Whatisa“Friend”

DongLina

The word I choose for this assignment is Friend.

Three prototypical features：

A.a person you know well

B.a person who is not hostile

C.a person who know for a long time

Scenarios：

1.When Ben is going through his friends Facebook pages，he always finds a guy called John and Johns comments are funny and smart. Therefore，Ben sends a friend invitation to John，and John accepts it immediately. Is John Bens friend？

Features：B

2.Lisa and Lily are grown up together，and they always go outside together. Lisa knows what Lily hates，and Lily knows what Lisa likes. Is Lisa Lilys friend？

Features：ABC

3.Lisa and Lily knew each other in the ice-cream social party. They talked a lot，their hometowns，life in Chico，friends，hobbies，etc. They stayed together in the party and they exchanged their contact information. Lisa invited Lily to her house and Lily said that she would definitely be there. Are Lisa and Lily friends？

Features：AB

4.Lisa is the leader of Team A in this game，while Lily is the leader of Team B. Two days ago，when Lily knew Team B would meet Team A next round，Lily did a research about Team A，especially the leader Lisa. Also，Lisa did the same thing like Lily did. Are Lisa and Lily friends？

Features：A

5.Penny is a very nice girl. Chris has heard about her from several her friends that there is a nice funny girl called Penny on Facebook. Then she finds Penny on Facebook and adds her as friend and Penny agrees to add Chris as friend on Facebook. Is Penny Chriss friends？

Features：BC

6.Lisa always hears about Lily from her parents how good Lily is. From Lisas parents，Lisa knows that Lily is good at piano and always gets a good grade in school. Is Lily Lisas friend？

Features：C

7.Lena and Chris are chess players in this chess tournament. After watching this check competition，Lena knows that her next adversary would be Chris. Is Chris Lenas friend？

Features：?

8.Ben is a tennis player，so is John. Ben and John have known each other for five years since the first time they met on the tennis playground. Their play is one of most worthy tennis match to see. Are Ben and John friends？

Features：AC

Results from four subjects （2 males，2 females）：

From the results above，none of the features is so important to determine peoples understanding of “friend”. Comparing the three features，feature B seems much closer than other two features of peoples perception of friend. The only one that people feel more sure about friend is when the scenario 2 has three features in it，however，one of the subjects rate it 5 which is close to cant say. However，when there are no features ABC，there would be no friendship described in the scenario （like 7）.

In addition，the results indicate that there would be gender differences when people think about friend and friendship （like 1，5）. Female subjects view feature B more important than male subjects. The scenarios 2，3，8 that the male subjects give a higher rate shows that male subjects view A more important，which female subjects think is important as well.

In the results table，I add my expectation about the scenarios I wrote. The three prototypical features are very important for me to define a friend. According to my understanding and the features I have defined，all the scenarios except no. 2 should be extreme negative，but the results turn out to be surprising，especially 1，3，5，8. The digital culture （Facebook，friending without face to face），quick friending （short-time focused social activity） and competition have changed “friending” a lot，and people accept this change gradually. Unfortunately，the subjects didnt give answer to the choice they made，so I cannot know the exact reasons that they made the choices.

“Friend” would be a hard word to examine because the understanding of friendship is based on personal perception that can vary from person to person. When I chose the subjects randomly at BMU，I didnt ask the subjects why they make the choice. However，the results show that it is possible that other experience will influence peoples understanding of friendship，like the huge differences in scenarios 1 （2 negatives，2 positives），4 （3 negatives，1 positive），8 （2 negatives，2 high positives）.

Another thing I have noticed when I wrote these scenarios is that friendship could be understood in two ways，one-way or bi-directional relationship. For example，A might think he is Bs friend but B doesnt think so，or A might think B is his best friend but B doesnt have such a strong feeling as A has. By doing this assignment，I found “Friend” would be a complex word to examine.

This assignment reminds me of my personal experience that I may have different friends in different community I participate in，like academic group，hobby group and so on. For further interest，I would like to see how people understand friends and how they organize the fiends in their mind； if people organize their friends differently in their mind，the functions of friends would vary or not. It is interesting to see why these differences exist.