Practicing “sorority rush”: Mockery and the dramatistic rehearsing of organizational conversations

Abstract

This study develops a dramatistic framework that combines Goffinan's social frame of rehearsal and Burke's guilt‐purification‐redemption cycle. The perspective is used to interpret how sororities rehearse the conversations to be performed during the recruitment activity of “rush.”; The study finds that sorority members use mockery in three forms of rehearsal, including demonstrations, question‐and‐answer sequences, and improvised conversations within “bump‐and‐float groups.”; In particular, mockery is used by sorority members to (1) transform or rekey the social frame of rush rehearsals to a “fun”; context, and (2) scapegoat the absent prospective sorority members (i.e., “rushees”) who will be encountered in the recruitment activity of “rush parties.”