Scripts

Let me tell you a simple story: John went to a restaurant. He ordered lobster. He paid the check and left.

Now let me ask you some questions about your understanding of this story: What did John eat? Did he sit down? Whom did he give money to? Why?

These questions are easy to answer. Unfortunately, your answers to them have no basis in actual fact. John may have put the lobster in his pocket. He might have been standing on one foot while eating (if he was eating). Who really knows whom he paid?

You feel we know the answer to these questions because you are relying on knowledge you have about common situations that you have encountered in your own life. What kind of knowledge is this? Where does it reside? How is it that your understanding depends on guessing?

People have scripts. A script can be best understood as a package of knowledge that a person has about particular kinds of situations that he or she has encountered frequently. Some scripts are culturally common, everyone you know shares them, and some scripts are idiosyncratic, which means that only you know about them. When you refer to something that takes place in a restaurant you can leave out most of the details because you know that your listener can fill them in. You know what your listener knows. But, if you were telling a story about a situation that only you were familiar with, you would have to explain what was happening in great detail. Knowing that your listener has the baseball script, you can describe a game to him or her quite quickly. But, if you were speaking to someone who had never seen a baseball game you would either have to make reference to a script the listener already had (cricket perhaps) or else you would be in for a long explanation.

Scripts help people understand what others are telling them and also help people comprehend what they are seeing and experiencing. When a person wants to order in a restaurant and starts to talk to the waiter and he hands the person a piece of paper and a pencil, the person is surprised. He or she may not know what to do. But, the person may have had experience with private clubs that want orders written down. If not, the person will ask. When expectations are violated, when a script fails and things don't happen the way a person expected, he or she must adjust.

Adjustments in daily life to script violations are the basis of learning. Next time the person will know to expect the waiter to hand him or her a paper and pencil. Or the person might generalize and decide that next time doesn't only mean in this restaurant but in any restaurant of this type. Making generalizations about type is a major aspect of learning. Every time a script is violated in some way, every time a person's expectations fail, he or she must rewrite the script, so as not to be fooled next time.

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