Forms Of Talk Research Articles

The Anthropology of Corruption

The Anthropology of Corruption

Talks and disputes of racism in Colombia after multiculturalism

ABSTRACTThis article examines the terms that shape the notion of ethnic group for black communities. This notion allows one to understand the singularity of Colombia’s turn to multiculturalism in the 1990s, and how it has impacted the political and theoretical imaginations of cultural otherness. I will argue that this shift to multiculturalism has not meant the disappearance of the talks and disputes of racism and the beginning of a kind of ‘post-racial’ social formation. On the contrary, old and new forms of talk and disputes of racism could be traced after this shift to multiculturalism, not only in relation to the dense legislation for the recognition of black communities as ethnic groups, but also in regard to other realms such as social media, activist struggles and academic paradigms.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Inequality: An Introduction to the Journal of Management Studies Special Issue

AbstractThis introduction to the Journal of Management Studies Special Issue on Inequality argues that the way we frame conversations about inequality reveals important information about how poverty and inequality have become institutionalized in modern society. We observe a distinct recent shift in the collective conversation about vulnerable populations in western society away from poverty and toward inequality. We question why this shift has occurred and who benefits from it. Drawing from the provocative papers that populate the Special Issue we describe how forms of talk can help create inequality, maintain it and holds the potential to change it. We encourage new research that adopts a holistic reintegration of poverty and inequality by attending to the ‘dirty realism’ of the violence of poverty and the dire consequences of internalized inequality.

The Comforting Touch: Tactile Intimacy and Talk in Managing Children’s Distress

ABSTRACTThe present study examines young children’s distress management in situ, focusing on situations of crying and caregivers’ embodied—haptic—soothing responses in preschools in Sweden. The adults’ responses to crying involve embraces, stroking, and patting. Haptic soothing is managed by calibrating the bodily proximity and postural orientations between the participants, including haptic—embracing or face-to-face—formations that are coordinated with particular forms of talk. Haptic formations configure specific affordances for embodied participation by actualizing the availability of tactile, aural, and visual modalities. The interactional organization of soothing in an embracing formation involves: an initiation/invitation and response, submergence of two bodies into a close haptic contact, and coordinated withdrawal from haptic contact. The embracing formation temporarily suspends the requirements for the distressed person to act like a responsive listener and speaker. The caregiver uses the face-to-face formation to reestablish conditions for the child’s interactional co-presence. Data are in Swedish and English translation.

Variations on the IRE pattern in a French beginner task-based classroom

ABSTRACTThe use of the Initiation–Response–Evaluation (IRE) sequence is common in education and, although classroom research does not preclude its practice in pedagogy, it recommends introducing other forms of talk into teaching. The present study, inspired by Task-Based Language Teaching research on learner language, uses Conversation Analysis to explore the variations on the IRE pattern that take place in a class of French beginners as they complete a learning task. Based on audio-recorded data collected in situ, the study uncovers two IRE subcategories and one pattern of interaction that diverges from the standard IRE pattern. These variations reflect changes in the lesson phase and show how a three-phase lesson plan focused on a specific task can move classroom participants away from the exclusive use of IRE.

Bioethics’ Contradiction: Everyday Ethics and the Morality System

Webb Keane’s Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (2016) asks how people live lives they consider ethical. He calls into question what counts in people’s categorization of a situation as ethical, and he considers the boundaries between the ethical and the moral, noting lack of consistent usage between those terms. This review essay focuses on how Keane’s arguments help articulate a fundamental contradiction between the everyday ethics that people bring to health-care situations and the institutional ethics that frames professionals’ work and discourse. Keane’s work is especially valuable in emphasizing the importance of “minor things” such as dress in how people make ethical evaluations. He emphasizes that ethical work is interactive, taking place in particular forms of talk.

The New Law “About Psychiatric Help and Guarantees of the Rights of Citizens at Its Rendering” in Russia.

Since 1993 in Russia is the new law which had to adopted to order legally mental health service, stopped a rough arbitrariness, abuses et cetera. So, how in real life this law works? The law guarantees to the mental sick person dismissal at “own desire” or for “full professional unfitness”. Usually, the employer speaks: “Leave yourself in an amicable way, or differently - you will leave badly”. Neither about opening a leaf of temporary disability, nor about registration of disability the speech doesn't happen. After dismissal, in attempts of work in other place, the person is waited by public insults, humiliation of personal advantage and business reputation. Why? Because the previous chief telephoned to the new employer about the mentally sick citizen only bad and negative characteristic. Such information should be qualified as a slander. But, to make responsible for slander of the chief, official person, administrator is impossible. The appeal, sometimes, to the law-court behind protection of the own personal human rights is useless. The next employer in a rough and contemptuous form, or with a minimum of decency, refuses in the work again. The law guarantees to man with mental disorder also development of a depression syndrome with thoughts of suicide, drift in poverty, as the result of unemployment. Psychiatrists write out recipes to the patients on some neuroleptics, antidepressants, tranquilizers, until at him money came to an end. However, to the full recovery and social-labor rehabilitation the extract of recipes doesn't conduct. With employment nobody will be help him. The patients continue to be disadapt more and more. A. P. Chekhov in “Chamber number 6” wrote: “… Doctor Khobotoff considered a duty occasionally to visit the sick colleague. Everything in him was opposite to Andrey Efimovich: both full person, and bad, indulgent form of talking, both word ”colleague“, and high boots; the most opposite was that he considered as the duty to treat Andrey Efimovich and he thought that he should really treats. In each visit he brought a bottle with bromic potassium and pills from a rhubarb.” In Russia schizophrenics won't be accused of “magic sorcery”, of “the contract of sale of own soul to a Satan”, not burned down (auto-da-fe) on an inquisition fire, but accused of the so-called full professional unfitness and discharged from work-office (more precisely, would expeled), thereby, dooming to additional sufferings, to slow and painful social death. Social death, unemployment and poverty conduct to deterioration of corporal (physical) health, depression, despair, suicide attempts. In Moscow You can see a lot of homeless people near metro stations. Much - schizophrenics are. They are the derelicts, pariahs, who lost own housing, and not just work. They go on garbage cans. Summary The law of mental health service in modern Russia as during N.M. Karamzin's period (XVII-XVIII centuries) “works” at paper. Anybody doesn't protect the social and economic rights of patients. For full citizens of schizophrenics don't consider. Them were deprived of a basal human right - on work, on active social life.

Making meaning through joint activity in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) settings: The interplay between content-related and activity-related talk

In the recent literature on CSCL which places the spotlight on participants' talk, there is a clear dichotomy between studies that focus on content-related talk and those that focus on off-topic or activity-related talk. In the approach adopted in this paper, based on the notion of educa- tional influence, the guiding hypothesis is that both forms of talk are close- ly linked in the collaborative dynamics and that activity-related talk, far from being irrelevant, has an essential role to play in promoting the collab- orative construction of knowledge. The paper empirically examines this hypothesis in four online collaborative learning situations. The results show that in small group situations requiring the preparation of a written product devote a major part of their discursive activity to ne- gotiating the form of organization of their joint activity and to making sure that all members are familiar with it. In contrast, the technological tools used in the collaborative situation do not seem to have an impact on the relative weight of the type of participants talk, either content-related or ac- tivity-related.

Gringo/a as Sociolinguistic Fractal

The polysemic term “gringo” inevitably mediates the negotiation of cultural identity for anthropologists carrying out fieldwork in Latin America. Drawing on experiences from the authors’ interactions in pursuit of professional goals, this analysis shows how nation, religion, gender, race, and the histories of colonization, migration, and alliance emerge and recede in kaleidoscopic encounters between hemispheric stereotypes and cross-cultural travelers. The intertwined personal experience narratives of ‘gringo-hood’ we present reveal the fractal character of knowledge and experience. This article, therefore, shows how linguistic, cultural, and especially folkloric interactions mediate the various dimensions of our socially situated experiences and the different forms of talk we encountered.

The Political Economy of the Radio Personality

In music radio broadcasting, radio personalities (presenters, hosts, DJs) have traditionally been of critical importance to programming success. In this article, I seek to add to the understanding of contemporary developments within radio, especially music radio, through focusing on the presenter from a political economy perspective. How do new business models and technologies affect the performances and forms of talk developed by presenters in contemporary radio? What new roles are assigned to presenters in commercial music radio? How are work practices and labor relations affected? The article shows how media convergence has impacted the work of radio personalities in traditional broadcasting.

Circle Time in Pre-School Class: A Study about Sex-Year-Old Children and Their Experiences of Participation in Two Different Circle Times

The purpose is to study children’s participation in two different circle times. The theoretical starting points consist of the socio-cultural theory and the developmental pedagogy theory. Developmental pedagogy emerged from empirical studies where there was a dynamic interplay and close cooperation between children, teachers and researchers. Data collection methods are: video recording/observation using a digital video camera and interviews with children in the form of talk about questions based on the videotaped circle time context. What are the differences between the two circle times? The study shows that children were participation to varying degree in circle activities. In circle 1 the theme was not problematized and the children did not understand the aim of the task. The children were less participation in the activity. In circle time 2 pre-school teachers try to take the content and theme a step further and arouse the children's interest. The children were participation in the activity and the theme could also further develop. Circle time 2 shows that it is possible to turn the child's spontaneous questions, play, and imagination into a learning opportunity and involve the children in the activity. This was not seen in circle time 1. Play and learning activities constitute an educational model for work in preschool classes and the circle times. In practice, the good preschool teacher with knowledge of learning plays an important role in the preschool class in promoting children's learning and development in a pleasurable way.

Voices in the Wind

This ethnodrama critically examines conceptualizations of women’s empowerment in international development initiatives. It represents a collection of experience-based narratives from six Malian women who participated in a photovoice project centered on women’s empowerment in the specific context of microfinance. Deviating from normative neoliberal financially-based assumptions underlying the relationship between microfinance and women’s empowerment, wherein the prevailing belief is that increases in economic resources necessarily lead to increases in women’s empowerment, this article suggests that empowerment is a complex multi-dimensional construct that includes, yet extends beyond, the financial paradigm. This one act ethnodrama is intended as a form of talking back to the academic literature and Western discourses surrounding empowerment. It draws inspiration from Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s transnational feminist framework, particularly the concept of history from below, by creating spaces for the women in this project to have their voices heard and to be included in global practices of history-making.

Transcending transmission

PurposeExtant research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication primarily relies on a transmission model of communication that treats organizations and communication as distinct phenomena. This approach has been criticized for neglecting the formative role of communication in the emergence of organizations. This paper seeks to propose to reconceptualize CSR communication by drawing on the “communication constitutes organizations” (CCO) perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that explores the implications of switching from an instrumental to a constitutive notion of communication.FindingsThe study brings forth four main findings: from the CCO view, organizations are constituted by several, partly dissonant, and potentially contradictory communicative practices. From that viewpoint, the potential impact of CSR communication becomes a matter of connectivity of CSR to other practices of organizational communication. Communication practices that concern CSR should not be generally dismissed as mere “greenwashing” – given that some forms of talk can be action. Consequently, there is a need to investigate which specific speech acts create accountability and commitment in the context of CSR. The CCO view shows that CSR communication potentially extends the boundary of the organization through the involvement of third parties. Thus, it is fruitful to study CSR communication as a set of practices that aims at boundary maintenance and extension. Organizations are stabilized by various non‐human entities that “act” on their behalf. Accordingly, CSR communication should also take into account non‐human agency and responsibility.Originality/valueThis paper links the literature on CSR communication to broader debates in organizational communication studies and, in particular, to the CCO perspective. By applying the CCO view, it reconceptualizes CSR communication as a complex process of meaning negotiation.

Informal talk: shaping understandings of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in rural Australia

Although there have been great strides in the prevention, care and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs, including HIV) in Australia, the increasing trend towards higher rates of some STIs is of concern, especially reports of higher rates of chlamydia in inner regional areas. Reasons for these changes are unclear but suggest there is an inconsistent use of prevention measures and ambivalence towards acting responsibly around sexual behaviours. Understanding an individual's response to the circumstances or contexts in which knowledge about STIs are operationalised in rural communities becomes central to recognising how individuals experience health and illness, especially for developing interventions to prevent the transmission of STIs. The aim of this research is to understand how individuals in rural communities make sense of their experiences in relation to STIs and how rurality influences discussion about STIs and health-seeking behaviours. In-depth interviews with 24 participants, 18 females and 6 males, aged between 19 and 65 years provide the data for the study. Methodological principles of 'grounded theory' underpin the analysis. An eclectic approach to grounded theory was used in the current study that was derived from a number of authors. The findings revealed that a number of contexts shape the actions and reactions of rural individuals towards STIs. These include 'public and private world of individuals', 'forms of talking in rural communities' and 'managing information and use of health services'. Factors that shape social life in rural communities such as the social bonds that are present, the relationships developed, and the way in which people behave influence the public and private aspects of rural life. Different forms of talk were identified that indicate that sexual issues are discussed in a number of informal ways and encompass distinct experiences of conveying information with regard to sex and STIs. Managing information and use of health services occurs when individuals assess and identify the need to access services for STIs. The strength of this research lies in the identification of a number of contexts such as the private-public divide and types of talk where informal mechanisms encourage individuals to conform and comply with community rules and values. Using informal talk as a health promotion and or prevention strategy in rural locations can provide an alternative approach to potentially changing social norms. It would be possible to extend the idea of positive informal talk to include symbols and imagery that encourage individuals to seek treatment and provide a more positive view of 'reputation'. Engaging rural individuals in positive talk about sexual risk, access to treatment for STIs, and provision of accurate knowledge can help to build new 'social norms' that encourage new interpretations.

La constitution de l'idéologie linguistique des chatteurs malgachophones dans les cybercafés de Tananarive

L’idéologie linguistique est devenue une question centrale en anthropologie linguistique parce qu’elle permet de s’interroger sur le lien entre les structures sociales et les manières de parler à travers l’étude des « idées sur la langue », soit en tant qu’elles sont explicitement formulées, soit en tant qu’elles sont incorporées dans les pratiques mêmes (Woolard & Schieffelin 1994). Généralement, l’idéologie linguistique est documentée au moyen de discours métapragmatiques produits en situations d’entretiens, censées permettre de recueillir des croyances et des représentations. Mais il s’agit d’une approche ex post qui renseigne au mieux sur l’écart entre les représentations que les locuteurs se forment de leurs langues et de leurs pratiques. Nous avons opté pour une approche différente en examinant les séquences interactionnelles où ce qui est en jeu se situe au niveau métapragmatique. Celui-ci nous semble être le lieu où l’on peut mettre au jour le processus de construction de l’idéologie linguistique. En nous appuyant sur notre corpus de données audiovisuelles d’interactions par chat recueillies dans les cybercafés de Tananarive, nous analysons particulièrement les moments interactionnels où font problème, pour les participants eux-mêmes, les manières d’écrire et les langues utilisées pour communiquer. Nous ne laisserons pas pour autant de côté le discours métapragmatique produit en situation d’entretien mais nous ne lui accorderons pas le rôle central qu’il a généralement dans les études consacrées à l’idéologie linguistique.

From The Editor: Climate Change Criticism

From The Editor:Climate Change Criticism Karen Pinkus, Guest Editor Thirty years ago diacritics published one of its most widely read issues, on nuclear criticism (vol. 14, no. 2, 1984). The editor—Richard Klein, also a contributor to the present issue—envisioned a book and Jacques Derrida predicted a series of university programs dedicated to the topic. Yet nuclear criticism did not take on steam and nuclear fear has faded to a barely audible hum in the noise of the current infosphere. The nuclear criticism issue—already we have in its title a destructive form of technology and simultaneously a nodal point around which criticism might revolve—looked toward possibilities of political engagement. Something “unforeseen” and positive might come about from “the application of literary critical procedures to the logic and rhetoric of nuclear war, but also from the interpretation of canonical texts through the perspective of nuclear criticism,” as Klein wrote.1 The dominant figure for nuclear criticism was allegory (of survival), and the dominant literary form a fable. Frances Ferguson, another contributor to the present issue, insisted on the sublime as the proper mode for facing the threat of total annihilation. The nuclear was above all textual, tied to communication, since, as Derrida noted, “a nuclear war has not taken place: one can only talk and write about it.”2 By contrast, climate change has always taken place. And it is not at all clear what forms of talking and writing might be commensurate with climate change. The Anthropocene—or, better, our very recent collective consciousness of it—has ushered in strange and chaotic temporalities. Fossil fuels, primarily from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods some four hundred and twenty million years ago, are somehow inextricably linked with Being, with a certain idea of human freedom. Over the past several years, humanists have begun to turn their critical attention to climate-related issues ranging from theories of deep time to environmental justice and international negotiation practices. Within a growing field of study, what distinguishes the essays here is an engagement with the nuclear moment along with an interrogation of what has happened (what will happen, what will have happened) to the traditions associated with diacritics—traditions that the contributors and readers of this journal have embraced and rejected; difficult traditions that have sustained us in difficult times and brought us to moments of immense joy—in the Anthropocene. We might go to an extreme and suggest that whether or not we explicitly take up climate change in our writing (critical, creative, institutional-bureaucratic, or otherwise), climate change takes us up. Writing in the time of climate change—even critical writing engaged with texts from before the widespread extraction of fossil fuels—is necessarily untimely, out of joint with familiar modes of thinking and being, no matter how heterogeneous these may be. As universal subjects under the globalized umbrella of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, we have come to the threshold of a radical geo-epistemological break, but one that we may have to suppress in order to go on writing. As Ian Baucom has written in an essay as subtle as it is devastating, we are forced to [End Page 3] search for a new method that might—remotely—respect the chaotic multidimensionality of being-as-geology, of a radically changed earth.3 If we are to write “in good faith” (yet, paradoxically, we cannot do so) we cannot allow ourselves to reflect back on this time from a future as post-catastrophic or post-apocalyptic since anthropogenic climate change is ongoing rather than eventual or unilinear. Our time is increasingly characterized by brief periods that allow us to write (in denial), punctuated by extreme weather, violent disruptions, panic. And yet, we do write and we do think, with all the critical acumen we can muster. This is the paradox under which the present issue labors. The photographs in this issue were taken/curated by Bernard Yenelouis, of his native Detroit. Cars are a potent symbol of climate change although a relatively minor contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. Detroit’s recent bankruptcy is another sign of the times. Many of the images point—allusively—toward a culture of...

Multilingualism in transformative spaces: contact and conviviality

South Africa is a highly mobile country characterized by historical displacements and contemporary mobilities, both social and demographic. Getting to grips with diversity, dislocation, relocation and anomie, as well as pursuing aspirations of mobility, is part of people’s daily experience that often takes place on the margins of conventional politics. A politics of conviviality is one such form of politics of the popular that emerges in contexts of rapid change, diversity, mobility, and the negotiation and mediation of complex affiliations and attachments. The questions in focus for this paper thus pertain to how forms of talk, born out of displacement, anomie and contact in the superdiverse contexts of South Africa, allow for the articulation of life-styles and aspirations that break with the historical faultlines of social and racial oppression. We first expand upon the idea of (marginal) linguistic practices as powerful mediations of political voice and agency, an idea that can be captured in the notion of linguistic citizenship, the rhetorical foundation of a politics of conviviality. We then move on to analyze the workings of linguistic citizenship in the multilingual practices of two distinct manifestations of popular culture, namely hip hop and a performance by a stand-up comedian in Mzoli’s meat market in Gugulethu, Cape Town. The paper concludes with a general discussion on the implications for politics of multilingualism and language policy.

Children’s Reflections on Two Cultural Ways of Working Together: “Talking with Hands and Eyes” or Requiring Words

Forty-four pairs of Mexican-heritage and European-heritage US children were asked to characterize differences between two contrasting cultural patterns of working together in video clips that showed a) Mexican Indigenous-heritage children working together by collaborating, helping, observing others, and using nonverbal as well as verbal communication, and b) middle-class European-American children working alone and using predominantly verbal communication.Through experience in two cultural settings, bilingual Mexican-heritage US children may become familiar with these contrasting cultural patterns that have been identified in research. Mexican-heritage US children characterized the clips in ways that corresponded with researchers’ descriptions more often than did European-heritage children, when discussing working together and helping but not when discussing communication.The children from the two backgrounds differed in their treatment of talk. In addition to talking more overall, half of the European-heritage US children considered talk a requirement for working together or helping, excluding nonverbal communication as a way of working together or helping. In contrast, the Mexican-heritage US children included nonverbal communication as a means of working together and helping, and some seemed to include nonverbal communication as a form of talking.

Stigma and Status

In this article, I use in-depth interviews with Black college students at two predominantly white universities to investigate the coconstruction of race, gender, and sexuality, and to examine intersectional identities as a dynamic process rather than bounded identity. I focus on Black college men’s talk about interracial relationships. Existing research documents Black women’s angry reactions to interracial relationships, but for Black men, interracial relationships present both problems and opportunities. I examine how Black men use two distinct forms of interracial talk— “player” talk and “intimacy” talk—to negotiate racialized gendered stereotypes of Black men’s heterosexuality. By moving between forms of talk, Black men negotiate the identity tensions they face as Black upwardly mobile men. Player talk and intimacy talk both respond to and use racialized stereotypes, reworking the relationship between gender, race, and sexuality. In this case, disrupted racial boundaries uphold gender inequalities between men and women.

"We Can't Feel Our Language": Making Places in the City for Aboriginal Language Revitalization

"We Can't Feel Our Language":Making Places in the City for Aboriginal Language Revitalization Natalie J. K. Baloy (bio) The Squamish teens . . . show an appreciation of their culture. It may not be to the same level or depth as their elders, but it may help to ensure that it lives on, even if in a different form. They have all heard their traditional language spoken at story-tellings, and at gatherings and funerals. Even though they don't understand it, they enjoy hearing it. "It sounds better," says Ralphie, "it's a lot more pretty than English." Belinda, growing up in urban Port Alberni, is one teen who feels a strong and deep connection to both her language and culture. Yet she still faces numerous stumbling blocks in her quest to learn more about it. . . . "I want to learn more prayers. When we go to workshops, I want to hear the prayers from beginning to end. If I knew the prayers, I would say them. I told my grampa that, so he's been teaching me, taking me out on the road, and now I'm learning about medicinal plants and foods." Belinda recognizes that there are teachings associated with her people's songs and dances. "I want to understand what they mean, so I go and ask my grampa. I don't want to sing without knowing what it means." Native language revitalization efforts are overwhelmingly located in rural environments, despite the fact that aboriginal people are increasingly choosing to live and raise families in urban settings.1 This profoundly affects aboriginal people living in cities, many of whom, like the Squamish and Port Alberni teens quoted above, are anxious to learn, speak, hear, see, and feel their languages. This article explores possibilities for extending aboriginal language education opportunities into the urban domain based on qualitative research in Vancouver, British Columbia. I [End Page 515] argue that aboriginal language revitalization efforts have a place in the city, as demonstrated by emerging language ideologies of urban aboriginal people expressed in interviews for this study. I identify three central challenges facing language workers and learners. I suggest possible ways to address these issues through urban language revitalization projects. First, language workers and learners must work against the sometimes subtle but pervasive idea that a strong aboriginal identity and an urban lifestyle are mutually exclusive.2 Many people acknowledge that urban aboriginal people can and do maintain strong connections to their heritage and homelands; however, language revitalization projects are located primarily on reserves, perpetuating a divide between language and the city. I present several approaches to reconceptualizing urban aboriginal identity that can support urban-based language initiatives. Second, language workers must consider how to address linguistic and cultural diversity among urban aboriginal people through language projects. Research participants suggested that attention to the local languages ought to be the first step, particularly for public use of language. Participants emphasized important links between land, language, and identity. Acknowledgment of local peoples, their lands, and their languages offers a starting point for addressing diverse language needs in the city. I call this step "placing language." Third, language workers and learners must identify how ties between land, language, and identity can be fostered and nurtured in urban spaces not only for local peoples but also for those who have moved to the city from elsewhere. For nonlocal urban aboriginal peoples, connections with homelands can be strengthened through enhanced access to language and culture.3 I suggest several approaches for "making places" for language and culture in the city. Including the urban dimension in language revitalization efforts is of pressing importance as languages continue to lose speakers and aboriginal people continue to dwell in urban spaces.4 Through recognition and promotion of connections between land, language, and identity, language workers and learners can make places for aboriginal language education in the city. Talking About Language: Language Ideologies Linguistic anthropologists and other scholars have recognized the sociocultural implications of language and examined its social functions. [End Page 516] The study of "language ideology" has emerged as a "mediating link between social structures and forms of talk."5 Language ideology refers to the social connections people make...