this I have to set up a situation in which is going to elicit strong opinions so that interruptions can occur. With a good situation or question and a time restraint, the occurance of interruptions is greater.

Pretty sad stuff, huh? A mom with lung cancer who isn't going to be there for her child because she didn't stop smoking, making a home movie in her living room for her baby. It literally almost made me cry. I'm kind of a softy, though.