Social Interaction in Everyday Life

Social Interaction in Everyday Life
Social interaction: the process by which people act and react in relation to others.
Status: a social position a person holds
Status set: all of the statuses that person holds at any given time
Ascribed status: a social position that someone receives at birth or assumes involuntarily later on in life.
Achieved status: a social position that someone assumes voluntarily and that reflects personal ability and effort
Master status: a status that has exceptional importance for social identity, often shaping a person’s entire life
Role: behaviour expected of someone who holds a certain status
Role set: a number set of roles attached to a single status
Role Conflict: conflict among the roles connected to two or more statuses
Role Strain: tension among the roles connected to a single status
Social construction of reality: the process by which people creatively shape reality through social interaction
Thomas Theorem: situations we define as real become real in their consequences
Ethnomethodology: the study of the way people make sense of their everyday surroundings
Dramaturgical Analysis: the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance
Presentation of self: a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others
Non-verbal communication: communication using body movements, gestures, and facial expressions rather than speech.
Personal Space: the surrounding area over which a person makes some claim to privacy

Every person has many statuses at once, for example a teenage girl is not only a daughter to her parents but also a sister, a student, and a goalie on her hockey team. These statuses can change gradually over time, for example as this girl grows up she will become a wife, a graduate, a lawyer and a parent. People over a lifetime can grow to have many statuses. Some of these statuses are ascribed meaning that they are something given to you without a choice being given, such as