Item Detail
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11525
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3
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0
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English
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Threads through a Patchwork Quilt : The Wedding Shower as a Communication Ritual and Rite of Passage for the Mormon Woman
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Salt Lake City, UT
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University of Utah
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Ph.D. diss.
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"This study offers an ethnographic discussion of Mormon women's communication as it was observed and recorded on audiotape within the context of the wedding shower. Wedding showers are shown to be repetitive, highly stylized community events which occur with great frequency among the women. Phenomenological hermeneutics is utilized as a theoretical base of inquiry. Anthropological work on ritual communication has also been drawn upon in the analysis offered. The discussion argues that wedding showers within a selected Northern Utah community serve as communication rituals which allow for the initiation of younger women into the world of Mormon womanhood. Furthermore, the study examines the function of these ritual events in the creation and maintenance of group life. Several points become apparent in the analysis. First, through stories and advice shared, each woman spins out personal history and identity before the group, negotiating individual conceptions of self and community. Secondly, within the ritual, the women are able to clarify their mythic vision of Mormon womanhood and community. Underlying cultural values and paradigmatic life stances are rediscovered and reworked. Presentational enactments of "face" in the form of politeness strategies are also exhibited and sanctioned within the wedding shower context. Community role structures and hierarchies become transparent as well through interactional strategies employed. The study concludes that wedding showers are an important communication ritual within this community of Mormon women. The ritual provides ideology which argues for and accommodates the cultural myth to everyday living. Finally, Mormon wedding showers serve as an example of a modern communication ritual which occurs in an industrial and technological society. Such rituals are central to the establishment of community realities and the perpetuation of community life." [Author's abstract]