240108 AR First Impression Sexual Scripts of Romantic Encounters: (2023S)

First impressions serve as a basis for initiating relationships that aid potential dates in communicating emotions, conveying feelings, and signalling attraction. First-date communication expectations regarding courtship behaviour usually include gender-related and cultural preferences. Unacquainted strangers, when they first meet a romantic interest, are in a state of tension dealing with uncertainty and novelty. But how would our life be different if we knew what to say and what to do when we meet someone for the first time and we do want to stand out by leaving a good impression on them? And what factors influence a potential date’s choice in face-to-face romantic encounters? These questions have been of interest to researchers across disciplines and have received significant empirical attention in the past few decades. Therefore, during the course, we will discuss diverse physiological, psychological, and behavioural markers that come into play when making the first impression. Specifically, we will examine the effect of cultural and gender preferences, word choices, vocal cues, facial expressions, eye behaviour, posture, gestures, and touching behaviour on intimate communication through the lens of digital methods. Thus, the course seeks to entwine Interactional Sociolinguistics and Digital Humanities.
As such, the first part of the course draws on Interactional Sociolinguistics (i.e., an approach to discourse analysis that studies how people use language in face-to-face interaction) and Digital Methods of conducting sociolinguistic research. Please, note that the emphasis of the course is on applying Interactional Sociolinguistics to “real” data. We will learn how to perform qualitative content and quantitative data analyses based on video clips drawn from face-to-face romantic encounters depicted on the American dating and relationship reality TV series “The Bachelor US” and its gender-reversed version “The Bachelorette US”. We will focus not only on linguistic forms such as words and sentences but also on subtle contextualization cues that are culturally specific and usually unconscious.
There will be also an important element of the course aimed at overviewing social and cultural norms, gender stereotypes as well as (non)verbal behaviours in the contemporary context of flirtation, courtship, and seduction. This is the Specialist Task where you are also invited to contribute to a better understanding of mediated depictions of gender, intimacy, and first impression scripts by finding and sharing video clips (around 30 seconds of initial interaction each) from any reality dating show. You will be assigned to perform line-by-line coding to define verbal cues within every spoken conversational exchange and analyse them by using newly-acquired digital skills. Given that this is a complex and time-consuming process, please, take this into account before you decide to register for the course. This Specialist Task accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation is aimed at providing the basis for a group discussion. Every student in the class should participate actively in these group discussions on a weekly basis.
Within the second part of the course, we will discuss the influence of the communication environment (lighting, colour schemes, sound, design, furniture, manipulating objects, etc.) and communicators’ physical characteristics (e.g., physical attractiveness, body type, height, human odour, skin colour, hair, clothes, incl. red dress effect, and artefacts) on the way we feel and the way we choose to communicate Given that the consumers’ dependence on media content is widely acknowledged, we will also analyse their perception of first impression scripts portrayed on reality dating shows and framed by persuasive courtship behaviours “Viewers' involvement: learning or entertainment: analysing the content of social media followers’ comments".
You do not need to have any prior knowledge to attend the course.