Using Improprieties to Pursue Intimacy in Speed-dating Interactions

Abstract

This study focuses on how potential romantic partners in speed-dating interactions use improprieties to create relational affiliation and thus pursue intimacy. Within speed-dating interactions, improprieties are viewed as potentially relationally constructive, as they allow speakers to display shared cultural understandings about categories of romantic partner or partnerships. Drawing on a corpus of 72 speed-dates involving 24 participants (12 male; 12 female), a sequential discursive approach was used to analyze how two particular types of impropriety, negative category attributions of non-present others and insults to the present conversational partner, were consequential social actions for creating affective mutual affiliation. The general, albeit surprising, finding is that far from being adversarial, improprieties tended to be useful for pursuing intimacy precisely because they presented interactive trouble. Successfully navigating the interactive trouble seemed to increase a subjectively shared sense of familiarity. The study reveals that non-normative (i.e., less polite) forms of social action may serve as preliminaries for intimacy in first encounters between potential romantic partners.

Flirting: A Designedly Ambiguous Action?

“…Where flirting has featured in discourse and conversation analytic work on naturalistic interactions, it tends to be discussed indirectly, as a constituent feature in the doing of something else. For example, Korobov and Laplante (2013; see also Korobov, 2011) examine how potential romantic partners in speed-dating interactions use improprieties, including insults, to affiliate with one another and pursue intimacy. They suggest that the recipients of such improprieties often treat them, not as adversarial, but 'rather as an indirect means of establishing repartee or as a flirtatious bid ' (2013; 18; see also Glenn, 2003).…”

“…Unlike routine and pervasive social actions like invitations, offers and requests, for example, which tend to be delivered via discrete and clearly demarcated utterances, members often characterise flirting as an elusive, multimodal encounter involving a combination of talk, gesture, and gaze. The existing literature appears equivocal on the matter: Whereas Korobov and Laplante (2013) describe actions like insults as flirtatious and discuss the flirtatious 'frame' or 'environment' of an interaction, Kiesling suggests 'there is no 'flirting' speech act in the sense of Searle (1969Searle ( )' (2013. Second, flirting is often regarded as ambiguous and deniable, relying for its effect on the existence of multiple possible interpretations of the same action (Kiesling, 2013: 106).…”

Flirtatious sequences in Indonesian : a conversation analytic and membership categorization analytic approach

“…This study contributes to the long tradition on the study of humor and playfulness in interaction (Bateson, 1955(Bateson, , 1987Scheflen, 1965;Holt, 2013); as well as humour, transgression, and intimacy (Jefferson et al, 1987;Korobov & Laplante, 2013;Coupland & Jaworski, 2003;Walker, 2013;W. Beach & Glenn, 2011).…”

“…The more recent study by Korobov and Laplante (2013) studied the mechanism of achieving intimacy through negative category attributions of non-present others and insults to the present conversational partner. Though the above works studied different kind of improper talks, the assumption and mechanism to achieve intimacy is more or less the same as what recorded in JSS.…”

“…This study also captures another means of achieving intimacy for potential romantic couple. Previous study (Korobov & Laplante, 2013) has documented talking about other people and insult to the interlocutor as means of achieving intimacy for potential romantic couple. This study offers ambiguous display of romantic or sexual attraction and playfulness as another means of achieving intimacy for potential romantic couple.…”