Personal relationships are enacted by talking with each other. If people don't have anything to say to each other, they generally can't sustain a personal connection. We can study social relationships by observing who talks with whom and in what manner. I will present research on differences in conversations by males or females; young or old; and different social class.
Women and men have distinct styles of talking; but in the upper-middle class, women talk more like men. For children, social class differences develop later: children sound more alike than adults do. People segregate themselves most sharply by age and class; as we can see when observing who is with whom in public.
I am going to describe an unobtrusive method I have been using to do research on conversations. It doesn't involve invading anybody's privacy, or carrying a hidden tape-recorder or camera. In the past two years, walking around city streets and parks, I carry a small note-book; and when I hear somebody talking, I write down the words, the tone of voice, and a brief description of the persons in the conversation.
Sometimes it is only a few words; sometimes it is several sentences. One might think that we can't make much sense out of little bits of conversation, unless we hear a complete exchange, as people talk back and forth. The fragments I pick up are mostly lacking in this kind of context. In addition, I know nothing about these people except what they look like and where they are when the bit of talking takes place. Nevertheless, I will try to show you that these little samples of talk make a sociological pattern; different kinds of people tend to do certain kinds of talking, when they are in public places. And we can infer that this is a sample of the way they talk in sociable situations elsewhere.
I started this research two years ago, in the latter part of the covid epidemic. During that time, many people started taking daily walks, for exercise and get out of the house. Restaurants had been set up on sidewalks, and many of these still remain. Somewhat earlier, with the proliferation of mobile phones, people became used to speaking their private conversations, generally quite loudly, in public. One might think that cell phone conversations would have even less context, since we hear and see only one side of the participants; but I will show you that cell phone talking fits the same social patterns as face-to-face talk.
Thus far I have collected about 240 conversational samples. I do not collect practical situations, where someone is giving an order at a restaurant, or delivering a package. I omit conversations that involve myself or where I know the people personally. I do not include conversations consisting entirely of people saying hello or other kinds of brief greetings; who greets whom shows a very strong difference by class and age, which I will summarize at the end.
Most of my observations were made in California, but some of these patterns exist in other parts of the world.
Here are two examples:
Two adult voices, female, walking past me on a block of neighbourhood shops. Hip-fitting jeans, slender, upper-middle-class women in their 30s. Mezzo-soprano voice says: "I don't want to have anything to do with it."
Alto voice: "I thought I had a thought on that..." and she ends with a trill and a laugh.
Middle-age
man in scruffy work clothes, a house construction worker, to the female driver of delivery truck stopped
in street:
M: "We'll have to go for a drink some time."
F: "What's that?"
M: repeats "We should go for a drink some time."
F: laughs
M: laughs
F drives off
The two conversations differ in social class and in gender composition. The two fashionable women are having what Goffman would call a backstage conversation, about someone they both know. They speak in a sophisticated manner, elaborate grammar and a certain amount of social distancing: "I don't want to have anything to do with it." "I thought I had a thought on that..." They are speaking cleverly; and seem to enjoy their cleverness, by the tone of voice and the laugh.
The second conversation, like the first, takes place within the same social class, in this case working class. It's a familiar sexual flirtation: the older man suggests having a drink "some time"; the woman puts him off by questioning what he has said; and laughs when he repeats it. He laughs too-- it was a failure but we had fun playing this little conversational game. She never says anything negative, but she wins anyway.
Here are some generalizations: by sex; by age; by social class.
POINT [1] WOMEN TALK ABOUT PERSONS; MEN TALK ABOUT OBJECTIVE THINGS.
3 teen-adolescent girls in shorts: "cause Jeremiah-- sometimes he-" --- I heard only four words, but they are talking about a person they know.
2 teen girls, hands in blue-jeans pockets; one says in a soft little voice: "with him, it's like.... well, I get it..." --- Not a complete sentence, but the pronouns are enough to know it's about a particular boy.
2 YF [young women in their 20s]: "He'll never do that again. But I--"
Older and younger women with a dog: YF: "She was really upset with her..."
2 dumpy mom-aged Fs: "I hope she feels really bad about it for the rest of the day." --- angry about somebody.
2 middle age housewives, schlumpfy in jeans, saying goodbye to each other; the woman about to get into a car says: "What he doesn't know won't hurt him!"-- then gives a shrill giggle. This is Goffman backstage talk, secrets between intimates. So are the next two quotes:
2 middle age Fs, walking: "I could not get that answer out of him..." --- complaining about a husband or son.
2 Fs, around 50: "she was worried that whatever it was..."
2 50s-ish women walking: "She's a comedian. She's very acerbic. She's blonde."
"...then she lost momentum and she can't get back into it..." Two 50s-ish women on bay-side walking path in a very nice residential area next to a yacht harbor, chattering full speed-- as I can hear them into the distance. --- The last couple of examples suggest higher social class by their vocabulary "acerbic," "momentum" -- psychology talk.
This pattern of female talk is not confined to the United States. I heard the following in a town in Germany: street in residential area, 2 mid-age Fs: "Er hat immer Wohnung, zu Hausen..." translation: "He always lived at home..."
MALES USUALLY TALK ABOUT OBJECTIVE OR TECHNICAL TOPICS:
"From a freeway point of view--" guy on cell phone in ocean-side park. There is no freeway in sight.
M to F, around 30, riding bikes in residential neighbourhood: "It's a lemon tree, or any other---"
"...books that are a year old... the books first of all..." This is a male in wide-brimmed outdoors hat and shorts, lecturing a silent female in similar clothes striding briskly past, talking a walk to stay fit. People who are together often dress alike.
Voices behind beautiful garden hedge, pastel-painted house in nice residential neighbourhood: YM: "that becomes another thing--" YF: "you mean they're building units--" YM: "yeah, residential and commercial--"
Even when out doing a group run, men still talk business: Bringing up the rear of 5 K run, middle-aged M walking with F says: "convenience of ownership..."
Even at a party, men tend to talk about objective topics rather than gossip about people. Saturday afternoon yard party behind hedge; sounds of several small children, a baby, laughing, giggling, encouraged by adults. At far end of hedge, a M in conversation says: "Well I think 100% wood... waterfront ..."
Men's conversation is not very sensitive to social situations. Most men dislike small talk -- i.e. talk expressly designed to fill a social obligation to keep up a semblance of sociability. Hence their talk intrudes male topics even when inappropriate:
Two male/female couples, middle-aged, presumably long married; in a hotel lobby bar, full of people on vacation. The women sit across from the men, who carry on a conversation: "Why are you still renting? The irony is..." "Can we still get another year? ... on market 3 years now..." He gives a lengthy monologue in energetic voice; women sit quietly while the men talk.
2 M, similarly dressed in shorts, baseball cap, T-shirt: One says: "...the agency. We don't want 'em anymore, get someone else..."
2 YMs in aisle of a popular bulk-purchase store: "Don't get me wrong, I did a 10-year at Farm" (i.e. investment in an insurance company). They are both very fit-looking, a sign of upper-middle class status in California.
YM runner, loudly talking on speaker phone while getting his exercise: "I tried calling him but---" I hear the same runner again, coming back from a dead-end street-- "a dealer I recycle with-- got him down to ... dollars a month" --- Not as high economic class as the previous example; but running for exercise is itself an indicator of social class.
The following example sums up the pattern of gender difference, starting already with kids: Half-dozen children coming home from school together; one of the bigger girls in front says to another girl: "He only likes that one person..." A smaller boy at the rear talks to another boy about a dog.
POINT [2] DIFFERENCES BY AGE: CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE TALK ABOUT ONESELF.
Half dozen adolescent girls on sidewalk outside a Saturday afternoon house party: One girl says: "I grabbed it with this hand-- I don't think I burned myself." --- One hears the first-person pronoun a lot from this demographic.
YF wearing tights, on cellphone: "I must be, right? I must be--" her arms gesturing while walking.
A wealthy neighbourhood: YF in shorts, heavy thighs, taking on cell phone while walking a small ugly dog: "It's like I... every supervisor turns against me... [complain-ey voice] ... Yeah, well I'm like.... I'm like..."
Two slender silhouettes getting larger in the on-coming distance on a residential street-- same height, same figure, casual clothes, jeans, sweater draped skirt-like around hips. One says: "I'm like this---" talking with hand gestures "[somebody's name] said I'm wrong... I do a lot of wonderful things."
SAME PATTERN WHEN TALKING TO OPPOSITE SEX:
YF and YM with backpacks sitting under shade tree in main city park:
F: "feed the cats... I'm the only one doing anything"
Big-bodied YF with hands in pants pockets, with 2 YM, talking ebulliently:
"I was just craving the... and the avocados, and then you called..." --- She is pleased these boys called her to come out; and she feels responsibility to fill the time with talk, so she says whatever comes to mind, i.e. what she was just eating.
OLD PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE PAST:
White haired woman with cane getting out of car, says to driver: "How old is he now?" "Seventy-five." "Oh, I thought he was older."
Car with windows open, at stop light: woman's voice, not young: "I used to know a girl who lived there-- I recognize the shape of the hedge. She loved Elvis Presley. Isn't that a funny thing to think of?"
Middle-class residential street, women's voices sitting on porch : "...delivered babies for the next thirty years, and retired..." One of the woman giggles while she talks.
Old M and F walking small dog; woman says: "they had nobody in the family"
Old M, walking dogs with mid-aged F: "in the nineteen-twenties--"
2 old couples walking dogs in resort park: 2 women in back, 2 men in front, one is saying: "... 45 years...." "... he was a really good lawyer... wanted to make him a defense attorney. He didn't like that--"
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
Mother and son walking together: boy 4 years old, says: "... wash my hands." Mother: "It's gonna be there. It's part of nature. You know what I'm saying?" Perhaps he had an accident, shit his pants?
In general, parents act as advice-givers and support group to their children.
10-year old girl, after school, walking home with father, says: "It's not like he's not nice--"
Mother and daughter, both in shorts, getting out of car; mother, getting something out of trunk, says: "No I'm not-- you have so many friends--"
Mid-aged F walking dog, on cell phone: "so would you be able to get to any classes?"
M in his 60s on cell phone, in friendly voice: "Tell me-- nice job, a good job?"
Kids do grow up. Here are some examples of college-age young adults talking to their parents:
Older F and college-age daughter, who says: "the 19th century... " This is one of the rare times I've heard anyone talk in academic language, although this is a well-educated neighbourhood, as one can tell from the book-exchange boxes people have on their sidewalks.
College-age YM talking in front yard to older M and F. "And if there is a major discrepancy, you have to..." -- pointing his finger like delivering a lecture.
Now the grown-up children get to talk like adults to their parents, turning the tables.
POINT [3] HIGHER CLASS TALK MORE ABOUT BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MATTERS, EVEN ON SOCIAL OCCASIONS.
How can you tell people's social class? One indicator is the place: a fashionable and expensive side-walk restaurant; standing outside houses that are large and luxurious, or ill-kept and decaying; at an expensive resort; or in a public park open to everybody. Sometimes clothes is a marker, even in this era of casualness when people tend to wear sports clothes everywhere. Some workers wear uniforms or overalls. In California, the upper-middle class uses fitness as a class marker: ostentatiously showing off their trim bodies.
UC couple: Big broad-shouldered M, wearing shorts, no shirt, very fit torso; with a woman, both ca. 60, walking with small dogs. This is a residential area, not a beach, and it is not an especially warm day. M says: "the center where my dad goes... it's at 6000 feet.... with a pool, outdoors" --both talking loudly, assertively, about family property.
Fit-looking M walking dog, arrogant body-language, talking loudly into his cell phone: "these are the orals, 3 pills a day" --- presumably a doctor.
Men often talk about business, even when exercizing: 2 men on sport bikes, looking alike in helmets, fashionable grizzled beards: "projecting it's gonna get worse, in January, you know, the economy has its..."
M on balcony over beach-side walkway, area of expensive vacation rental cottages; wearing black sweat suit, talking loudly on cell phone: "I don't think we can negotiate with them..."
White haired M in shorts on cell phone says: "I don't think we have any such issue..." in authoritative voice.
Sometimes the talk itself indicates social class: 2 older men strolling with dachshund: "management... that are deemed to be the owners"
Group of 8 middle-age M, semi-formally dressed (long-sleeved shirts, jackets, no neckties) : one man is saying: "problem in this one... all that legalistic stuff". Such a large group walking together suggests they have come out of a meeting; this is a district of office buildings.
Even on vacation, men tend to intrude their topics. On the walkway in expensive resort: couple in vacation clothes; middle-aged M says to woman: "the insurance says..." It's a beautiful tropical garden of lagoons and exotic birds, but that's not what he's thinking of.
WOMEN TALK BUSINESS TOO, IF THEY'RE IN THE UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS
Outdoor table at a trendy expensive restaurant: heavy older F, 2 nondescript YFs in their 20s, one of whom says: "Asked them about full disclosure... because of the job."
"Obviously I'd love to go back. The government confirms..." This is a young woman in shorts, showoff legs, deep assertive voice; talking to casually dressed YM and YF, in the front yard of very expensive block of houses.
Outside resort hotel in sea-side park, 2 women in their 30s, professionally dressed, wearing name-badges from a meeting: one of them says: "manage to kill their spirit..." --- the psychology-talk of management professionals.
Professionally dressed, white-haired woman sitting in an arcade outside art museum, to 4 well-dressed women at table. She is saying: "for operating expenses... so if you designate a gift" -- smoothly explaining with her hands.
Mid-aged F walking dog, talking on cell phone in a UMC residential area: "I could come back down a little bit, and then sell Norris on the... "
Dumpy-looking woman in her 50s to scruffy-bearded man while their dog is pissing by the sidewalk: "Because it was his own fault because he was on the committee-- he was probably good at it."
--- I'm not sure about social class in this one. They're not showing any UMC markers. Seemingly they are talking about politics, which is more common in the higher classes. The women talks critically about a particular person, which fits the gender pattern.
POINT [4] CHILDREN AND EARLY TEENS RESEMBLE THEIR AGE GROUP, EVEN ACROSS SOCIAL CLASS.
Children of the wealthy sound like the youth culture in general. Do they eventually grow out of it and sound like the upper class?
Example: The neighbourhood's grand mansion, Italianate ballrooms, terraces, walled grounds; a quarter of the parterre is taken up by massive plastic playground equipment, objects that seem to speak for the wealthy parents proclaiming I-can-afford-for-my-kids-to-have-everything: from whence comes loud shrieking of a small child, harsh, pained, persistant. All I can see across the wall is a bigger kid, maybe 5 years old, waving a tennis racket-- is he pestering and torturing a sibling, or trying to calm it down? The child's screeching persists down the block, echoing past the mansion and its hundred-meters of garden.
Another house in the same neighbourhood: I hear raucous shouts, jeers, exultings-- boys playing some kind of ball game behind long private hedge of another not quite-so-big mansion. Children of the rich sound no better than anyone else's kids
Around the block, substantial houses opposite a classic Spanish mansion surrounding a courtyard: I hear brash, piercing voices of teenage boys at the age of obnoxiousness; the loud abrasive off-key sounds of adolescence when their voices crack. One of them comes down the street to a parked car: he is older than I thought, good-looking young man, athletic fraternity-boy type. Their looks don't match up with the way they sound.
On the same street: male teen voice, bare legs and feet sticking out a rolled-down car window parked in front of home: "just-- so-- fucked-- UHP..."
I've heard other teen boys talk like this, a string of obscenities. What seems to be new is that some of the girls and young women are adopting their language.
An Asian YF talking loudly with a YM, ostentatiously waving her hands: "... and no one gave a fuck..." She is not good looking, which suggests it may be a form of rebellion against the pretty-girl standard.
A family group: white-bearded hispanic M, wearing pro athletic team jersey, pushing baby stroller in river walk park, an area near lower-middle class apartments. Heavy YF takes 2-year-old out of stroller to walk, holding its hand, while talking on cell phone: "Fuck you! Fuck you!" she exclaims.
People used to say, watch your language around children. What we see now is cell phone etiquette, or lack of etiquette, which makes people physically present invisible to the person on the mobile phone, even one's own baby.
I will add two more observations relevant to whether the deliberate obnoxiousness of teen-age boys is affecting gender culture. In young M/F groups, boys are often silent while girls make conversation:
3 young-teen girls in shorts: one says coyly "... asked about school, asked about Halloween..." [describing a conversation she had with an adult, probably a visiting relative] The girls are preceded on the path by 2 young-teen boys, skinny, T-shirted, silent.
This reminds me of observing a group of adolescent boys after school in the same neighbourhood: 3 young-teen boys, all dressed in droopy black garments, covered with cheap metal chains; all with up-spiked mops of scraggly hair, not talking among themselves.
A comment about physical attractiveness: As noted, there is a cult of bodily fitness, ostentatiously presenting oneself as good-looking. Many teenage boys, especially in the awkward young teens, adopt a culture of ostentatious ugliness-- perhaps a rebellion against stratification by good looks. This can also be class conflict, as in the punk movement of thirty years ago.
There is a three-way intersection of age, class, and gender. From my earlier examples, it appears that men of the higher classes tend to control conversations with women of their class. Is this something boys grow into: starting as obstreperous kids, passing through a silent period, passing through obnoxious adolescence, and ending up as assertive adults? While lower in the class structure, girls start out talking among themselves, and eventually when they grow up, take the lead over their boyfriends and husbands, at least conversationally? More evidence will tell.
SELF-SEGREGATION IN PUBLIC
My last point is more general: there is a strong tendency for people to self-segregate in little sociable groups, at least when we observe them in public. My evidence here goes beyond the conversational samples I have reported.
Here is another set of observations made on the streets, since the beginning of the covid epidemic: Polite greetings among strangers are largely confined to the same social class and age. Greetings take place among similar demographics-- just saying "hi," "hello," "good morning". Middle and upper-middle class people frequently exchange a brief greeting or at least a nod or a smile when out for a walk, in their own neighbourhood. Greetings are especially likely among older persons; and extend fairly widely to adults from age 30 upwards. People who are walking dogs are especially likely to greet one another, and even stop to have a conversation (usually about their dogs). On the other hand, people who are on cell phones do not greet passers-by, or hardly ever nod or smile-- the cell phone realm takes priority, even when they are not talking business but only chatting.
Young adults are much less likely to greet older people; they don't greet each other very much unless they are previously acquainted. Teenagers and children are encapsulated in worlds of their own.
Social class is an unconscious default setting for conversational boundaries. Residents who are otherwise quite polite do not exchange greetings, nods or waves with gardeners, construction and repair workers, or delivery drivers. In my observations, workers do not greet or converse with other workers unless they are on the same job. This is one reason I have relatively few observations of WC talk; middle- and upper-class people dominate the conversational landscape, at least in public.
Another self-encapsulated group are people engaged in athletic activity. Bikers rarely exchange greetings or gestures with pedestrians; or with other bikers unless they are riding together, in which case they often carry on a male-style conversation. I have observed that bikers never stop for stop signs or red lights at street intersections, unless there is heavy vehicle traffic; bikers act like they are in a cocoon where ordinary laws do not apply.
Runners are in another cocoon; they seldom have greetings or gestures for other runners, except when it is a traffic matter like calling out "passing on your right." Runners, bikers, and pedestrians occupy the same space in parks and beaches, but are in different worlds. They almost never acknowledge each other sociably, beyond a minimal concern for avoiding collisions.
Has the world gotten more encapsulated as it has become self-segregated into implicit categories like street athletes, exercise walkers, and workers in public places? (not to mention cell phone users mesmerized by their screens) I hesitate to make this conclusion, since literary and historical descriptions of people in public from the 1930s on back into previous centuries show a very restricted etiquette among the status-conscious upper classes. Blatant display of rank has greatly diminished in the period after 1960; with the rise of casual clothing, preference for sports attire, and the general veneer of egalitarianism and moral disavowal of any kind of group prejudice. Nevertheless, as an observational sociologist it would be blind not to point out the ways in which people segregate themselves in public.
Having collected observations in public for about 30 years, and collected photos going back to about 1900, I would make the generalization: people who are "with" someone else in public, especially in small, self-chosen groups, tend to resemble each other in almost every dimension: about the same age; similar height, weight and physique; similar degree of attractiveness; generally wearing similar clothing styles, similar degrees of formality or casualness; often the same hair styles (specially for women and for teenage boys). From these markers, we can infer they are generally of the same social class, and same subgroups within it. People who are together in public are generally of the same ethnic group or race, although this form of segregation has declined somewhat in the last 20 years. Ethnic segregation has probably declined more in work places (where integration has been mandated) than in personal life.
The main dimension in which people are not self-segregated in public is gender. Males and females are frequently together as couples-- at least this is true for adults; not for children. Males and females who are together tend to dress quite similarly, sometimes just in general style and degree of formality or informality, but often quite literally in this era when males and females wear the same sports or hiking clothes. Two explanations are: they select each other by their appearance; or they choose a similar self-presentation when they go out together. Adult males tend to be taller than females of their age, but even that difference is calibrated; taller men are with taller women, etc.
Judging from historical photos of people in public, personal segregation has declined most for gender, with much less decline in associational segregation by economic rank. Men and women are more integrated informally than ever before; although from the conversational observations I have given, there are still major differences in male and female talk. The main place in which this difference has been overcome is in the higher social classes, where women talk more in the male style. I have also touched on the point that there is a teenage style (especially for adolescents) where teen-culture outweighs class differences. Among young-adults, some young women are assimilating to the obscenity-laden male style-- perhaps class rebellion, perhaps age rebellion; perhaps it is just a standard of "being cool". Whether they grow out of this into adult cultural styles, as I said, remains unknown.
The strongest form of self-segregation in public is age segregation. People in public are almost entirely segregated by age, unless they are with their families. But even in families, look at what happens if it's a big group:
In a restaurant serving Mexican food, not very expensive, a multi-generation family is sitting at a long table, 9 chairs on each side. At one end of the table are two bearded grizzled men; next to them are two oldish women. Almost without exception, the females sit on one side of the table, the men on the other; arranged from older to younger, the male/female couples generally sitting across from each other. At the far end of the table are the children, arranged from teenagers down to small kids. It is one big extended family group; but they choose to sit with those nearest in age, and for the males next to males; females next to females. Presumably they sit near somebody that they can most easily have a conversation with. Conversations across age groups are awkward, or at any rate one-sided.
Sampling conversation is a way to get at the mechanisms by which people choose whom they can converse with best; and thereby self-segregate themselves.
I will conclude on a practical note about doing research. You can do sociology anywhere; all you need is a willingness to look for patterns. There is no need for an elaborate methodology. Statistics tends to dominate the social sciences; but in the history of sociology and anthropology, ethnographers have made more important discoveries than statisticians, who are locked into a narrow set of categories when they collect and analyze their data.
Careful observation gives better data than any other kind of data; what we see people do and what they talk about in natural situations is far more accurate than what they say in a formal interview. This is even more true today when interviews are done by telephone or on-line rather than in person.
If we ask people about how segregated they are personally by race or any other category, we will get a biased answer towards the ideal response. Surveys would not have discovered the extent of self-segregation by age or by good looks (although it has been discovered that obese people tend to be friends with each other). That is because statisticians use existing categories, and can only add new categories when someone else finds them. Journalists are even worse, generating headlines out of two-variable statistics, ignoring complexities and what happens on the ground.
Ethnographers may not have the prestige in the academic world that goes to people who get big research grants or use elaborate computer schemes. We're relatively cheap researchers. But we're also higher quality. Even if we are a sociological underground, we're the ones who keep sociology going intellectually. And I venture to say, we're the ones who have more fun. Join us!
Appendix: the screeching cult among pre-school children
In the last 10 years I have noticed that small children in public places often produce a high-pitched screeching or shrieking sound. It is piercing, since children make it as loud as possible and in the audible range where sound carries farthest. It is deliberately produced rather than a spontaneous cry of discomfort or distress; as we can tell because the child looks happy, even proud; and because it is a long sustained sound, not the choking, sobbing rhythm of genuine crying.
Here are some examples: [we have already seen one with the child in the mansion's private playground]
A harbor and park area full of tourists from many countries. Two little girls, each in a stroller pushed by a parent, lean out sideways to look at each other and scream loudly, smiling, having fun doing it.
Two girls, age about 4 and 5, playing on a small merry-go-round near an apartment house. The older girl shrieks with delight as she pushes the younger girl. Each burst lasts for a few seconds, repeating intermittently as they play.
A crowded outdoor seafood market. A 2-year old girl in stroller pushed by father shrieks piercingly.
Downtown shopping street in popular tourist city. African man carrying a boy (about 4 years old) in his arms. Boy is screaming at the top of his lungs, stopping only to catch his breath. Father puts him down to try to distract him, but unsuccessfully. Picks him up again, still screaming, and they disappear around a corner.
South Asian family waiting for their order in a fast-food restaurant: father, mother, grandmother in Hindu-garbed sari; two older girls (around 6 to 9) running around. Two-year-old boy in stroller, clapping his hands loudly:
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! repeatedly, looking around with a determined expression on his face. He has found a substitute for shrieking, but with similar circumstances and effect. Father looks embarassed; grandmother smiles indulgently.
Some examples may overlap with children crying from exhaustion or boredom during extended time in public accompanying parents, a combination of sounds and motives. I have noticed pure shrieking especially in airport terminals, but also on streets and playgrounds, in North America, Europe, and East Asia.
Why do children screech? We should avoid imposing our adult opinions; instead, look at the visible evidence. Two patterns: Children do it for fun, judging from facial expressions and body postures; and in the presence of other children of similar size.
Children screech when they are with their parents, especially in public, less so at home; and not when they are alone. This implies they are taking advantage of permissive, non-disciplinary parents, in crowded public places.
Sociologist John Parker, who has a 5-year-old son, agrees that the shrieking is deliberate. He interprets it as a weapon of the weak, for children of an age without many resources for power over others.
We can pin it down by age and situation. Deliberate shrieking does not seem prominent among babies and toddlers; nor among school-age children, where they are regimented (also in games) by adults keeping order. Screeching thus concentrates in age 2-5, when kids go to day-care or make the acquaintance of a peer-group of other kids.
Where do they learn to makes these sounds? Not from adults. Not from TV or the electronic media. The content of 21st century child entertainment is innocuous, compared to the comic violence in 20th century cartoons like Road-runner or Bugs Bunny. Shrieking is concentrated in the ages when children play with each other and are not yet fully absorbed in computer games. They must learn shrieking from each other-- from hearing each other shriek in public.
It is a genuine culture, autonomous of the adult world and its entertainment designed for kids. Remarkably, the shrieking/screeching culture has spread around much of the world, passed along among small children by themselves.
This theory is testable. Where do we expect not to find the screeching culture? In parts of the world or parts of societies where:
[a] parents are authoritarian and exercise strict controls or punishment;
[b] families are not part of the cosmopolitan circuit of middle-class tourist sites and travel places (such as airports).
What theory could possibly have predicted the rise of a global shrieking-children culture? That is why we need ethnographers to keep their eyes and ears open for what is happening.
