Overview - Jeanne Watson Eisenstadt -- CONVENTIONS THAT SHAPE SOCIABLE INTERACTION

I. OVERVIEW OF THE PARTY STUDY

THE DATA. Parties come in all shapes and sizes. In choosing which ones to observe for the study, we looked for parties that were small enough so that one observer could get a sense of the entire party. A large cocktail party, for example, would be unsuitable because one could report only on oneself and one’s immediate contacts. Also, it was necessary that the parties we selected include conversation as a major activity.

Such parties were defined by participants as private. The demand for privacy was a major barrier for us. We tried several different methods of access, but in the end we found that we had to have the same relationship with participants as they had with each other. As outsiders, we would miss the significance of much of the interaction, and indeed, would be so much of a disturbing factor as to destroy the phenomena we wished to observe.

Several observers were working on the project. We each tried to expand as much as possible the range of parties to which we had natural access, but we could not get a detailed report of party conversation except at parties that included ourselves, with friends and/or acquaintances. We supplemented this central body of data with briefer party reports from other people and other places, so that in the end we had reports of 60 parties from 10 different cities and 8 different states. In preparation for the final report, we prepared an appendix giving a brief summary of each of the 60 parties.

The 60 party reports were uneven in quality. We divided them into three categories.
1. Twenty-six parties that were most fully reported were selected for intensive study. Each written report was divided into episodes, and we coded each episode.⁽²⁾
  
  ⁽²⁾For more detail on the definition of an episode, see Watson and Potter, “An Analytic Unit for the Study of Interaction.” In episode analysis, the speaker(s) and listener(s) are treated as a single unit; they work together to shape what happens. The shift of the speaking role back and forth between them is unimportant.
  
  The code was lengthy and, befitting an exploratory study, included many different qualitative codes. Two persons coded each party, and every difference between them was discussed and resolved. Parties selected for coding ranged in number of episodes from 40 to 149, giving us a total of 1873 episodes with an average of 72 per party.
2. A second set of 14 parties was reported in detail sufficient to permit coding of “sequences.” Each party was divided into sequences, with an average of 9 per party. An experienced coder coded each party, using the full episode code for each sequence. This gave us an auxiliary sample against which we could check any findings from the first analysis.
3. A third set of 20 parties increased the range of our observations, but reports could not be used to identify either episodes or sequences. Instead, each report gave information about the party as a whole.
Combining the three sets of parties gave us 60 parties that we used to develop a classification of party type.

The 26 parties that received the most exhaustive attention were all in our own general milieu – directly or indirectly connected with a university, in the metropolitan area of either Detroit or Chicago. The larger set of 60 parties included 15 (25%) from non-academic milieus.

This set of parties was in no sense a representative sample. Rather, it was an enlarged and objectified representation of the slice of life visible to a particular set of people at a particular time and place. Other people in other places would see other parties, even then. Now, with the passage of time, there is even more reason to expect difference.

For comparison with the party information, we collected two other sets of data. We obtained reports over several months of the conversation of a group of graduate students who lunched together regularly; and we collected reports over a number of weeks of the conversation among college students who provided the staff for a large family- and-conference summer resort.
WHERE WE STARTED. To study sociability meant that we took seriously the things people said when they were not being serious. We started with the proposition that party conversation was an expressive art form that must be described in its own terms. We found that a party gave expressive recognition to the feelings that participants had about one another as persons, about themselves as a group, and about their shared concerns. Each of these provided a separate vantage point for the analysis of sociability, although all three could be present in the interaction at the same time.
OUR CONCLUSION. Party conversation is a form of collective behavior, governed by conventions familiar to participants. These conventions represent the distillation of experience as to how the persons present can pool their individual energies to achieve a satisfactory form of collective activity. Each convention provides a stereotyped solution to the question of how to talk together in a sociable situation.

A convention must follow rules that are known to participants and within their sphere of competence. Each person at a party should be able to participate freely. A convention must be sufficiently well-defined to be quickly recognized; sufficiently resonant among the persons present to engage their support; and sufficiently familiar so that persons present know what to do. In a sense, conversing at parties is a participatory sport. The conventions reflect the vision, needs, and expectations of the participants.

Individuals can exert only limited influence on what happens at a party. It would be judged unsociable if one were to require that others at a party act in ways for which they were unprepared, or which they considered inappropriate. Similarly, it would be considered unsociable for one person to monopolize the conversation, talking only about the things that were important to her or to him. Successful interventions by individuals are likely to be ones that initiate a move from one convention to another.

Some conventions are widely known throughout a culture; others are unique to a particular group or sub-culture.

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