Check Your Location (Applied)

There are many unspoken rules that exist in communication. The unspoken rules are set up by societal norms through roles each person plays in society. Social norms are "rules, whether implicit or explicit, about behavior" (Tubbs 273). With these rules people developed ideas about how best friends, family members, lovers, and strangers should act towards one another. When people step out of their societal norms and act differently to certain people, it throws off the roles each person represents in the circumstance. 

To begin, when people have had a stressful day they tend to just ramble about their problems to just about anyone they meet. For example, a bus stop or local coffee shop are prime locations where people can easily be taken out of the role as a stranger and instantly turned into a companion or someone to talk to simply because one has accidently sat or stood next to someone who has had the bad day. Situations like this tend to not align with the proper level of intimacy that should be in the relationship because the stressed person (old lady in the red shirt) suddenly does not have a filter with the information they are disclosing to the stranger, acquaintance, new best friend because they are so frazzled about their day. Therefore, next time you are stressed about remember your settings and the roles of the people in it before you discuss your life with someone who is entirely uninterested. 

Works Cited

Tubbs, Stewart L., and Sylvia Moss. Human Communication : Principles and Contexts. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages, 2007.