13 July 2009
Lottery Betting
Posted by bsypniewski under: Sypniewski .
Lottery BettingAs part of my ongoing research into the effects of the surroundings on communicative behavior, I began a series of observations at a local convenience store to determine how people communicated when doing a well-defined task in a non-laboratory setting. Lottery betting in New Jersey is nearly a ritual. The paper describes the surroundings and how the elements of the surroundings effected the communicative behavior of the people who were involved in the purchase of a lottery ticket. When the surroundings are formalized to a sufficient degree (a matter of further research), an act (a lottery bet) can be accomplished without using words. Of course, the same act can be accomplished with words and usually is. However, these observations raise questions about whether spoken language is used more for its social function or to “lubricate” an activity rather than to strictly convey information as is the current dominant paradigm.
Sypniewski, Bernard. 2004. Lottery betting. Hard Science Linguistics, Yngve and Wasik. Click here for the PDF: lottery-betting.pdf