New Girl Scene Analysis

In the new episode of New Girl, titled Big Mama P, Schmidt meets Cece’s mother (Ms. Parikh) for the first time, only to find out that Cece had never told her mother she was getting married. Using code switching, facial expressions, and paralanguage, Schmidt tries to create a good first impression in order to receive her blessing, and ultimately fails to do so. His failure is shown through Ms. Parikh’s use of powerful language, and the same nonverbal cues used by Schmidt. The scene first starts with Schmidt walking towards Ms. Parikh. He greets her by politely calling her “Ms. Parikh.” This a contrast from how he greets his friends, as he would normally greet his friends casually and call them by their first name or nickname. His greeting is an example of a verbal cue called code switching. Code switching is a type of accommodation where one person changes the way (s)he speaks to adapt to the context of the situation (O’Hair, Weismann, Mullin, and Teven, 2015). In this case, Schmidt realizes that his first meeting with his fiancé’s mother requires a more formal and polite language. It would be inappropriate for him to call her by any other name, seeing as this is only their first meeting. He adjusts the language he uses in order to show his respect and create a good first impression. Schmidt continues his attempt to impress

When the scene first begins, Schmidt notices Ms. Parikh and walks towards her. As he is walking towards her, his brows are furrowed and his mouth is slightly open, signaling a nervous expression. He then replaces his nervous expression with a smile, a technique known as masking. According to O’Hair et al. (2015), masking is “replacing an expression that shows true feeling with an expression that shows appropriate feeling for a given interaction” (p.104). Schmidt masks his nervousness with a smile in order