Abstract
This article considers how strangers who use public transportation initiate conversations and how disruptions of the transportation system affect interactions among strangers. How conversations are initiated has rarely been discussed in the literature because the majority of research takes the initiation of talk for granted. Building on Goffman, the article tests two hypotheses that explain how strangers initiate conversations. The first hypothesis states that travelers rely on interactional rituals if they have to talk with others because of a rule against opening talk with strangers, a rule that can be relaxed if travelers are faced with disruptive events. The second hypothesis states that a conversation can be initiated without introductory remarks if a traveler’s focus of attention is discernible to another traveler, irrespective of the circumstances travelers find themselves in. I argue that the latter hypothesis better explains how strangers initiate conversations and discuss how this finding may be generalized.
Introduction
Living among strangers is a historical particularity of modern city life (Lofland 1974; Simmel 1908), a particularity we rarely question, being, for the most part, city dwellers ourselves. City life almost inevitably brings us into close physical proximity to strangers while we maintain social distance. But this pattern is not without exceptions. Strangers sometimes find reasons to talk with other strangers, and this transition from an “unfocused interaction” to a “focused interaction” (Goffman 1963) is the topic of this article. I consider how strangers initiate conversations in public space and draw particularly on Goffman’s work about interactions in public space (Goffman 1963, 1971, 1983a, 1983b) to analyze interactions among strangers using public transport.
The majority of research on face-to-face interactions does not scrutinize the initiation of talk because it either considers talk among people who know each other (and expect to be recognized, greeted, and talked to), or talk among people who act in a professional or service role that accounts for the fact that they address someone or are addressed by someone they do not know. Conversation analysis (CA), for example, is a research tradition that closely scrutinizes a conversation once it is initiated. We learn from CA that beginnings are important because they structure what follows in the conversation. Each turn in a conversation is closely tied to the turns preceding it and following it, which CA discusses under the topic of “adjacency pairs” (Sacks 1987; Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974; Schegloff and Sacks 1973) or more generally as “next positioning” (Goodwin and Heritage 1990). But because of its rigorous focus on conversational data, CA is not well equipped to consider what happens before words are uttered and somebody starts the recording, although what happens before might have a structuring effect on the conversation that follows as well.
If we search for conditions where conversations might be initiated, we notice that there may also be situations where there is talk by someone but no conversation ensues (Goffman 1983a). Consider an example from my field notes in which a traveler says something that could potentially lead to a conversation with other travelers but does not receive any verbal uptake: 1
W44 notices a pack of cigarettes on the seat and asks whether somebody forgot it there (3). And although both W19 and I could respond to this “noticing” (Moerman 1988, 101) verbally, neither of us does so (4). How could we explain such an interaction? I suggest that in order to understand how strangers (successfully) initiate conversations, we cannot limit ourselves to talk alone; we have to consider gestures, glances, and the spacial configurations in which people interact. In other words, we need ethnographic tools like participant observation that allow a broader analytic perspective. Several ethnographic studies discuss interactions among strangers in different Anglo-American public or semi-public contexts. Some studies focus on public streets, places, and parks (Anderson 1990; Jacobs 1961; Lofland 1974), others on bars, clubs, and restaurants (Anderson 2003; Laurier and Philo 2006; Morill, Snow, and White 2005), and a growing number of studies focuses on the means of public transportation (Kim 2012; Nash 1975; Sheller and Urry 2006). What bars, clubs, trains, and buses have in common is that they bring strangers into close proximity to one another, while the patterns of use of these spaces encourage them to remain in close proximity for a while. Whereas strangers who cross paths on public streets seldom linger, strangers who frequent the same bar may sit next to each other for at least as long as it takes to order and consume a drink, and strangers on a train may sit next to each other for the duration of their journey. This proximity facilitates conversations among strangers but does not fully account for their emergence. Conversations among strangers remain relatively rare in such spaces and this may in part be due to the norms to which we adhere in public space. In particular, Goffman argues that there is a general rule against opening talk with strangers in public (1983a), a rule that requires strangers to follow certain ritual procedures if they nonetheless want to initiate a conversation (Goffman 1971), and W44 possibly fails to follow these procedures in the case above. What complicates the matter is that the rule against talking with strangers can be relaxed under certain conditions (Goffman 1983a). Public transportation systems are highly regulated, interrelated “expert systems” (Urry 2007) that guide travelers through signage (Fuller 2002) and provide travelers with up-to-date information about the system by technological means that reduce the necessity to acquire information by talking with others. Yet transportation systems also occasion disruptive events like delays, malfunctions of technology, and accidents, events that reduce the reliability of information provided by the system and provide travelers with the need to orient themselves and make sense of their surroundings (Goffman 1974; Weick 1993). To orient themselves, travelers can ask other travelers questions, as I observed during fieldwork. However, the occurrence of disruptive events did not explain all the cases in my data where travelers initiated conversations with others. My search for alternative explanations lead me to question the significance of the rule against opening talking with strangers that Goffman postulates and instead focus on what travelers know about each other in a given situation.
In the next section, I discuss the role of theory in my fieldwork. I then describe some of Goffman’s concepts that are relevant for conversations among strangers. While Goffman provides us with a rich array of descriptions and concepts, their multitude also implies a problem of selection that can impede our ability to understand what is going on (Strong 1988). This is why I formulate two hypotheses that explain how strangers initiate conversations. Both are based on Goffman’s work, but the first considers conversations as a ritual exchange and the second considers travelers’ focus of attention as recognizable to others.
Methodology: Participant Observation on Trains and Buses
Documenting conversations among strangers is time-consuming because they are relatively rare. Between 2009 and 2011, I spent more than one thousand hours on trains, buses, trams, subways, in train stations, and at bus stops as a participant observer. I wrote notes contemporaneously while in the field. I either jotted down observations in a notebook or typed them directly into my laptop. On days during which I gathered data, I spent an average of three hours twenty minutes in the field, my longest journey being a thirteen-hour train ride from Sweden to Germany. I spent the majority of my time on local trains, and less time on buses, streetcars, and long-distance trains. Most of my research was carried out in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, whose cities form the biggest metropolitan area in Europe with a dense network of public transportation. Most trains in Germany have separate first-class and second-class seating, while buses and streetcars have only one class of seating. My observations on trains are limited to second-class seating because of the ticket with which I was traveling. I selected trains and buses at random, and I sought out routes on which I knew that accidents had just happened or that were undergoing scheduled construction, routes where I was more likely to find travelers trying to make sense of their surroundings, and I also commuted daily between two cities for a period of three months.
To begin data analysis with the beginning of a recording is unproblematic in cases where we study interactions among acquaintances, but the silence that precedes a conversation becomes crucial for the analysis of interactions among strangers. Audio and video recordings enable analysts to listen to and view talk multiple times and pay close attention to phenomena like turn-taking that would otherwise be difficult to capture (Bergmann 2007). Yet recording conversations among strangers in public space is problematic because it is unclear when, where, and between whom conversations might be initiated. Gaining consent from strangers to record their interactions also poses analytic problems because asking for permission would require the initiation of conversations, exactly the phenomenon of interest here. For these reasons, only very few interactions were audio-recorded and participant observation was the method of choice for this study, a method suited for verbalizing silent social practices (Hirschauer 2001).
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We are already well equipped for conducting such a study because we routinely monitor our surroundings and the people who inhabit them. Yet since our monitoring ability remains limited, what to focus on while in the field remains a process of learning and testing theoretical assumptions. Burawoy (1998) describes how theory and fieldwork can be intertwined:
Each day one enters the field, prepared to test the hypotheses generated from the previous day’s “intervention.” Fieldwork is a sequence of experiments that continue until one’s theory is in sync with the world one studies. It is a process of successive approximation that can, of course, go awry. Wild perturbations between observations and expectations signify poor understanding, while occasional shocks force one into a healthy rethinking of emergent theorizing. (17)
I developed several hypotheses concerning travelers’ interactions that I subsequently tested in the field, two of which I will present in the next section. My approach to participant observation was more passive than Burawoy’s “interventions,” but my presence certainly affected the interactions I observed. Although I rarely initiated conversations myself, I was sometimes approached by other travelers. Such conversations turned out to be good data because I was able to document them from the beginning and could also consider my experience as a traveler through introspection. What I observed was influenced by my research interests, and those changed over the course of fieldwork. In the beginning, I was interested in what exactly travelers said and in what sort of situation they said it (e.g., during disruptive events), and I did not always document travelers’ focus of attention. But my suspicion that interaction rituals and the (non-)occurrence of disruptive events did not always explain the initiation of conversations forced me to search for alternative explanations, and the inclination that travelers’ focus of attention might be important enabled me to alter my own focus during fieldwork to bodily orientation and gazes. In this sense, theoretical assumptions and empirical observations were intertwined, which makes it necessary to describe the theoretical concepts that influenced my fieldwork.
Theory: Goffman and Others on Interactions in Public Space
Theories help us to see by guiding our attention in the field. Theories of face-to-face interaction remind us that the beginning of a conversation is not identical with the beginning of interaction. Instead, interaction begins with mutual presence within the same physical space, where those present are mutually aware of each other’s presence and adjust their behavior accordingly, but do not have to speak with each other (Kieserling 1999). Goffman describes this as “civil inattention”:
One gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates that the other is present (and that one admits openly to having seen him), while at the next moment withdrawing one’s attention from him so as to express that he does not constitute a target of special curiosity or design. (1963, 84)
Relative to the physical space in which individuals find themselves, the boundaries of interaction can become fluid. It can be impossible to say who is aware of whose presence in spaces like a busy main hall of a train station. The degree to which the physical presence of a body in a space translates into the social presence of an individual with an identity is moderated by bodily position and glances; those who wish to minimize their social presence will maximize their physical distance to others and minimize eye contact at the same time, something that has been well documented for different public settings (Hirschauer 2005; Kim 2012; Lofland 1974; Nash 1975; Pütz 2012).
The norms of civil inattention are tied to modern city life and the history of mass public transportation in Western cultures. Georg Simmel, the first sociologist to write about interactions in public, argues that people were unable to look at each other without talking to each other before there were buses and trains, and that they had to learn this skill with time (Simmel 1908). The designs of the first passenger trains in the nineteenth century in Europe were inspired by horse-drawn carriages, which had dominated long-distance travel until that point (Schivelbusch 1977). Seating in compartments was arranged in a U-shape, so that travelers were facing each other in the same way as in horse-drawn carriages, and travelers were physically unable to move to other compartments. Schivelbusch (1977) cites a source from the year 1866 who states that travelers on horse-drawn carriages, who knew they were traveling together for hours or even days, formed bonds that often survived the journey itself, whereas travelers on trains experienced the proximity to strangers in compartments to be unpleasant. 3 Current research on public transport also indicates that travelers are more likely to form relationships when they spend longer periods of time together on the same train or use the same bus service frequently as commuters do (Letherby and Reynolds 2005; Levin 2009; Nash 1975). However, such circumstances are increasingly rare in modern industrialized societies where travelers follow individualized travel paths (Urry 2007). For those who travel alone, the arrangement of bodies in space according to the norms of civil inattention creates physical distance because unacquainted travelers will avoid sitting next to each other if other seating is available (Kim 2012), otherwise they would intrude into someone’s “personal space” (Goffman 1971).
For Goffman, the risk of bodily harm and other forms of unwanted attention by strangers go a long way in explaining behavior in public space. He argues that people in public space both attempt to appear normal and watch for signs of alarm and abnormal behavior in others that could indicate danger, a scenario complicated by the fact that those who wish to do others harm know this as well (Goffman 1971). The question of intentions is particularly relevant for conversations among strangers: if a stranger shows an interest in others, these others may suspect some nefarious design (Anderson 2003; Kim 2012). Thus, people in public space may ask themselves why somebody they do not know initiates a conversation with them and be skeptical of that stranger’s intentions.
With “civil inattention,” the “territories of the self,” and “normal appearances,” Goffman aptly describes what keeps strangers in public apart. Goffman’s observations are supported by empirical research on Anglo-American public transportation systems (Bissell 2009; Kim 2012; Lofland 1974; Nash 1975). But what is it that allows strangers to overcome these hurdles and initiate conversations with others? Among the “territories of the self” (Goffman 1971), the “conversational preserve” is the territory that is concerned with the initiation of conversations. Goffman defines the “conversational preserve” only briefly as “the right of an individual to exert some control over who can summon him into talk and when he can be summoned” (64). The qualifier “some,” implies that an individual’s control over the “conversational preserve” is limited, but we do not learn the exact nature of its limits here. What we do learn is that potential breaches of the territories of the self can be nullified through “remedial interchanges” (Goffman 1971, 124). The function of a remedial interchange is to transform the meaning of behavior that could be regarded as offensive into acceptable behavior. What we gain from other writings is that “acquainted persons in a social situation require a reason not to enter into a face engagement with each other, while unacquainted persons require a reason to do so” (Goffman 1963, 124). Goffman (1983a) later lists some of the reasons, among them asking a stranger for directions; he states that asking for directions requires a summons first to establish a state of talk. He also lists exemptions to the rule against opening talk with strangers, among them dramatic events. The following explains why:
During occasions of recognized natural disaster, when individuals suddenly find themselves in a clearly similar predicament and suddenly become mutually dependent for information and help, ordinary communication constraints can break down. Again, however, what is occurring in the situation guarantees that encounters aren’t being initiated for what can be improperly gained by them. And to the extent that this is assured, contact prohibitions can be relaxed. (Goffman 1963, 136)
I will test whether this proposition is applicable to disruptive events in public transportation. In “expert systems” (Urry 2007) like public transportation, technology maintains a barrier between the system and its environment. Railroad tracks that are connected through switches form a geographical network of mobility controlled by modern computer systems. Technicians, train operators, conductors, and other personnel make sure the system functions as smoothly as possible. But as tightly coupled expert systems, public transportation systems are also vulnerable to “normal accidents” (Urry 2007; Perrow 1984), during which the barriers between the system and its environment can temporarily break down. Because public transportation systems are interconnected, disruptive events such as delays, accidents, technical malfunctions, and software breakdowns have the potential to spread and affect previously unaffected parts of the system. Disruptions all indicate that the system is not functioning optimally and affect the reliability of information provided by the system itself; when a train ride does not proceed as scheduled, the schedule becomes of limited use. In such cases, the framing of the situation based on this information can become problematic and turn into collective “sensemaking” (Weick 1990, 1993), where even skillful travelers consult service personnel or other travelers to find out “what is going on here” (Goffman 1974) and what they should do next. So while disruptive events increase the likelihood of conversations as a way of making sense of a situation, they also lower the barriers toward conversations because they provide travelers with a legitimate reason to talk. Building on these propositions, we can formulate a first hypothesis for how strangers initiate conversations:
The Remedial Interchange (RI) Hypothesis says that travelers use a “remedial interchange” (Goffman 1971) if they have to talk with others because they follow a rule against opening talk with strangers, a rule that can be relaxed if travelers are faced with disruptive events.
I will demonstrate that this hypothesis explains some interactions among strangers where conversations are initiated but not all—one of the difficulties being that travelers do not always use the elements of remedial interchange when they are not confronted with disruptive events, and they sometimes use elements of a remedial interchange although confronted with a disruptive event. I show that travelers do not react uniformly to disruptive events, and that it matters how they react and what this reveals about their current focus of attention. Theorists of face-to-face interaction have emphasized the importance of a mutual focus of attention for focused encounters (Collins 2004; Goffman 1963; Turner 2002) but have not given sufficient attention as to how a mutual focus is established in practice by the participants of an interaction.
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It is again Goffman who points us in the right direction, who argues:
When jointly faced by what are to be taken as dramatic occurrences, any two individuals in the community can acceptably assume what is in each other’s mind, can laconically bridge remarks to it, and will not be seen to presume in doing so. (1983a, 33)
However, what I came to question is whether it is the event itself that allows travelers to “assume what is on each other’s mind” (Goffman 1983a, 34) or whether it simply matters what a traveler’s attention is focused on at the moment another attempts to initiate a conversation. This leads me to my second hypothesis:
The Focus of Attention (FoA) Hypothesis states a conversation can be initiated among alter (a traveler) and ego (another traveler) without introductory remarks if alter’s focus of attention is discernible to ego. And if somebody’s focus of attention is not discernible to others, a summons like “excuse me” or other introductory remarks will be used.
Both hypotheses build on Goffman’s writings about interactions in public space but only the RI Hypothesis distinguishes between different types of situations while the FoA Hypothesis does not. The FoA Hypothesis concentrates on traveler’s behavior and the inferences travelers can draw from observing said behavior in others, irrespective of the situations they find themselves in. I propose that the FoA Hypothesis is the better explanation because it is more economical and more widely applicable to my data.
Analysis
Searching for an Explanation: The Remedial Interchange Hypothesis
I begin by providing two cases that can seemingly be explained by the Remedial Interchange Hypothesis. In both cases, those who initiate a conversation are not sure how to get to their destination. And being either unable to find that information on their own or being confronted with contradictory information, they ask other travelers for help. According to Goffman (1971), the remedial interchange to be used on such occasions has recurring elements such as accounts (cf. Buttny 1993; Scott and Lyman 1968), apologies, or requests. Accounts explain why alter has committed or is about to commit an untoward act. An apology is used after a breach of territory has been committed, and requests are used prior to a breach of territory or during its initiation. “A request consists of asking license of a potentially offended person to engage in what could be considered a violation of his rights” (Goffman 1971, 144). Accounts, apologies, and requests are functional equivalents that Goffman summarizes as “remedies.” Similarly, regarding an account as sufficient, accepting an apology, and granting a request are functional equivalents Goffman summarizes as “reliefs.” A remedial interchange thus consists of at least two parts: a “remedy” by alter and its “relief” by ego which nullifies the potential offense by alter; this base sequence can be expanded by an “appreciation” by alter of ego’s relief and a “minimization” by ego of the relief.
W39 appears to have made the attempt to orient herself with the help of information supplied by the railroad company (1) and apparently failing to do so, she looks for help (2). Her glance around before she addresses me (E) indicates a search for something or somebody; a way of orienting in public space (2). This indicates that she addresses me because of my proximity to her; I am merely someone who is available and not someone she has a special interest in. The remedial interchange in this case consists of two pairs of turns, each containing part of a remedy and a relief. With the opening “excuse me” (3) W39 asks for my attention which I provide by saying “yes” (4) with a rising intonation and turning towards her. The second pair of the interchange is W39’s request for information that she combines with an account (5). In my reply I acknowledge W39’s request indirectly as legitimate by attempting to help her (9). While the account used by W39 acknowledges a mistake on her part, the account used in the next example indicates that the traveler initiates a conversation because the railroad company provides contradictory information:
The remedial interchange in this case consists of a remedy, a relief, and an appreciation. After M17 requests information that M20 provides (2), M17 in turn provides an account for his question as part of a remedy (3). M20 adds additional information about the route to Mühlheim in his relief (4), after which M17 expresses his appreciation of M20’s relief with “thanks” (5). While W39 acknowledges a mistake in boarding the wrong train and her subsequent inability to find the information about the destination she is looking for, M17 explains that he was attempting to apply the information he had but found other information to be contradictory. While his ticket brought him to this platform, he finds a train on the platform identified by a different number than on his ticket.
Both case 2 and 3 indicate a potential infringement of the rule against opening talk with strangers. This rule could explain why travelers used elements of a “remedial interchange” to frame their questions for information. The RI Hypothesis also considers the situation in which travelers find themselves. According to the hypothesis, the rule against opening talking with strangers can be relaxed if travelers are confronted with a disruptive event. Both case 2 and 3 describe routine situations of travel. 5 The following case exemplifies what changes when travelers are affected by disruptive events:
In this case, both M50 and I are confronted with the cancellation of a train. M50 has likely been on the same train as I and was planning on making the same transfer. And since we appear to be in a similar predicament, it seems that the barriers for conversations are lowered; M50 does not have to initiate a “remedial interchange” (Goffman 1971) to ask me about the cancellation because it affects us both.
However, the mere occurrence of a disruptive event does not automatically lead to conversations among travelers who are unacquainted, despite potentially lowered barriers for conversation:
The streetcar is not moving for several minutes and this is noteworthy for M66, who not only asks “what is going on here” (2) but also appears to be irritated by the unaccounted delay, possibly because this is not the first time today that a streetcar is behind schedule. We can consider M66’s question as an attempt at sensemaking. Yet neither W40 nor I participate in his search for an explanation, nor do we respond to M66’s audible irritation. According to the RI Hypothesis, M66 would not have to use elements of a remedial interchange to initiate a conversation and does not do so yet no conversation ensues (as in case 1 discussed earlier). What is the reason for this? Is it because M66 fails to address another traveler directly or because a short delay is not disruptive enough (and not dramatic enough) to lower barriers for conversations among strangers?
It seems that the RI Hypothesis can explain the behavior of travelers to a certain extent but some reservations remain. 6 Goffman’s writings about interactional rituals are of course an abstraction of empirical observations. As theoretical concepts they cannot, by definition, account for all empirical variations of a phenomenon in the field. But variations can also indicate that a theoretical concept is not “in sync with the world one studies” as Burawoy (1998, 17) argues. In order to substantiate this impression, we have to examine the idea of dramatic or disruptive events. Upon closer inspection, Goffman’s assumption that dramatic events allow travelers to relax the rule against opening talk with strangers turns out to be problematic.
From Disruptive Events to Travelers’ Focus of Attention
While disruptive events increase the likelihood of conversations as a way of making sense of a situation (Weick 1993), they also lower the barriers towards conversations among strangers. During dramatic events like natural disasters, strangers find themselves in a “clearly similar predicament and suddenly become mutually dependent for information and help” (Goffman 1963, 136), so that constraints to initiating conversations can be relaxed. However, people have to recognize that there is a disruptive event that affects them first before this can lead to collective sensemaking, otherwise they do not realize that they are in a similar predicament (Murakami 2003). Furthermore, in order to be in a “clearly similar predicament” (Goffman 1963, 136), people also need not be equally affected by events. Goffman’s (1963) formulation that a disaster has to have been “recognized” (136, note the past tense) distracts from the fact that people who are confronted with events can frame them differently, and that this in situ framing is likely to differ from a retrospective description of events, something that Goffman clearly recognizes in his later work (Goffman 1974). Vollmer argues that it is not the event itself but participants’ framing that matters:
Since the difference between normal and abnormal events is constituted not by actual occasions but by how participants respond to them, there is always more than one avenue of response open to participants, and not all participants will tend to respond in the same or even just a similar fashion. (2013, 41)
I argue that what holds true for dramatic events also holds true for mundane events. Case 6 exemplifies how travelers are not necessarily equally affected by a disruptive event:
At the time I documented this case, the railroad company was doing maintenance on the tracks and had established a rail replacement service. Travelers are faced with a situation in which the train only goes a short distance from Dortmund main station, stops in Mengede, and then reverses its direction and goes back to Dortmund main station. But W70 expects the train to continue to Herne and does not know what is going on at first when the train reverses its direction. By exclaiming “what is going on now?” (3), W70 makes her puzzlement public, which alarms other travelers and initiates a process of collective sensemaking with others who respond. I sit in close proximity to her and wonder what prompts W70 to react in this way at first. In contrast to W70, I am familiar with the rail replacement service and have been using it for several days. While the railroad replacement service clearly affects W70 and her travel plans, it does not affect me to the same extent since I adapted my behavior accordingly and can explain what is going on right away (6). W70’s account that follows implies that she is not entirely to blame for her lapse, in retrospect she is able to identify a potentially crucial announcement whose contents she overheard while having her ticket checked (9, 11). Because the train was not very crowded, it did not alarm W70 that all other travelers left the train in Mengede, leaving her and M4 temporarily alone on the train. And since new travelers also boarded the train in Mengede, the train did not remain empty for long, while W70 was unaware of the fact that these new travelers intended to travel in the opposite direction. This case reveals some of the difficulties in assuming that events affect all travelers equally. The rail replacement service is scheduled by the railroad company and in operation for several weeks. While all travelers who travel on an S2 train have to adjust their plans, those that use the line frequently become familiar with circumstances so that it does not appear unusual any longer to them that the train changes direction in Mengede.
The question whether travelers are equally affected becomes more difficult to answer the less dramatic events are. Take such mundane and common disruptive events like delays (see also case 5 above). Travelers often learn of delays through announcements or electronic displays through which the railroad companies provide a framing of their own. A delay can be temporary; a train may reduce its delay with time, which means that a traveler who has to get off at the next station may be more affected than a traveler who stays on the train for another hour. Travelers who have to catch a connecting train may also be more affected by a delay because they risk missing that connection. Furthermore, certain connections on certain times of the day may be delayed regularly so that frequent travelers come to expect delays and learn to adapt their plans accordingly.
Clearly, travelers only know for certain how they are personally affected by a delay. So how can travelers who are strangers and know by definition very little about each other assume “what is in each other’s mind” (Goffman 1983a, 34) if the circumstances do not allow them to simply assume that they affect everybody who is present equally? The answer turns out to be quite simple, and it applies to all situations I observed in German public transportation systems no matter whether we label them normal or abnormal, dramatic or mundane. The point being that “what is in each other’s mind” is indicated by somebody’s focus of attention insofar as that focus of attention is discernible to others by virtue of the gaze, bodily alignment, and positioning in physical space.
Searching for another Explanation: The Focus of Attention Hypothesis
No matter whether a traveler is watching an accident, or an electronic display on a platform, the gaze indicates to others on what that traveler’s attention is focused at a particular moment. Being able to infer what is on someone’s mind by virtue of their focus of attention allows others to initiate a conversation with that someone about just that topic. That is why the Focus of Attention (FoA) Hypothesis states that a conversation can be initiated between alter (a traveler) and ego (another traveler) without summons or other introductory remarks if alter’s focus of attention is identifiable to ego. I argue that the FoA Hypothesis explains how strangers initiate conversations with each other better than the RI Hypothesis. According to the FoA Hypothesis, phrases like “pardon me” and “excuse me” are not so much remedies that indicate a normative infringement as they are attention-gaining devices that strangers use when the circumstances do not allow inferences about somebody’s focus of attention.
Consider the cases analyzed so far again in light of the FoA Hypothesis: In case 2, W39 and I are standing on the same platform. Previous to my conversation with W39, my attention is focused on nothing in particular, but my bodily presence on the platform in a waiting stance enables others to conclude that I intend to take the next train departing from this platform (Nash 1975). W39, on the other hand, consults the schedule of departures, and we can conclude from the enfolding conversation that she is looking for the city of Rheda-Wiedenbrück. Since she does not know when and from what platform a train departs for that destination, she cannot reasonably assume that I am traveling in the direction of Rheda-Wiedenbrück and that this is a destination I can therefore easily bring to mind. For this reason, she begins our conversation with “excuse me,” a summons that allows me to anticipate a forthcoming request. The situation is different in cases 3, 4, and 6. In all three cases, the travelers who initiate the conversation can assume that what they are about to ask is on the other person’s mind right now or can be easily brought to it. In case 3, M17 can assume by virtue of M20’s bodily presence on the train that M20 knows where the train that is about to depart Düsseldorf main station is headed to. In case 4, M50 asks me about the cancellation of the train without introduction because I just walked up the stairs to the platform, looked at the electronic display, and am now looking around to orient myself. As in case 3, W70 can assume in case 6 that I know where the train I am riding is going, and she can therefore question me about its destination without any introduction to prepare the conversational ground. Furthermore, the expression “What’s all of this, what is going on now?” (3) already makes it clear to me that she is trying to make sense of her surroundings, and W70 knows that I know after her exclamation that she is trying to find out what is going on.
The FoA Hypothesis can also explain why other travelers sometimes do not respond when a traveler says something without introduction, as in cases 1 and 5. In case 1, W44 asks whether somebody forgot an object on the seat she wants to sit in, but W19 looks out the window and I play with my cell phone as W44 asks this; we are focused on something else. And while M66 in case 5 notes that the streetcar is not moving with some irritation, neither W40 nor I seem to be focused on the nonmoving streetcar at the moment; we either did not notice or are not concerned by the short delay, which is why we do not respond.
Consider further the following two cases. Each is difficult to explain with the RI Hypothesis but easily explained with the FoA Hypothesis. In case 7, it is unclear whether a short delay actually affects the travelers who are present, but a traveler does not use a remedial interchange to initiate a conversation. In case 8, there is clearly no disruption to the transportation system, yet a traveler initiates a conversation without a remedial interchange:
M41 initiates a conversation with me after the second announcement without using a remedial interchange, but is this due to the delay? The conversation reveals that delays are common events for M41 that he is faced with almost daily, delays that may inconvenience him but do not disrupt his travel plans. There does not seem to be a “clearly similar predicament” (Goffman 1963, 136) that M41, I, and the other travelers on the train are in. Yet the delay seems to be a ready first topic for a conversation between M41 and me. While the RI Hypothesis is difficult to apply to this case, the FoA Hypothesis offers a straightforward explanation: Although all travelers on the RE6 train can hear the first announcement before the train enters Hamm (except for those hard of hearing or distracted by loud music in their earphones), they are not necessarily also equally affected by what they hear. Yet in the situation above, M41 can observe what my attention is on and thereby guess what is on my mind. Both M41 and I look up as we listen to the first announcement near Hamm station. Our glances meet at the mention of ‘important trains’ (2), which indicates that our attention is focused on the announcement. I also smile slightly, indicating that I am rather amused (and resigned to my fate); an attitude that M41 seems to be able to relate to. Then, a few minutes later, there is a second announcement. I look up again with renewed attention, and M41 begins to talk to me, being reasonably certain that the announcement and its contents are once again on my mind.
In case 8, the traveler M56 also does not use introductory remarks because what is on W28’s mind is discernible to him because it visibly occupies her attention:
M56 initiates a conversation with W28 without introductory remarks although there is no disruptive event. Travelers carry bicycles with them from time to time and such accessories are not particularly noteworthy. But in this case, W28 is visibly concerned with handling her bicycle within the limited space of a crowded streetcar. M56 builds on this visible focus of attention with a sympathetic remark that implies that the new type of streetcars that also operate in the city are more spacious and would give her less trouble (3). In cases 7 and 8, the RI Hypothesis is either difficult to apply or would predict a different course of events. Both cases show that travelers can initiate conversations with strangers without introductory remarks if the focus of attention of the traveler being addressed is identifiable.
Conclusion
This article considered how strangers initiate conversations in public transport. I argued that individual travel trajectories, the arrangement of bodies in space, and the avoidance of eye contact reduce the likelihood of conversations. Two competing hypotheses were advanced to explain how strangers can nonetheless initiate conversations in this context, the Remedial Interchange Hypothesis and the Focus of Attention Hypothesis. The former hypothesis states that travelers use elements of a “remedial interchange” if they talk with others because of a rule against opening talk with strangers, a rule that can be relaxed if travelers are faced with disruptive events. The latter hypothesis states that if alter’s focus of attention is discernible to ego, ego can initiate a conversation about that focus without introductory remarks, irrespective of the situation travelers find themselves in.
Through an analysis of interactions of travelers in Germany, I demonstrated that the RI Hypothesis fails to predict the behavior of strangers who initiate conversations with other travelers. I observed that travelers frequently use phrases that Goffman conceives as elements of a “remedial interchange,” but such phrases are not necessarily linked to breaches of the “conversational preserve.” Instead of being part of a remedy, a summons like “excuse me” can be used as an attention gaining device by travelers, and “thanks” can be offered for helpful information, instead of an acknowledgment of relief for a potential breach of the “conversational preserve.” I showed that the assumption that the rule against opening talk with strangers can be relaxed if travelers are faced with disruptive events is problematic as well; travelers have to realize that there is a disruption to the system and can be affected differently by such a disruptive event to a point where it is questionable whether they are affected at all. These problems with the RI Hypothesis lead me to propose the FoA Hypothesis as an alternative explanation. In the cases where alter’s focus of attention is discernible to ego through alter’s gaze, bodily alignment, and positioning in physical space, ego can conclude what is on alter’s mind and initiate a conversation about that topic without prelude or introductory remarks. Disruptive events can facilitate conversations, but only if travelers indicate through their focus of attention that they are affected by or interested in whatever is happening around them. It is crucial how travelers react to disruptive events both nonverbally and verbally, and it is equally crucial what this reaction reveals to others who are physically present as well.
Turner (2002) argues that episodes of face-to-face interaction are “constrained by the mesostructures and associated culture of corporate and categoric units” (38) in which they are embedded (cf. Kieserling 1999, 335). The public transportation system is such a mesostructure that facilitates the movement and positioning of bodies in space and also constrains interactions. Goffman (1983b) and Collins (2004) on the other hand highlight the relative autonomy of the “interaction order” from meso- and macrostructures. Just how can we understand this interplay of constraint and autonomy in the context of public transportation? The analysis of interactions where strangers initiate conversations with others revealed that disruptions to a system of public transportation have only a mediate effect on interactions. Whether disruptive events facilitate conversations is not simply a question of severity or scale since even minor disruptive events that barely affect travelers can become a topic for conversations, and many travelers may not talk with others even during dramatic disruptive events (Murakami 2003). How disruptions of the transportation system affect interactions is mediated by four factors: First, the information provided by the system itself about such events matters. Travelers have to learn of disruptive events to be able to respond, especially if a disruptive event is minor or travelers are only indirectly affected. Second, the effects of disruptive events are mediated by sensemaking and framing. Travelers have to realize that they are affected by a disruptive event for that event to have an effect on their behavior, and how they frame a disruptive event influences their reaction to it. Third, how a disruptive event affects travelers depends on contingencies such as individual travel plans and individual experience with similar disruptions. Fourth, disruptions facilitate conversations among strangers insofar as they allow travelers to discern the focus of attention of others and thereby provide a potential first topic for a conversation.
My findings wait to be elaborated or disproved by further research in similar settings and other cultures. Goffman assumes that his theoretical ideas about face-to-face interaction are of a general nature but we lack comparative empirical studies of Goffman’s ideas (Kendon 1988), a qualification that seems to be still true today, especially concerning non-Western cultures (Meyer 2010). My study offers little relief in that sense, being based on research in Germany, but most research on public transport so far has been undertaken in Anglo-American countries. Furthermore, some of Goffman’s ideas may require adjustment even if applied to Western cultural settings, and the general rule against talking with strangers seems to be such a candidate.
I did not need Goffman’s (1971) concepts of the “remedial interchange” and the “conversational preserve” to explain how strangers who use public transport initiate conversations, and this leads me to conclude that the predominance of a rule against opening talk with strangers in public is itself questionable. The simple fact that most people do not initiate conversations with others they come across in public does not necessarily imply that they follow a general rule against doing so; a statistical trend of people’s behavior does not imply that there must always be a rule behind the trend (Garfinkel 1967). This is not to say that the actions of some travelers may be guided by a rule against talking with strangers occasionally: Children can be taught by their guardians not to talk with strangers (Milne 2009), some travelers may fear to interact with “young black men” (Anderson 1990, 163), and some travelers may refrain from talking with strangers at times or areas they consider to be dangerous (Kim 2012). However, my findings suggest that the rule against talking with strangers is not generally applicable to interactions in public transportation in Germany, which would account for the limited explanatory power of the Remedial Interchange Hypothesis in this setting. The Focus of Attention Hypothesis, on the other hand, might be applicable to transportation systems in other countries if we take into consideration that a particular transportation system and sociocultural expectations about that system affect what travelers consider to be noteworthy in the first place.
Consider, for example, time schedules provided by a transportation system and related expectations about timing and punctuality. Despite the fact that (short) delays are common in Germany, many travelers expect trains and buses to follow the schedule. Deviations from this expectation are also frequently made visible or audible by technological means such as electronic boards or through announcements and thus potentially notable for travelers. But this is likely to vary across transportation systems. Nash (1975), for example, describes the Tulsa public transit system in the United States as a system where bus schedules require substantial interpretation by riders: Riders must know the nature of roads, traffic conditions, and construction on the roads. “With these bits of knowledge at hand, the rider hypothesizes an estimated time of arrival: the bus is timed” (Nash 1975, 103). To know whether a bus is late requires experience in this setting and the notions of “being on time” and “being late” seem to be more flexible, while traffic conditions and current construction also provide travelers with a potential topic for conversations. Kim (2012), on the other hand, argues that experienced riders of Greyhound buses expect extended delays because they are common. “Most people who take the Greyhound understand that problems are likely to arise. Consequently, this creates a social system where people become reluctant to complain about factors they have no control over” (277). Instead of complaining about extended delays, riders tend to retract. For the Greyhound transportation system, delays appear to be not particularly noteworthy for travelers because they are to be expected. 7
Further research is necessary to verify this, but I would expect that what travelers focus their attention on varies culturally, but that discernible foci of attention facilitate conversations remains true for other transportation systems and possibly further public settings. The key to initiating a conversation between strangers in public space seems to be for ego to identify one element of the situation that appears to concern alter currently and to then turn that element into the first topic of the conversation. This would resonate with the finding in conversation analysis that ongoing conversations among people who are acquainted possess a “local sensitivity” (Bergmann 1990) for their context, which means that participants in an ongoing conversation can always turn elements in their field of perception into a topic. Insofar as disruptive events are a potential topic for conversations, they are similar to other elements in the field of perception of travelers like pets that accompany somebody, books that travelers read, or a bicycle somebody carries on the train, all of which can be an initial topic for conversations because they tell alter something about ego that is at the same time not considered to be an improper topic of talk.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank Hendrik Vollmer and Jörg Bergmann for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the article. I also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers of JCE for their help in improving the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.