A study of applause in family ritual

Abstract

With reference to the previous empirical works on applause, we explore the roles it plays during the first birthday celebration using multimodal analysis. Particularly, we focus on modes of its initiation and collaborative enactment. The empirical material includes 25 videos from different Polish families. The analysis demonstrates that applause works in interaction (1) as a ritual anchor that allows the participants to move to either the end or the next sequence of the ritual, (2) as an appreciative assessment of the previous action, (3) as a device for focusing joint attention, which coordinates the interaction of participants and (re)focuses the attention on the most important actor/recipient of the ritual.

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

“…Because it remains a convention, though, the ritualization process in its classical sense is incomplete. The birthday party, for example, did not become a transformative ritual expressing collective effervescence-and this holds even more strongly for smaller rituals like the handshake or clapping, despite their iconic status (Corfield, 2017;Remisiewicz and Rancew-Sikora, 2022). These rituals are performed almost automatically, with no emotional intensity; omitting them or deviating from their protocols is normally forgivable.…”

Clap, Clap, Clap - Unsystematic Review Essay on Clapping and Applause

“…A more recent study done with polish families (Remisiewicz & Rancew-Sikora, 2022 ) has highlighted how moments of applause accomplish a particular function besides directing attention or showing appreciation. They found it is used as a ritual anchor that allows the participants to move to the following ritual sequence.…”