Ethnography Project

Observation:

I did my research at a Starbucks. In walks in this beautiful girl with a bag in one hand, and her phone in the other. She seems to be looking for someone, she searches both the front and the back of the store. After a thorough search of the place, she realizes that the person she was looking for was nowhere to be found. She then sits at a nearby table, takes out her phone and proceeds to text excessively. A few minutes later she gets a phone call and she informs the person that she has arrived and was waiting at the back of the store. After about twenty minutes or so, a guy well attired for a fist-pumping session, walks in with his hair gelled up desperately trying to hit the ceiling. He is adorned from head to toe with every accoutrement Ed Hardy has to offer. He walks in, winks at the girl, and walks up to the counter and orders his drink. Her excitement was obvious, she gets up and gives him a kiss and a hug. She then tells him what she wants and he pays. She didn’t even bother to reach for her cash, not even a slight gesture. That’s man-ly chivalry for you.

A few tables behind them sits a couple, each on their laptop. From time to time the guy would get up from his seat and go to where he can see his girlfriend’s computer screen and would burst into laughter. He did this a few times, and after every single laughing session, he would kiss her on the lips and return to where he was previously sitting. After every kiss, after he has sat down, his girlfriend would take his hand, squeeze it, and would give him the cutest smile, a smile that was so adorable, so bright, that it would make turn the darkest of nights into days. I later found out after a quick trip to the restroom that the girl was having a Skype session (webcam to webcam) with an older woman. I assume that to be her, or his, mother.

Every now and then, in the midst of all this, there’s always that person on his/her phone that would walk in talking to another from across the airwaves. A steady stream of people on their electronic devices that would wander into this lowly neighborhood Starbucks. It was either the wife calling and asking the husband for his dinner preferences. The husband checking in on the wife and kids. The college/high school student calling his significant other wondering where he/she is and if she fancied herself a drink. The “Electronic Elves” as I called them on my notes.

Analysis:
During my observations, one thing was prevalent, and that was the use of electronics or technology. In our society today, the major means of communications is through technology. Whether it be by the girl texting her boyfriend, or the couple talking to their parent or the hordes of “Electronic Elves” communicating with their loved ones, human interactions are now taken to a whole other level because of the use of electronics.

In class we discussed the many ways gender roles are portrayed. During my observation I didn’t really see any of that being done. Except of course for the girl waiting for her boyfriend. Usually, or at least socially, it is more acceptable for the man to be chivalrous and not leave the lady waiting, but all that was brought to status quo when the man paid for the drinks, which, going back to the old days, was always “socially expected”.
According to Derrida, the relationship between A always changes with accordance to the “thing” accompanying it. He says that “there are only differences within a language.” (Derrida) I saw that with the wife caring for her husband’s dinner preference. She was not just a wife, in relationship to her children, by definition she is also a mother. Derrida state that there’s no real binary relationship, or as Saussure would call it, “signage”, when it comes to one thing. Definitions are always changing with relations to the things around it.

Couples are only called couples because according to Saussure, a sign is composed of a signifier, which is the “sound-image,” and a signified, which is the “concept”. (Saussure 79). In every sense of the word, the couple sitting on the table, holding hands, is what makes them, at least socially, a “couple”. This of course is what makes them a couple. Because of what we see and what society tells us the definition of what a “couple” is. The affection they share is what people see.

Works Cited.
Derrida, Jacques. “Chapter 8: ‘Difference.’” 385-407. PDF File.
Saussure, Ferdinand De. “Chapter Two: Course in General Linguistics.” 76-89. PDF File.