Revealing the Importance of Communication:

A Discussion of Ethnomethodology & the Social Construction of Reality

Karyn Lewis
Foundations of Sociology
Winter 2005
Final Paper

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 In sociology, there is an essential bond between language and social structure. Through
communication, people transform themselves and their environments and then respond accordingly to
create the world we live in. Underlying the basis of this communication is a general understanding of the
way things work—an understanding that, in turn, influences our actions. All human groups have norms
that are influenced by this understanding in the forms of background assumptions. These norms make
social life possible by making behavior predictable. People are socialized to follow norms and to play the
basic roles that society assigns to them, and in this way construct their own realities. In getting a better
idea of how social structures are formed and how this affects us, I found it fundamental to ask—How do
our background assumptions reveal the importance of communication within our society?
There are several significant reasons to study the effects of our background assumptions and the
development thereof. If communication really is, indeed, vital for the creation of social structures, it is
important to understand how it influences the development of our background assumptions that, in turn,
work to build these structures. If we are made more aware of the manner in which our understandings of
the way things work influence our actions, researchers may be better able to explore new forms of
communication that can cross the paths of ambiguity that is naturally evident in language and other forms
of interaction across differing social backgrounds. Possibly just as important, this knowledge may help
people understand how background assumptions affect actions and therefore give us a stronger
appreciation for the reasons why people do what they do in any given situation. We may acquire a better
understanding of how people’s definitions of a situation might underlie their deviation from or
conformance to social norms. All in all, it is important to study how our background assumptions reveal
the importance of communication in order to further expand our knowledge of interpretation and the
assumptions that these interpretations are based on to find ways to improve communication and get a
better understanding of human behavior in general.
To answer this fundamental question of how background assumptions reveal the importance of
communication within our society, we must first conceive of the relationship between our basic
understandings of the way things work and the development of social structures. To understand what an
individual does, we must have some appreciation of his definition of the situation, and this requires
knowing something of what he takes for granted. Only then can we analyze how communication plays a
vital role in this development. Through research I have attempted to explore this relationship.
I developed several hypotheses in regards to the information I will come across in answering this
question. Through exploration of the topic, it is reasonable to believe I will find that communication plays
a vital role in the development of social structures in that it provides a means to bypass the confusion that
may be apparent in situations of interaction involving members of differing social backgrounds.
Experimentation through the observation and analysis of the interactions between individuals under

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predefined, abnormal conditions will reveal the tendency for people to rely heavily on communication for
everyday situations. Communication, just like an individual’s basic understandings of the way things
work, is taken for granted in everyday situations.
To understand the development of social structures, it is first necessary to understand the way in
which background assumptions come about to begin with. In one article I’ve come across in my research,
Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology, Denzin writes, “Human beings are capable of making
their own thoughts and activities objects of analysis, that is, they can routinely, and even habitually,
manipulate symbols and orient their own actions towards other objects. A great deal of human conduct is
of this routine nature. Once the meanings of objects have been agreed upon, conduct can flow along lines
of custom, tradition, and ritual.” In other words, people tend to create their own routines, and this, in
time, naturally results in the creation of background assumptions. In Ethnomethodology’s Program,
Garfinkel mentions these assumptions can be made because “there is order in the most ordinary activities
of everyday life in their full concreteness.” Also, “The witnessably recurrent details of ordinary everyday
practices constitute their own reality.” Routine is created almost automatically in most everyday
situations, and thus background assumptions are readily made. To better understand how background
assumptions come about in the first place, it may be helpful to look into how are they employed.
Individuals tend to fit lines of action together by first identifying the situation, employing their own
background assumptions around it, then acting according to these assumptions. Henslin further illustrates
this in his book Essentials of Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach in explaining that these background
assumptions lie at the root of daily life and are so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we are
seldom even aware of them. These background assumptions—or our taken-for-granted ideas about the
world—underlie our behavior and therefore act as an essential part of the social structure. In further
exploring the relationship between our background assumptions and how they affect social behavior, and,
in turn, develop social structures, my research has introduced me to Ethnomethodology.
Ethnomethodology proposes an analysis of the routine, taken-for-granted expectations that
members of any social order regularly accept. It is the science that explores the so-called “encoded”
norms that are used to make sense of the social world. Natural language and interaction among members
of a society are studied in order to describe an individual’s accounts of formal social structures wherever
and by whomever they are done. This reveals the general nature of social behavior as it relates to an
individual’s personal understanding. Ultimately, Ethnomethodology reveals how individuals are linked to,
shaped by, and in turn create social structure. In Frank III’s own words from his article Reality
Construction in Interactionsim, “Whatever social reality is, the construction of its members make it so.”
People tend to create realities or social structures based on their understandings of the situation. The

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Thomas Theorm can be applied; stating that each person’s behavior depends on their own interpretation
of the situation, or their own definition of reality.
Thus, my research has uncovered the link between background assumptions and reality
construction. “Members of society enter most situations knowing the relevant reality, and whatever
negotiation remains can only proceed from this knowledge. Such knowledge is social-structural” (Frank
III). They construct the social world using resources of shared knowledge of what realities take place in
what circumstances in conjunction with the common knowledge of how to do things. Background
knowledge is almost always invoked as the reality of the situation. In Frank III’s article, Goffman defines
reality construction as, “A process in which all we do is assess correctly…and then act accordingly.” Any
activity that takes place depends first and foremost on the individual’s understanding of the situation. An
individual will act according to his own definition of the situation—parts of which are often taken for
granted. Frank III also mentions that people’s actions are based not only on the preexisting, structuring
discursive routines—the basic understanding of events that constrain the possibilities of what takes
place—but also on the competencies of all interactants and the properties of events. It seems only
reasonable, then, to emphasize the importance of communication as the basis of comprehension between
members involved in any situation at any given time. Communication is crucial in any society because
it provides the opportunity for reality construction. Language, which is an important tool in
communication, is understood to be a primary medium of construction, and communication that of
society’s most elemental but vital social structures. Members of a society often define situations
differently as a result of differing background assumptions, but through the primary means of
communication, society provides these individuals with definitional and perceptual “schemes” that can
ultimately achieve coherence in any situation. According to Frank III, all members of society can typify
reality using these schemes. Members of a given society must share in common a general code of
behavioral interpretations in order to clearly understand basic activities, and this coherence is only
achieved through communication.
Through research based on literature review, it is clear that individuals of any social order take
certain rules, norms, and meanings of daily, routine life for granted. Several assumptions can be made that
act as the basis of these rules, including (but not limited to) the following: The normal background
conditions in any situation are usually taken for granted and typically remain unchallenged among
members of a society. The meanings behind an object or situation on one occasion will generally hold
true for future occasions, suggesting that the definitions made by some are assumed to be the same as
those that others would make if faced with the same situation. People tend to identify and attach meaning
to objects through the standard terms, symbols and labels of language. And finally, even though
individuals base their definitions of a situation on their own backgrounds and experiences, disagreements

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that arise in a situation are generally kept quiet to avoid conflict. In short, situations are defined through
interaction, and thus there is an opportunity for individuals to feel some degree of conflict between their
definitions of a situation and what is outright thought to be true. These rules of everyday routine life may
help to reveal the importance of communication within a society.
To reveal these basic taken-for-granted rules of daily, routine life, I have explored ways in which
to disrupt normal social events in order to challenge people’s perceptions of the ordinary world. I set up
several occasions that I thought would challenge the routine rules of interaction in order to reveal the
importance of communication within our society. In setting up these experiments, I was careful as not to
reveal my studies or suggest experimentation of any kind to the individuals that were challenged. I
carefully explained the basis of my experimentation to my subjects so they understood the importance of
being serious and keeping a straight face when creating the uncomfortable, abnormal conditions needed
for my studies. Strangers would be suspicious and acutely aware of strange circumstances and would
surely look for a plausible reason for such behavior—thus anything short of serious would certainly
reveal a setup. I also made sure the individuals involved in each experiment couldn’t change the situation
to fit their own terms. My subjects were told where to go, who to approach, and what to say.
In one occasion, I asked a friend living on the same floor of my dorm room at RIT to keep conversation
with her roommate at a bare minimum for an entire day. A first-year student, I chose her because she is
very friendly and usually close to her roommate. As far as I am aware, they have never experienced
problems communicating and have become close acquaintances over the first one and a half quarters here
at RIT. I knew that limited conversation would be abnormal behavior between the two roommates and
therefore likely to induce a profusion of questions and concerns for the roommate who was unaware of
the experiment. When asked a question, my subject was instructed to simply shrug it off or “ignore” it,
and walk out of the room or the area and avoid replying with anything more than simple answers like
“yes”, or “no” “I don’t know”. Sure enough, at the end of the day we had one thoroughly confused
roommate. According to my subject, her roommate was growing more and more frustrated throughout the
day with the less than satisfactory short-answer replies that their conversation was delimited to, and even
expressed a concern about that status of their relationship. It was abnormal for the two roommates to
avoid conversation, and these conditions made the experimentee feel out of place and out of touch with
what she felt was the norm of everyday life.
On another occasion I asked my younger brother to avoid interaction of any kind with my
parents for an entire evening. It is regular routine in my household to talk about the events of our day
while dinner is prepared and served every evening, and silence during this time would surely be abnormal
and unexpected behavior. My brother is a regular conversationalist with my parents at home especially
now that I am no longer there and able to take part in this routine. Silence in this scenario is certain to

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effective, then, to challenge my parents’ perceptions of normal, every-day routine behavior. One
Thursday evening once everyone one was home and situated, the experiment began. My brother was
instructed to avoid talking or interacting with my parents, so he sat and watched TV until he was spoke to,
at which he pretended not to hear and later went to his room and shut the door. As the evening went on,
my brother reported my parents’ growing concern for my brother’s decided silence and reluctance to join
them in their regular evening conversation. He mentioned feeling discombobulated himself—as he was
not used to just sitting in his room in the evenings. Apparently then, this experiment was successful in
making both the subject creating the experiment and the experimentees feel out of place by challenging
their perceptions of what is considered normal behavior by introducing strange circumstances.
On a third and final occasion, I asked a friend to half-mumble his order at a fast-food restaurant’s
drive-through menu. In this scenario, we drove to Wendy’s in Rochester one afternoon with the intent of
ordering a spicy chicken sandwich and baked potato broccoli-and-cheese. As the lady in the microphone
asked for our order, my friend was instructed to reply—completely straight-faced and serious—a different
reply as many times as it took for the lady to make sense of it. He replied four times. The first response
was, “A McChicken Spicey and cheesey potato fries.” Then, “A King-sized chicken selecty-cheese and
broccoli potato.” Then, “Jr. spicey chicken club-and-potato greens and cheese.” The fourth response was
the from the correct Wendy’s menu. I set up this experiment with the intent of confusing the employee
with two oddities: the mixture of jumbled words that are all recognizable for any drive-through fast-food
place (they are all real terms just mixed-and-matched), and the way they were presented: mumbled
sentences that make them even harder to decipher. Between each reply the employee behind the
microphone asked my friend to clearly repeat his order because she could not understand him. She was
seemed somewhat confused because he seemed serious about his order, and plainly frustrated because she
did not understand why he was persistent and she was still unable to understand the order. The terms in
the jumbled sentences that he used surely made the situation more frustrating because the experimentee
seemed to believe she should know what the customer wanted. The added persistence of the jumbled
responses was intended to add confusion and panic to the situation on the employee’s behalf, but resulted
in only annoyance. This experiment may not have been as effective as I would have liked in challenging
the norms of everyday life because the employee may, unbeknownst to me, experience trouble
understanding her customers through the microphone or deal with prank orders on a regular daily basis.
Her perceptions of what is normal—at least while she is on the job—may have boundaries that expand
beyond what would be considered normal in the interactions of her personal life outside the job.
Communication is obviously important in this situation, but it is interesting to learn that people’s
perceptions of what is normal can change according to the circumstances.

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 It was important to explore basic ways of disrupting normal life as not to allure to the possibility
of mere experimentation—and my approach was effective indeed. In each of my experimental situations,
it was obvious that my subjects were uncomfortable challenging the routine rules of interaction. Once in
an “experimenter” frame of mind, however, each could pursue the challenge and I was able to analyze
their results. In general, each of my subjects—or “experimenters”—felt distrust, hostility, anger, and
frustration from the people they challenged. This only proves that individuals are not readily willing to
accept situations that are out of the norm or outside their assumptions of how things work. People
obviously assume that others share the same expectations and definitions of a situation, and that others
will act on the basis of these assumptions just as they would. When this understanding is challenged, a
sense of distrust is formed. This suggests that when one person is forced to distrust the other, normal
background assumptions become problematic. Feelings of hostility, anger, and frustration erupt. It is this
that reveals the need for communication as a vital means of connecting opposing viewpoints among
members of a society and bring these problematic feelings back to a mutual level of understanding.
How is it, then, that our background assumptions reveal the importance of communication within
our society? Through research and experimentation based on the observation and analysis of interaction
between individuals under predefined, abnormal conditions, the answer to this fundamental sociological
question is made obvious. While individuals may initially agree on definitions, rules of conduct, and
images of self, these definitions can be vague and leave room for conflicting points of view. We must,
then, have a way to convey new perspectives in order to allow continued action in any given situation.
Society is sustained by the formation of perspective—that of which can encompass all of the basic forms
of thinking and acting that is common to that society. Denzin remarks, “For consensual lines of actions to
emerge, there must exist a common community of symbols.” Communication not only unites objects with
names, but creates a connection of concepts with perspective. Expression alone is not as clear as
language, but in any case, people are not hesitant to communicate. The everyday, taken-for-granted
meanings of everyday life must fit into routine patterns of interaction, which really is only possible
through communication. Thus, communication is necessary for social construction.
We can better understand human behavior by knowing that people use background assumptions
and their basic understandings of everyday, routine life to define the reality of situations. Our definitions
provide the basis for what we do and how we feel about life. Through our interactions with others, we
develop the ways in which we look at life and, in turn, develop these assumptions. In this way,
communication plays a vital role in the development of social constructions. By understanding the way
society is constructed on the basis of communication underlined by our background assumptions,
scientists and sociologists can work to find ways to improve communication and prevent ambiguity in
differing social situations. Overall, with the knowledge of the way things work, we can at least hold a

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better appreciation for why people do what they do—the reasons some deviate from the norms—and
perhaps carry with us a sense empathy when coming across a social situation outside our general idea of
how things should work.

References

Henslin, James M. Essentials of Sociology, A Down to Earth Approach, 5th ed. Allyn and Bacon, 2003.
Frank III, Arthur W. “Reality Construction in Interaction,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 5 (1979),
167-191.
Lemert, Charles C. “Language, Structure, and Measurement: Structuralist Semiotics and Sociology,” The
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Jan., 1979), 929-957.
Denzin, Norman K. “Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology: A Proposed Synthesis,” American
Sociological Review, Vol. 34, No. 6 (Dec., 1969), 922-934.
Mines, David R. “Social Organization and Social Structure in Symbolic Interactionist Thought,” Annual
Review of Sociology, Vol. 3 (1977), 235-259.
Garfinkel, Harold “Ethnomethodology’s Program,” Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar.,
1996), 5-21.

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