This observation was done at a local Starbucks. The main impact this had on my observation was that I am familiar with the culture of coffee shops, even if this one was new. I had a good understanding of who I would see and my perceptions of them based on this experience, as well as other cultural norms. For example, I mentioned the couples as likely being romantically involved if heterosexual, and same sex couples to be friends/ acquaintances/ work partners, due to my experience with heteronormativity, as well as the prominence of coffee shop dates and work meetings in my cultural understanding. I also assumed adult and child pairs to be parent and child due to my own experience (as well as the words “mom” or “dad” on occasion) as opposed to any actual knowledge of their relationship.
These were all assumptions, largely based on descriptive inference with an awareness of my thought process behind it. I did address some aspects of sound analysis within this, such as my perception of gender. Of course, identity is not always correlated with appearance, but I did acknowledge that this is at least generally the case, and so my assumptions of gender had some acknowledged basis. I did also analyze some of the reasons why I noticed one boy’s out of place
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In addition to ideological bias (I am a quiet person, dislike loud noise, and prefer fellow quiet people, so I portrayed quieter behavior as “respectful”), this is relevant as a whole due to the superstructure of our society, which includes a correlation between noise levels, societal acceptance, and respect. Though I didn’t include it in my observation, this is supported by the correlation I saw between the volume of music and the volume of chatter; when the background noise was quieter, the people followed, suggesting an effort to match a value system of respectful noise