Abstract
Opening Paragraph:|Raymond Williams notes that to study a culture means to study a signifying or symbolic system (Williams, 35-40). This project is an examination of a particular culture, young females working in the service industry of the Old Market in Omaha, NE. They do not fit neatly into uniform categories; these women are individuals, basing their personal choices on numerous factors. Yet, these young women also have shared meanings and they interact with the rest of society in a similar manner, making them a distinct group: a distinct culture. In the introduction to his ethnographic study, Angels’ Town, Ralph Cintron defines his project as “a project in the rhetorics of public culture or the rhetorics of everyday life” (x). Similarly, I design this project as a study of “the rhetorics of everyday life” of the young female servers in the Old Market. Cintron claims that his project is consistent with the discipline of rhetoric because “it is interested in the structured contentiousness that organizes, albeit fleetingly, a community or a culture” (x). My study then also remains consistent with the discipline of rhetoric because it aims to examine and analyze the signifying or symbolic system, moreover, “the structured contentiousness that organizes” the culture of young females in the service industry.