Routinization occurs, meaning the initial habit persists and is adopted by multiple individuals. For example, several weeks has passed and you and your friends have continued to eat lunch with each other outside, sitting 6 feet apart. Moreover, several of your friends from high school mentioned they also have started eating with friends outside and sitting 6 feet apart.

Application papers are designed to assess your understanding of a theory covered in class and your ability to apply the theory to your lived experiences. For this first paper, you will apply a theory you learned in class to your own experiences or observations. Ask yourself, how do you see theories operating in the real world? How can a specific theory help you make sense of an interaction, interpret the actions of others, and/or illuminate a social, interpersonal or organizational situation?gaging in routinization because your initial habit has continued, and others have now adopted the interaction.

Make up a situation of routiniztion. Cite from interplay chapter 5 Interplay: The Process of Interpersonal Communication,

Actually can you write the paper on the Process of Social Construction occur in life. you can make something up.

1. First, habituation occurs, whereby some number of humans form some initial interaction together. Perhaps you say to a friend, “hey, let’s eat lunch at a park and sit 6 feet apart!” These initial habits are created and maintained through communication cues and interactions.

1. Next, routinization occurs, meaning the initial habit persists and is adopted by multiple individuals. For example, several weeks has passed and you and your friends have continued to eat lunch with each other outside, sitting 6 feet apart. Moreover, several of your friends from high school mentioned they also have started eating with friends outside and sitting 6 feet apart. You are all engaging in routinization because your initial habit has continued, and others have now adopted the interaction. Your new communication interactions have likely developed names now, like social distancing.

1. At some point, the interaction might become adopted by many others and social rules begin to form that relegate how this interaction should take place. Institutionalization is the social control that forms over a communication interaction. Informal institutionalization refers to social norms that govern an interaction. For instance, maybe most college students have started expecting social distancing and they get very annoyed when someone stands too close to them, particularly at lunchtime. A social norm exerts some social control over our action, but it isn’t enforced by any authority figure. Formal institutionalization occurs when social authorities step in and start making rules of interaction. So, when UNC makes a rule that says, “no one can stand closer than 6 feet,” then your lunch time social distancing is now formally institutionalized.

1. After a group of people have institutionalized, either formally, informally, or both, a pattern of interactions, they eventually forget that they could act some other way. The routine feels natural and normal after a while, Berger and Luckmann call this objectivation. Once a set of communicative interactions feels normal and natural, individuals have unquestioningly accepted the set of practices and they forget the interaction is a social construction. Let’s say, just for example, that we cannot find a vaccine for Covid, maybe after a few years social distancing will seem normal to us. Imagine you have a child who is born and grows up in a Covid world. Social distancing and mask wearing would be the only reality she knows. In fact, taking off her mask might seem odd to her. She might look at your old high school pictures and think it looks funny to see people standing so close and with naked faces.

1. A set of communication practices will die out when individuals leave the social system, unless new individuals are taught the practices. Socialization, therefore, is the process of transmitting communication practices to a new generation or group of people. So, if UNC wants to continue the habit of wearing masks and social distancing, then we have to educate new individuals about participating in these social practices. In fact, the entire educational system –kindergarten through college – is a system of socialization designed to integrate new members of society into our social practices. Of course, we know socialization is never perfect – we rarely completely reproduce the social system. Social interactions always change based on new generations and new group members; but, the new interactions are always built on the foundations of the old (even if the new interactions appear to overturn the old).

1. Once a social system is in place, meaning must be continually regenerated so that individuals continue to reproduce the same patterns of interaction and make sense of the world in similar ways. The maintenance of these systems of meaning is called universe maintenance. Things like conversation, storytelling, jokes, and other forms of seemingly mundane communication serve the function of universe maintenance.

Communications Question

The theory of social construction seeks to offer insight into how common understandings of the world are constructed through the shared assumption that people have on reality. Based on the theory, meanings are developed through coordination with others and never as a separate individual. Camargo-Borges and Rasera (2013) assert that according to social construction, meanings are constructed socially through the coordination of people and their encounters. The theory, however, indicates that the social constructs differ based on the particular society and the event that occur within the period of construction. The experiences of each individual provide illustrations of times in life when people engage in the process of social construction.  For example, I have had experiences that illustrate the process of social construction at play in my life.

We live in an extraordinary time in history when the whole world is dealing with the challenges posed by the covid-19 outbreak. As a student and a part-time employee, the pandemic significantly influenced our lives, taking learning from the traditional classroom to online platforms. It also brought about the closure of the places of business as the authorities sought to curtail the spread of the pandemic. Further, given knowledge on the spread of the pandemic and measures that have been instituted, such as social distancing and the wearing of masks, students and employees have been forced to adapt to these changes to fit into the new environment.

As the nation came to terms with the pandemic and instituted measures of curbing the spread o the pandemic, the economy has gradually been opened; schools returned to the face-to-face format, and businesses have opened their doors. However, the pandemic introduced new ways of operating, and as employees in a coffee shop, we had to find ways to cope with the changes and resume our lives. One of the things that the pandemic forced my coworkers and me to do was find new ways of greeting one another and acknowledging the presence of a peer. Given that the pandemic required maintaining social distancing and refraining from touching one another, one of our coworkers started saluting whenever he saw any of our mates.  At first, it looked funny, and we would often laugh about it; however, we took the cue and started saluting back with time.

Further, since the mask kept us from smiling at our customers once they walked in, one of the coworkers started verbalizing their welcome to the customers and continuously engaging them in conversation. When the others saw the favorable response is obtained, we each engaged in the same behavior and incorporated it as part of our service. Adler Rosenfeld and Proctor (2017) indicate one of the first things that happen in ritualization is the occurrence of habituation. Here, several individuals have an initial interaction together, which they maintain through communication cues and interactions. In our case, although the saluting or making of some sign with our hands and verbalizing our welcome to the customer started as a joke, the more we talked about the prevailing challenges and what we could do, the more it became a habit.

The saluting or hand signal and verbalized welcomes became part of our daily routine when we meet, and every member of our group has adopted it.  This aligns with Adler Rosenfeld and Proctor's (2017) assertion that routinization occurs when an initial habit persists and is adopted by other individuals in the group. An observation of the coffee shop environment shows that the habit, albeit a bit differentiated, has also been adopted by employees in other shifts. Even the neighboring establishments are keen to e adhere to the rules of covid-19 and yet still make their environment friendly and welcoming.   When walking around, one can see employees making different motions to others with some significant distance maintained.  Even when close friends meet, one can see them making diverse hand signals as they acknowledge the presence of their mates.

 Although hugging, holding each other's hand, and smiling were an engraved part of our social life before, the new environment has completely adapted the practice of simply saluting or verbalizing a sentiment to communicate. This has become an accepted norm, and people are cautious about touching each other or even standing close.  The process also aligns with what Adler Rosenfeld and Proctor (2017) say about institutionalization. While the new form of behaviors was foreign, they have become institutionalized in our communication interaction. It represents the standard of operation, and everyone expects that anybody who seeks to interact with them will adhere to the same parameters. The management of the coffee shop has also made a step to institutionalize these matters, making the rules of interactions. For example, some rules require that we often wear masks, maintain social distance and yet still engage the customers verbally to feel welcomed into the establishment.

  Adler Rosenfeld and Proctor (2017) assert that the normalization of these issues follows the institutionalization of these interactions patterns until they become a natural part of operations. The process works so that people forget that things were once done differently or how they do things is simply the result of social construction.  Currently, we are still making this new system of operations in the coffee shop part and parcel of the organization and its operations.  Although most of the coworkers have completely adopted these practices and have learned to treat them as normal, we still have memories of different times when we did things differently.  We have, however, made significant strides to ensure that wearing masks to cover our mouths and noses, saluting to one another instead of touching and verbalizing our welcome to the coffee shop clientele instead of simply smiling as we did before is now part of our operations.

The practice is also being passed to recruits joining the coffee shop as part of the employees. I have had the privilege of training one employee and inducting her into how the coffee house operated. Other than the normal elements that a new employee is supposed to know, such as managing the cash register, brewing coffee, catering to the clients, and so forth, we have had to incorporate the new realities.  The new employee was oriented on the need to keep her mask on all the time, how to wear the mask, engage with the customers, verbalize her welcome, acknowledge her coworkers, and so forth.

Adler Rosenfeld and Proctor (2017) assert that after a new practice has been institutionalized and become part and parcel of the organization, socialization begins to be transmitted to a new generation of people. The communication of these practices seeks to ensure that new members are integrated into the system with its unique practices.

The new practices that we have adapted in the workplace have continued to be regenerated through conversation, jokes, and even storytelling. For example, jokes have played a significant in the welcoming of clients and entrenching the new system. Since the client cannot see the employee smiling, we have had a running joke where the employee breaks the ice with the customer by telling them even though they can't see it because of the mask; they are smiling now that they have seen them. There have been different reactions to these jokes from the customer, all of which have formed part of the storytelling that has entrenched the culture.

Using the theory of social construction makes it clear to see how changes occur in real life and make sense of the interaction that one observes. Further, the theory helps one to be able to interpret the actions of other people and make sense of their behavior.

Outline

Topic: Communications Question

Format – Essay

Introduction

• The theory of social construction seeks to offer insight into how common understandings of the world are constructed through the shared assumption that people have on reality
• The theory, however, indicates that the social constructs differ based on the particular society and the event that occur within the period of construction.

Overview

   Body:

1. We live in an extraordinary time in history when the whole world is dealing with the challenges posed by the covid-19 outbreak
2. Further, given knowledge on the spread of the pandemic and measures that have been instituted, such as social distancing and the wearing of masks, students and employees have been forced to adapt to these changes to fit into the new environment
3. However, the pandemic introduced new ways of operating, and as employees in a coffee shop, we had to find ways to cope with the changes and resume our lives.

Case  

1. At first, it looked funny, and we would often laugh about it; however, we took the cue and started saluting back with time.
2. When the others saw the favorable response is obtained, we each engaged in the same behavior and incorporated it as part of our service
3. In our case, although the saluting or making of some sign with our hands and verbalizing our welcome to the customer started as a joke, the more we talked about the prevailing challenges and what we could do, the more it became a habit.

How things are  

1. An observation of the coffee shop environment shows that the habit, albeit a bit differentiated, has also been adopted by employees in other shifts.
2. Even when close friends meet, one can see them making diverse hand signals as they acknowledge the presence of their mates.
3. This has become an accepted norm, and people are cautious about touching each other or even standing close
4. The management of the coffee shop has also made a step to institutionalize these matters, making the rules of interactions