| Increasingly, speech scholars are beginning to express concern with the study of groups of people in their natural environments--where they live, work, and spend the bulk of their waking hours. Consideration, by researchers, of the entire matrix of relationships in which individuals find themselves embedded becomes the focus of critical inquiry into these groups.;Research into groups in their natural setting provides the researcher valuable opportunity for the study of socio-cultural permanence and change, as the researcher seeks to specify cultural as well as sociocultural features of the groups. In the process of identifying sociocultural commonalities, according to James Chesebro, noted critic and naturalistic researcher, four primary objectives should guide the inquiry. First, the researcher seeks to capture or identify the central symbols or symbolic system of the community as it is experienced by those in that community, i.e., the controlling communication system of the group. Second, the researcher collects data in the natural settings of the subjects where they carry out their routine daily activities. Third, the researcher functions as both a participant and an observer. Fourth, the researcher attempts to reduce or minimize reactivism as much as possible.;Research into selected groupings of individuals within the community, or of a community as a group, offers several important possibilities for the advancement of our understanding of human communication processes. Of major importance would be the following questions: (1) How do members of a group, especially of a group in which affiliation arises because of economic needs--such as a group of people working in a common plant area or common task--come to form a common symbol system? (2) How does this common symbol system function among the members of such a grouping of people? (3) What control functions does such a symbol system manifest in relation to the daily activities of members of that group? (4) Does the symbol system extend beyond the boundaries of the work group or work area, and if so, in what ways and with what effects upon the non-work aspects of the lives of such individuals? These four broad questions formed the basis of this study. The specific work group selected for observation was the employees of the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The method of study was that of participant observation by the author, who for eight years, from April 1972 until June 1980, spent three years of full-time employment and five years of part-time employment as a member of that group. One full year of that time, roughly corresponding to the calendar year of 1979, the author spent time recording specific data--observations, conversations, incidents--utilizing unobtrusive measures as such events occurred within the natural setting.;Using the five key terms of Kenneth Burke's pentad--scene, act, agency, agent, purpose--as frames through which to interpret data, it was found that the mass service workers of the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania do share a controlling communication system.;While the study specified communciation dimensions and sociocultural features of the workers within the Greyhound terminal, certain broader sociocultural implications emerged from the data which may not be immediately obvious. Actually, a second, somewhat implicit, research question really motivated the study as well, i.e., are there clashes between different communication systems in the Americal culture?;It appears that at least three different, fairly well defined, communication systems can be said to exist in this culture, roughly corresponding to three major economic units: mass service workers, goods-producers, and professionals. |
