While observing people engaged in
conversation, I have noticed that one individual can have multiple
personalities, depending on who they are talking to. As I watch two friends
from the basketball team greet each other, they give each other high-fives and
openly laugh and smile as they catch up on each others day’s events. The same
person speaks with her professor after class; she has a more serious look on
her face, her tone is serious, and she is on her best behavior. As a couple of
guys are talking, they are both using slang and are speaking with exaggerated
accents and dialects. The same young man has a totally different voice when
talking to his girlfriend, using a much softer and sweeter voice. When he talks
to his six-month old nephew, he seems totally crazy, talking baby-talk and
making silly faces. My sociological imagination tells me that people want to
please other people. We speak to the elderly with respect, because we want to
please them; we use our best grammar in a job interview because we want the
interviewer to like us; we use baby-talk with babies because we want to make
them happy and to see them smile. By observing these communication patterns it
is easy to see that society adjusts to situations and to people in order to fit
in and to be liked.
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