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Social Signals

I never thought I was signalling -I mean, I didn’t really mean to; I was simply walking into a little coffee shop and stumbled on something. It was embarrassing I suppose, because I couldn’t see anything on the floor, but I did look just to be sure I wasn’t being clumsy. I even checked the bottom of my shoe just in case, but stuff happens, doesn’t it; not everything requires an explanation; not everything needs an apology. And anyway, I didn’t offer one; I just flashed a surprised smile at no one in particular. No one in particular seemed to care, either; the fact that my awkward entrance had attracted no attention was more distressing than my momentary ignominy.

But, why did I think my embarrassment would be noticed? Why did I attempt to justify my clumsiness -or, rather, think that it merited absolution? Forgiveness? And now that the bark is beginning to peel around my increasingly empty branches, what would I have to gain with contrition? Age incites feelings of sympathy in others perhaps, even forgiveness maybe, but seldom empathy: the audience is usually younger and cannot see through my eyes; it only hopes that it will not suffer the same indignities in its autumnal decline.

Or possibly there is something else going on -something far more profound, far more primeval than simple mortification. We are a social species, constantly sending out signals to our audience in case they care; in case they judge our actions in a way we had not intended. Maybe we feel a need to reassure all and sundry of our benign intentions: reassure the herd that we mean it no harm; reassure bystanders that we do not suffer from grievances we seek to rectify, or mental aberrations that we might, under certain conditions, decide to unleash on them.

I’ve wondered about this for a while, but have never had either the wit to piece it together into a coherent theory, or, for that matter, the inclination to take the idea beyond the kind of idle speculation to which I am prone in what remains of the evening hours when I am too tired to read. Age does that I think, when the years summon memories from the darkness, or find questions hidden in the midnight sky.

Sometimes, though, I find answers to questions I’d forgotten I’d asked: answers lying fallow from the day; answers I could have uncovered had I merely looked more closely at the burgeoning field. ‘There is nothing simple about passing through a public space. Instead, we are always expected to reassure strangers around us that we are rational, trustworthy and pose no threat to the social order,’ says the sociologist Erving Goffman.[i] ‘We do this by conforming to all manner of invisible rules, governing, for example, the distance we maintain from one another, where we direct our eyes and how we carry ourselves… behaviours of this kind, much as they might feel like it, are not the results of idiosyncratic anxieties, of excessive self-consciousness or awkwardness. Instead, they are sensible responses by people appropriately attuned to the complexities of the social world.’

I have to admit that I’d never heard of ‘microsociology’ before. The fact that all encounters are guided by social rules and social status, I suppose is obvious, but they usually fly far below my radar -until they don’t, that is…

I must admit I don’t have a particularly large chest of cultural experiences on which to draw; I’ve travelled, yes, and yet that only allows for a shallow skimming of the social conventions. As soon as the person to whom I am speaking hears my Canadian (read American) accent, they shift into a different mode: I am not one of them; I could not possibly know the rules.I suppose that can work to my advantage, but can sometimes be used to mark me as alien, when I am desperately trying to blend in.

For example, I was in a MacDonald’s in New Zealand just as concerns about the onset of Covid were beginning to emerge. It was early in February 2020  and it had not yet been designated a pandemic by the WHO, so people were confused about how to handle the obvious problem of social interactions; the old rules, they realized, might no longer apply. I had been travelling from town to town on vacation, and had not yet realized there was a problem.

At any rate, MacDonald’s is hardly haute cuisine and its customers seldom academics au fait with world events, but I think I underestimated the reach of social media. I was waiting for my order at the counter, when I happened to hear the man next to me ordering food with an obvious Canadian accent. Of course, so far from home, I decided to ask him where he was from.

“Williams Lake… British Columbia” he added, in case I was from another Canadian province, and no doubt surprised at my accent in the sea of New Zealandese. “Lived here for almost ten years,” he continued, this time with the unmistakeable New Zealand twang. “You…?”

“Oh, I’m from B.C. too… I often visit New Zealand to get away from our winter.”

He was silent for a moment as he waited for his order. “Guess you’ve heard the news, eh?” I shook my head, but showed obvious interest. “About the deadly infectious virus that seems to be spreading around the world…?” The clerk handed him his take-out order before I had a chance to ask him more.

“I suppose we shouldn’t shake hands, then, eh?” I said, proffering my elbow like I’d seen some of the hip young people do on TV.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said with a grin. And when I looked embarrassed, he bumped me with his foot instead. “That’s how we do the non-handshake in New Zealand, mate,” he explained, and headed out the door with his order.

The foot-bump seemed like a typical Kiwi adaptation; I wondered if it originated with a Māori custom -they’d had a huge influence over societal norms, I remembered. I’d once worked briefly on the North Island of New Zealand, and had been visiting the country whenever I could manage since then, so I was interested in blending in with the local customs.

I suppose I’d been waiting a while at the counter, and seeing my grey beard, one of the employees behind the counter must have felt sorry for me. “Go find a seat, sir, and I’ll bring your order when it’s ready,” she said with a coy little wink.

I wandered over to a free table and before I could sit down, she arrived carrying my food, looking quite worried. “Thought you looked tired, so I figured you could use a little help, eh?” she said with a pronounced Māori accent.

I was flattered by the attention, but a little concerned about how old and frail she thought I looked. I realized I should thank her and was about to proffer my hand to shake when I remembered what that Canadian at the counter had said about the virus. I thought I should try the foot bump, but I think I did it a little hard.

Her eyes immediately narrowed. “You didn’t have to kick me, eh? I was just trying to help!” Then she stormed off and started speaking excitedly to the other woman behind the counter and pointing at me. They both started to laugh.

I think it’s sometimes difficult to blend in with the local social conventions when you’re from away. And it’s difficult to know if you’ve been had…

[i] https://aeon.co/essays/pioneering-sociologist-erving-goffman-saw-magic-in-the-mundane

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