Let's Talk Skateboarding: An Ethnographic Investigation of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Characteristics in the Skateboarding Community

Abstract

The means in which skateboarders communicate with each other can be appealing and even somewhat fascinating to those both within the community and outside of it. Through the combination of verbal and nonverbal messages, skaters are almost always communicating something to each other because, if they do not and communication breaks down, there is a high possibility for serious injury. By looking at how skateboarders communicate amongst themselves, I hoped to gain a new and unique perspective on skateboarding culture and dive into a field of study that is lacking in substantial scholarly research. In my preliminary research about skateboarding and skateboarding culture, only a handful of scholarly articles and studies came up. It is for this reason that this thesis took the shape of an ethnography, focusing on skateboarding and the communication between its participants. Initially, I engaged in participant observations at a local skatepark. To get a closer look, one-on-one interviews were conducted, to help get qualitive data on the subject. To select participants for these interviews, adults above the age of 18, who were local to the area and had a long history of skating, were interviewed. Interview questions regarded the community, verbal, and nonverbal communication of the skateboarding community. After analyzing the data, skateboarding verbal and non-verbal communication was split into several general topics: encouragements/congratulations, casual and small-talk, self-talk, traffic alerts, style, courtesies, and language. This study provides a foundation onto which future research can be conducted.