My anthropologist senses were buzzing today and as a result, I started to notice weird things about people. I was particularly intrigued by our cultural custom of clapping, so I'll do a bit of off-the-cuff analysis.
Clapping is which is produced by rapidly slapping one's hands together in a such a way as to produce noise. This noise can be raised in frequency by keeping one's hands flat, or muffled by cupping the hands. Speed, power, and frequency of the clapping can be varied to produce different noise effects.
Clapping, in American culture, is used to convey congratulations, or to attract attention of those in the nearby area. Additionally, it is sometimes used as percussion in music.
Clapping serves a purpose of conveying congratulations within a large group. It most commonly occurs when those in the group cannot convey their congratulations individually, so instead they do so by clapping together as a group.
Clapping may also serve the purpose of avoiding American adversity against individual congratulations, as it can be viewed as embarrassing to congratulate someone.
And that's all I have.
As a bit of a side note, I recognize that I need a lot more practice at this sort of analysis to get very good at anthropology. I suppose it could be just a matter of inexperience, but I also think I need more time and I feel that there is probably a process that exists to recognize the common elements of a custom, but I just don't know it. Perhaps a checklist of some sort. I'll poke around for one, but if not, I think it would probably be worthwhile to create one for myself, so that I don't miss important things in my analysis.
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