Independent Research Project- Miss Universe Australia

Lara Morris
4328322
Katie Freund
SOC250
Everyday Interactions
1 November 2012

Independent Research Project: Miss Universe Australia Question Fail

Miss Universe pageants maintain remarkably high standards for their competitors within their codes of conduct which allow for a large domain of disappointment. One trip, stumble or wrong answer can cost a contestant her chance at winning the crown and title of being the most beautiful woman in the world. The women in these pageants are intensely critiqued on their mannerisms, appearance, impression, talents, and ability to answer questions. Their success is based on their ability to impress the judges and conform to their expectations of the Miss Universe idealistic in being an intelligent, well-mannered and beautiful woman. Thus, when the contestants fail to perform in such a way, they are heavily scrutinized and demeaned. The vast array of expectations between and among the contestants and judges provides an intriguing sociological interpretation of the micro interactions that occur within these pageants. 

In this report I am going to analyze a video clip and how it relates to themes of micro-sociology and everyday interactions. The piece of data that I have chosen to analyze is of a Miss Universe Australia contestant, Jesinta, during the question answering round. I am going to analyze Jesinta’s interaction with her setting, audience, and interviewer through micro-sociological themes. Specifically, I will interpret how Jesinta breaks the rules of conduct within the Miss Universe Australia competition and how she does not live up to the expectations of herself and the audience. I will also briefly conduct a discourse analysis on the types and ways that language is used during these interactions.

Video 1. The video clip of Jesinta during the question response round in the 2009 Miss Universe Australia pageant (Ten 2010).

As seen in Video 1, the setting of this contest takes place in a formal venue where there is a single focus among a stage and an audience. Everyone present is there to watch or be a part of the Miss Universe Australia pageant. The three main actors in this clip are the contestant, Jesinta, the interviewee, Peter, and the audience. Between and among each of these actors there are micro interactions occurring.  

As first identified by Goffman (1971), there is a front and a backstage for every interaction. The backstage is defined as an informal setting where actors prepare for their performance on the frontstage where they act a role in front of an audience. The backstage of this clip involves all of the preparation Jesinta has put in to getting ready for the competition including her make-up, fittings, and rehearsals. With every backstage there is a corresponding frontstage. The frontstage of Jesinta’s performance is her appearances in front of the judges and during the Miss Universe Australia competition. This is when Jesinta is on her best behavior and acting according to the way that she wants people to perceive her. She is putting on a performance for both the judges and audience and acting in such a way that she believes Miss Universe Australia would act. This social front can be divided in to three parts: setting, appearance, and manners. 

The setting of the pageant is that of asymmetrical demeanor, meaning that there is a hierarchy among the people present or a difference of treatment between them (Goffman 1967). Within the hierarchy, Jesinta is at the bottom of the pyramid. She is seeking approval by the judges while being critiqued on everything she does. The rules of conduct within the contest hold expectations and obligations from both the actor(s) and the audience. These rules are upheld by the judges and what it symbolizes to hold the title of Miss Universe Australia. These rules represent a guideline for her actions based on the views of Miss Universe by society and cultures throughout the lifespan of the competition. In the Miss Universe Australia pageant, the audience and judges maintain certain expectations and ideals of what they believe Miss Universe Australia is or how she should behave. Accordingly, this is how they expect Jesinta to behave. This is also represented in the way that Jesinta has an obligation to perform in a way that adequately represents the winner of the Miss Universe competition. A successful self performance by Jesinta according to her obligations and the expectations of the judges is the key to fulfilling her role and winning the competition. 

Jesinta gives off an impression of wealth, elegance, glamour, happiness, and perfection. She does this through her personal front by managing her appearance and mannerisms (Goffman 1971). Because of this initial self impression given off of, Jesinta has a high status and exchange rate. 

Figure 1. Jesinta’s appearance during the Miss Universe Australia pageant in 2009 (Google Images 2012).

As seen in Figure 1, Jesinta is wearing an elegant and very expensive looking gown showing off her slim figure. Her hair and make-up are done to perfection along with her coordinated jewelry to complete her appearance of the ideal femininity. Her appearance acts as a stimuli to inform the audience of her social status (Goffman 1971). Within the video clip, Jesinta is continuously smiling and maintaining impeccable manners to display the attributes of Miss Universe Australia. She is polite in that she respects Peter while he is talking and then thanks him for giving her a question to answer, which is not necessary.   

Jesinta breaks the rules of conduct of the pageant when she stutters and loses her wording while trying to answer the question proposed by Peter. As noted by Goffman (1967), “when a rule of conduct is broken we find that the two individuals run the risk of becoming discredited: one with an obligation, who should have governed himself by the rule; and the other with an expectation, who should have been treated in a particular way because of this governance. Both actor and recipient are threatened.” Specifically, Jesinta does not live up to the expectations of the judges who expect her to be able to answer this question without hesitating or losing her wording. Similarly, she does not fulfill her obligations as a Miss Universe Australia contestant. Jesinta acknowledges that she has broken the rules of conduct when she awkwardly laughs and apologizes. This inability to conform to the rules of conduct damages her ‘face’ and deprives her of the role she is attempting to achieve. She is visibly upset after her face-damaging act, as one’s emotions are associated to one’s ‘face’ and status. Jesinta attempts to maintain her 'face' by apologizing to the audience and judges for her word fumble. 

The audience responds to Jesinta’s apology and loss of words by clapping for her. Although clapping is not an interaction through spoken words, it is a form of communication (Whelan 2012b). However, within this form of interaction the content is not clear. This clapping can be interpreted in two ways: as a positive or negative act. The clapping could signify the audience’s encouragement to continue answering the question while recognizing Jesinta’s mishap in her performance. Alternatively, the clapping may be an acknowledgement that she has failed to comply with their expectations and that her question answering round is over and she will most likely not go any further in the competition. Because clapping is commonly a sign or recognition of a job well done, the clapping in this scenario is most likely an encouragement and face-saving act. In this way, the audience is not opposing Jesinta but is instead providing means of compassion and facework (Whelan 2012a). However, they are not creating an alliance with her because they know that she has committed a beauty pageant faux pas. This is what Goffman terms 'cooling the mark out' (Goffman 1952). The 'mark' is the failure to comply with the expectations of the Miss Universe Australia pageant. When someone is involuntarily deprived of their role or status, there is a cooling period, or transition and acceptance of a lesser role or demotion. By the positive facework done on Jesinta, she is given a second opportunity to redeem her face and enforce her status as competitor for the title of Miss Universe Australia.   

The pragmatics of Jesinta’s use of the phrase “I’m sorry” is contextual and representative of her understanding that she did not oblige by the rules of conduct for the pageant. By definition, the meaning of 'sorry' is to feel distress or sympathy for someone of misfortune or to acknowledging a wrongdoing by expressing remorse (Pettigrove & Collins 2011). If this is the context in which Jesinta was using the phrase, it would imply that she has sympathy for the audience and judges. This would suggest that she feels bad for the audience’s misfortune of hearing her scramble for words and that she is apologizing for not living up to their expectations of her performance. The meaning of this apology is very specific to this interaction. In other contexts, “I’m sorry” can be a way of expressing sympathy or compassion for the death of a friend or family member or accidentally nudging someone while walking down the street. An apology can have a vast array of meanings. It is not for the stumbling of words that Jesinta is apologizing for, but instead it is the meaning behind the stumble. It shows her inability to fulfill her performance as Miss Universe Australia. As quoted by Goffman (1971), “a person may involuntarily be deprived of a role under circumstances which reflect unfavorably on his capacity for it. The lost role may be one that he had already required or one that he had openly committed himself to preparing for. In either case the loss is more than a matter of ceasing to act in a given capacity; it is ultimate proof of an incapacity.” In the context of Jesinta's apology, it is a recognition that she has let herself, the judges, and the audience down and may be appealing for their sympathy or compassion.

Jesinta’s overall performance was successful in that she was able to complete the question while providing an acceptable answer. However, her performance would have been scrutinized by the judges and not considered very fulfilling as Miss Universe Australia. Her original high status was not re-established although it was not entirely diminished either. The facework done on Jesinta by the audience allowed her to save 'face' and keep her composure to complete her answer. 

From a broader perspective, Jesinta's question round 'fail' was posted on youtube.com and evidently went viral and public for anyone to see. This may affect the reputation of the Miss Universe Australia competition in that they do not have control over who views the video and how they interpret it or comment on it.    

References

Goffman, E (1952), 'On Cooling the Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure', accessed 28 October 2012, http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/Goffman--Cooling.htm

Goffman, E (1967), ‘The Nature of Deference and Demeanor’, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviors, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, pp. 47-95.

Goffman, E (1971), ‘Performances’, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp. 28-82.

Google Images (2012), accessed 29 October, from http://leisure.ezinemark.com/jesinta-campbell-crowned-miss-universe-australia-2010-77364e0b3a68.html

Pettigrove, G, & Collins, J (2011), ‘Apologizing for Who I Am’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 137-148.

Ten (2010), ‘Miss Universe Question Fail.’, Youtube.com, accessed 20 October 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AAViRKF2mA

Whelan, A (2012a), 'SOC250 2012 Subject Outline', Everyday Interactions, University of Wollongong, Faculty of Arts, accessed 20 October 2012, pp. 1-10.  

Whelan, A (2012b), 'Week 8 Lecture Slides', SOC250 Everyday Interactions, University of Wollongong, accessed 28 October 2012, http://soc250-everyday-interaction.blogspot.com.au/

Whoops! Comment.

I forgot to post the link to a comment I made on Danielles's blog a while ago! Here it is:

http://daniellejalovec.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/bloody.html

Week 12 ...Profanity

I know I am totally out of order with the blog posts, but I realized I never wrote about the most interesting topic of this entire course - profanity! Swearing changes everything within discourse. For example,

"I love you" - very serious, meaningful, 3 letter phrase most people are terrified to admit to a significant other.
"I fucking love you" - most likely between 2 friends after a few beers, and most like has the same meaning as "you're an awesome person and we should hang out more."

And then there the instances where swearing and tone are combined to make things even more fucking confusing.

"Fuck off" (serious tone) - get lost before I knock your teeth out.
"Fuck off" (casual or sarcastic tone) - another way of say "are you serious?!"
"Fuck off" (playful tone) - aka 'Fuck off :)' - if you get lost right now because I said "fuck off" it will probably be really awkward and I will wonder what I did wrong.

Discourse analysis has made me hyper-vigilant about the ways and tones in which I use words. I am now overly aware of the way people talk to me. Thanks SOC250...

Now that I have pretty much reached my word limit for these blogs, all I have left to say is... I fucking hate blogs! Actually, I just hate the ones that I have to write on a weekly basis that are based on lecture content and references, which to me totally and completely defeats the purpose of writing a blog in the first place. Isn't a blog supposed to be something that you write because you enjoy it and you want to express your epiphanies that you had riding on the bus or talking to a complete stranger in everyday life?

Week 11 - D vs. d

Only in sociology would there be different definitions for a word depending on whether it has a lower or uppercase letter at the beginning. The definitions are very straightforward and easily understood- those being for the differences between institution and Institutions, and discourse and Discourse.

The one topic that I found particularly interesting this week was reverse-polarity questions. I am fascinated at the way in which people can influence or manipulate the responses of others based on the way that they phrase their questions. This way of talking reminds me of when you meet people for the first time and don't want to offend them, so you want to try and please them by giving them the answers that they want to hear, or the answer that they imply they want to hear. For example, when you're getting ready for a party with a couple of new friends and one of them asks, "this shirt doesn't look good, does it?"

To me, this question has already answered itself. The person asking it just wants an opinion from someone else to enforce their decision that is does not look good. Chances are, they wouldn't have worn the shirt even if I had told them it looked great.

Group Presentation

Here is the presentation slides from last Thursday's tutorial. Better late than never, right?

Week 9 - Conversation analysis

I remember as a teenager wanting a new cellphone every time a new and more advanced one became available. My first phone was a flip phone, and at the time I thought I was the coolest kid on the block. I even decorated it with shiny rhinestones. After losing this phone, I got a slide phone with a touchscreen AND a camera built right in to the phone! Then came the smartphones. I can now check my email, update my status on Facebook, and instant message with my friends half way across the globe. Technology has advanced and in turn our modes of communication and the discourse that we use have changed with these advances. This new technology provided a new means of communication and conversation. Computer mediated communication is something that my generation has grown up with. First it was the email, a disembedded interaction lifted out of space and time. Now we have smartphones which have allowed computer mediated communication to dominate a large percentile of social interactions by re-embedding disembedded interactions. This means that interactions such as email, that were once only considered as online conversations, can now be considered to have time and space because most people have smartphones that allow them to reply instantly from anywhere. This being said, email is still considered to be an asynchronic interaction in that it is not live in the same way that a chatroom or instant message is.

There have been many trends in the past decade in computer mediated communication that allow people to interact both live simultaneously, asynchronically, anonymously or with an identity. There is an increasinging amount of information that people put on social mediated websites such as Facebook and Twitter about their identities or anonymity. Without even knowing someone, a lot can be discovered about a person through their comments, photos, and posts. The risks associated with attaching ones name to their online identity are very vast and exceed most peoples expectations. "When using the internet technology socially online for friendship or relationships there is an element of risk. People tend to lie and present false identities online, more so than face-to-face interaction, and deception can be hard to detect when it is computer mediated. A degree of disinhibition online that is associated with diminished feedback appears to contribute to deceptive or harmful behaviors" (Goh et al., 2011). Because people's names are not necessarily attributed to their true identities, they are more inclined to diminish others or act in extremist ways when online.
 
The question is, what sort of computer mediated interaction will be the next big craze? Surely Facebook is only the beginning of communication in virtual space and time.      

Ttyl :)


Reference

Goh, L. Y. Q., Phillips, J.G., and Blaszcynski, A. 2011. "Computer-mediated communication and risk-taking behavior." Computers in Human Behavior. vol. 27, no. 5: pp. 1794-1799.

Data

I am doing my data discussion presentation tomorrow. Here's a link to the data I have chosen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AAViRKF2mA

If I stutter in the morning I wont feel so bad, because apparently Miss Universe does it too.

Week 8 - The Code

"To call someone a fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that's like saying that you're nothing" (Pascoe, 2005, pp. 335). In another sociology course I am taking, Men and Masculinities, we recently studied the intersections of masculinities and sexuality. This involved the study of the slang word 'fag' and it's pragmatics and sociolinguistics. To call someone a fag is defined as an offensive way of calling someone a male homosexual. Although, in a study done by Pascoe among high school students, this was not the typical meaning that they associated with the term 'fag'. As noted by Pascoe, "'fag' is not necessarily a static identity attached to a particular (homosexual) boy. Any boy can temporarily become a fag in a given social space or interation" (pp. 330). In the study, both heterosexual and homosexual boys were called 'fags' based on their failure of competence and masculinity, not because of their sexual preferences. The literal meaning of the term 'fag' was not used between schoolmates but instead there was social understanding of what the words unwritten meaning was.

Pascoe's study of high school students relates to the topics of SOC250 in that we study forms of communication and conversational structure. The discourse of many words, including 'fag', are capable of having many meanings in different social contexts. For example, many people may call their heterosexual friends 'fags' when they do something embarrassing and in this context the term is taken much more lightheartedly than if a homosexual was called a 'fag'. The genre of one's speech, or hedging, may also influence the way these words are interpreted and how offensive they are meant to be.         



References

Pascoe, C. J. (2005). 'Dude, you're a fag': Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse. Sexualities, 8(3):  329-346.

Week 7 - Ethnomethodology

A baby boy picks up a utensil. He calls it a fork, when it is actually a spoon. Is he wrong? How do we know that it is a spoon? What defines a spoon? The answer lies in the haecceity, or thisness of the spoon: it's characteristics and properties that define it. What gives things these characteristics and definitions? The only reason that we, as a society, know the difference between a spoon and a fork is because we were taught the characteristics of each as a young child and these notions have been passed down through generations and are reflected in dictionaries, etc. As defined by Garfinkel, the documentary method of interpretation is the method used to make sense of such social means such as why a spoon is understood to be a spoon among societies. This method helps us recognize patterns in social situations and rationalize things for ourselves while interpreting our surroundings. The forks and spoons that the baby plays with are reinforcing that the baby is in a kitchen. The patterns of cutlery, chairs, tables, food, etc., are all justification that the setting is a kitchen because of their relevancy to the kitchen environment.

In a review of Garfinkel's idea of ethnomethodology, John Heritage states that it is "utterly devoid of significant content [and is] preoccupied with narrow methodological concerns" (1986, pp 346). John also claimed that ethnomethodology was "lacking any methodology whatsoever, especially procedures of deciding validity and replicating accounts of the social world" (pp 347). I also found Grafinkel's terms within ethnomethodology very ambiguous and hard to understand. The definitions all seem very intertwined in that they all describe ways to rationalize and understand the social world in means that make sense to oneself.


Reference
Heritage, J 1986, Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 346-349, viewed 13 September 2012.

Week 5 - The self

This is the first sociology course I have taken and it is making me think much differently about interpersonal relations that I have everyday.  I found this weeks topic of self presentation particularly interesting because it makes me wonder why I do the things that I do, from getting dressed in the morning to staring down in class so that I don't get chosen to read a response out loud.  My favorite concept from Goffman's reading this week is that of asymmetrical and symmetrical relations.  Thinking back to high school, I remember having many levels of relations with teachers, classmates, friends, and family.  I had symmetrical relationships with my friends and many classmates, but when in front of my family or friend's parents, I portrayed an entirely different self, and participated in asymmetrical relationships.  At school we swore, bragged about partying and drinking, and often back-talked classmates and teachers.  The impression my mom had of me when I got home from school each day was entirely different and similar to what teachers and other higher authority figures thought of me because of the way I acted in front of them.  I was always aware of the different ways I portrayed myself in different social contexts but Goffman has helped me identify and understand these self expressions more critically. 

Week 6 - Life as a game

Once again, the SOC250 reading had me thinking twice about normal 'everyday interactions' that I have. This weeks reading was Performances by Goffman. In particular, I found it entertaining comparing the frontstage and backstage performances to Facebook. I look at Facebook everyday. I think most students who attend UOW can say the same thing. It's comical to think about those friends on Facebook, the ones that you have added even though you really do not know them all that well. You know, those ones you may have met once through a friend or even someone that you have shared many drunken nights with but don't actually acknowledge each other when you cross paths at uni. Those Facebook 'friends'. We all have them. You sit on your computer bored and creep their pages making critical assumptions about their life based on their profile pictures, photo albums, mutual friends and wall posts. This Facebook profile, or frontstage as Goffman would call it, portrays the person the way they want their friends, family and public to see them. There's also the wall posts and comments. When you sit on Facebook on the same photo for fifteen minutes trying to come up with a good comeback to the previous comment so that your audience (friends) of your frontstage (Facebook profile) will applaud you with 'likes'. This topic relates back to last weeks readings about demeanor and deference in that the response from your audience influences your performance.

Another topic that Goffman presented was of idealized characters and performance. I have to say I find his example of girls playing dumb to make boys like them as stereotypical. Most guys I know do not like girls that act dumb - they think they are dumb. However, I do agree that people put on roles to impress their peers or love interests. Girls may put on roles to make men feel more masculine which in turn causes him to like her more. This leads to the topics of misinterpretation and social cues which give way to some of the most awkward situations that have ever occurred.