MALLS

Today, malls have become essential public place, not only for economic transaction but social interaction and public communication also. Metro cities in India have fast developing economy and therefore place like shopping malls, multiplexes, pubs, discs and other high profile entertainment places too.
Malls too like any other public place, have a degree of hierarchy of privacy or levels of social interaction; vis-a-vis most open, semi open and private spaces depending upon degree of interaction, social position of the customers visiting and type of activities happening within.
People presenting or visiting the malls are identified to which group they belong to by the social behaviour decisions they take and meaning interpreted out of the cues which they give or perceive.
Although people coming from different layers of the society at malls have different notions of social behaviour and the settings in which their environment has existed, gives the different notions of coding or decoding the cues and take the decisions of appropriate behaviour, accordingly.
Certain kind of habits which gives notions for behaviours right at public places have been encultured into us from the experiences we get around and that sets the hints for decoding the settings and remembering them. At places like malls these notions help us to behave with the degree of some decency, playfulness and mannered behaviour which identifies our position in society and starts our interaction and communication with people from another group of society like mall staff, shopkeepers etc.
Certain symbols of built environments like materials, signage, zones, circulations etc set the cues for customers which over a period of time gets generalised and give meanings that help to decode the cues which are useful for appropriate behaviour next time at next mall. They become mnemonic.
Once a person belonging to certain group is identified by the society; with the help of cues that his appearance and attributes of character exert, it becomes easier to take decisions of the extent and patterns of communication to be made with him by the third person. Costume being the first element of creating impression, to a great extent, it defines the person’s position in society. These judgements about the person include economic and education level, social position, sophistication, heritage ,character and success.
Depending upon these judgements for a particular person, with the interpretation from his behaviour ,other people decide their patterns of behaviour and then communication happens or does not happen.
e.g. if a person with high social and economical status , goes to a mall with old or unwashed cloths, the cues his or her appearance give out to the people, generate certain impression about him on the working staff ; which makes them take decisions about his social position, ability to spend and sophistication; these decisions will put him in to a category of group which similar people belong to. Considering this, the attendants or shopkeepers are going or not going to pay him attention or required service and that will decide the degree of communication between them . On the other hand, person who is really not interested in buying, or doesn’t have capacity to spend, can create better impression by his appearance and interaction level with him could be higher. But ultimately ; the accent, body language, educational level etc are going to help in better communication will make the position of the person more clear.
To avoid this confusion, more than appearance elements, it is important that environment itself gives the cues to people through symbols and medium of indirect communication that will help them to decode the meanings through previous knowledge of them and settings about the space will be clearer in their mind which will help them to notice, understand and obey the rules and restrictions made by the space and required for the activities happening to be right. These cues are generated from space organisation, taxonomy, services, degree of the space use and so on...
For different people coming from different context, these cues may vary individually; but after having visited similar places with frequent time intervals , one derives common meanings implied for the symbols and learns to decode or encode them easily. After certain visits to similar places, the settings and appropriate behaviours gets encultured into his mind and next time one behaves without even noticing cues and taking decisions about the behaviour and still gets his position defined right and appropriate communication happens.