Procedimientos de restauración del sentido ordinario de la realidad

Un estudio de las secuencias de revelación de las bromas de cámara oculta

Abstract

Conceived as public communication objects, hidden-camera pranks (HCPs) are a documentary variant
of ordinary jokes. As opposed to the classic garfinkelian breaching experiments, HCPs also offer a
natural form of ethnomethodological experimentation. Presented here are some results of the analysis
of a sample of forty-nine HCP revelation sequences (RSs). These small clips (between five and fifty
seconds long) allow for the description of a large amount of audiovisual details that are characteristic
of the singular, finely coordinated interactional work that actors, hooks and victims of an HPC have to
perform in order to «put an end» to an artificially fabricated social situation. My study centres on a
series of curious practical relevances of the work of revelation (offer) and awakening
(acceptance/rejection) made evident and internally topicalized by the very in vivo social production
work of the agents caught up in the HPC situation. What is particularly interesting is the discovery
that the academic justifications that make up the revelation sequence of ethnomethodological
breaching experiments are replaced here by a singular topic of mundane conversation (the special
location of audiovisual recording and broadcasting devices).