Do you and your closest friends have your own inside jokes? Have you ever tried to make a word or story catch on? Think of all the different trends we give into these days. They all started with one person telling it to another person and then having it catch on by others, then leading it to go viral. If you were ever wondering what this is called, it actually comes from Ernest Bormann’s theory of Symbolic Convergence.
Symbolic Convergence is formed by dramatizing messages, fantasy chains and symbolic cues. When I was first thinking of what a good example of this theory would be the first thing that came to mind was Mean Girls. I, being a typical young adult female, am obsessed with Mean Girls and could quote most of the movie. I also will take into consideration that this year marks the 10th anniversary of it premiering and it is on a Wednesday, so I will probably wear pink.
Back to symbolic convergence theory. In the movie, there is a group of three girls who are called the "plastics" and are the popular girls in the school, a.k.a. the trend setters. Lindsey Lohan plays the part as the new girl who gets wrapped up in the popular girls circle. One day one of the “plastics”, Gretchen, tries to make “fetch” a new go to slang word. In the movie she makes the statement phrase “that’s so fetch” happen. Regina, who is the leader of the pack, immediately denies the use of this slang word. Gretchen continues throughout the movie trying to make it a thing though. Here is a couple of scenes from the movie to get a better understanding of the use of “fetch”.
Gretchen’s use of the word “fetch” would be considered a dramatizing message. She is using an imaginative message in order to describe something instead of just saying “that was cool”. Dramatizing messages can be much more than just word play, but also jokes, anecdotes and exaggerated stories. Most of the time dramatizing messages are relative to situations not currently occurring within the group. This leads into fantasy chains. In the case with Gretchen trying to make “fetch” happen and Regina acknowledging it, it then becomes a fantasy chain. Once others start to pick up on your dramatizing message then a chain reaction comes out of it. After your joke or story has become noticed, others will start telling their own jokes and stories that could relate to yours which creates a chain reaction around that initial message. Even though Regina wasn’t nice in Gretchen trying to make “fetch” happen, she did say something about it and would later go on saying how she is right and Gretchen is wrong and it is all based off of this initial message.
The “plastics” have already created their own fantasy theme by the way they act around others. They are the snobby popular girls who feed off of peers insecurities. A fantasy theme is the content of the dramatizing message that reflects a groups culture and dynamic. Regina is the ring leader of the “plastics”, so of course if she doesn’t want Gretchen's new slang word to happen, then it won’t happen. Even though Gretchen is also considered a popular girl, she is still under Regina’s reign. If you look closely in the video at the first two scenes where Gretchen uses the word “fetch” you can see her friends give subtle nonverbal cues of confusion because they don’t know whether or not it is okay to like it or not because then you see Regina’s reaction and she clearly did not like it. This would be noted as symbolic cues. They are an agreed-upon trigger that sets off group members to respond as they did when they first shared the fantasy. It is shown through code words, phrases and nonverbal signals.
Regina obviously did not catch on to Gretchen slang word, but their group is a great example of group cohesiveness. They have their own inside jokes, they wear pink on wednesdays and they all have very similar personality types/styles. In symbolic convergence there are core principles. They include; sharing group fantasies, group members develop a unique consciousness, they become we instead of me and there is a heightened cohesiveness especially given a name like the “plastics”. Their group has such a high level of fantasizing and group cohesiveness that they are very unique which makes them the popular girls. If they did not do all the random things like wearing pink on wednesdays and being super exclusive they would be considered boring and people would not find them interesting. The more dramatizing messages that turn into fantasy chains that end up going viral and creates this group cohesiveness, the more interesting you become. This would be a high level of the symbolic convergence theory. Since Mean Girls is a movie its ability to grow from a group level fantasy chain to a public fantasy chain is not the best example of rhetorical vision. Rhetorical vision is when a fantasy chain grows out of the small group and becomes viral. Now a days it is a lot easier for andy trends to go viral because of our access to the media and internet. This is the last step of Symbolic Convergence theory in which the dramatizing message had gained such enthusiasm that now everyone wants to be apart of it. In my example of using Gretchen use of the word fetch, her dramatizing message did not go far in the lengths of symbolic convergence, but the "plastics" and the group itself had made a different image for itself that goes to the extreme levels of symbolic convergence theory.
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