Chapter 10: Symbolic Interactionism and Social Constructionism-Toby Zhu

1. TobyZhu
10/24/2017
Chapter10:
MediaandCulture
Theories:Meaning-
MakingintheSocial
World
Part1/3

2. Social
Interactionism
Social
Constructionism
PragmatismBehaviorism Typifications
Phenomenology

3. Symbolic Interactionism
What are Symbols?
 Artitrary, often quite
abstract, representations
of unseen phenomena
 Meaningless except to
the ones who know how
to decode them
 Require literacy to be
able to read

4. Social Interactionism
• Symbols and Schemas
 Mead (1934)-Mind, Self, and Society-argues that we use symbols
to create our experience of consciousness (mind), our
understanding of ourselves (self), and our knowledge of the large
social order (society).
 Symbols structure our ability to perceive and interpret what goes
on around us.
 In information-processing theory (chapter 8), schemas (sets of
symbols) that we have learned in the past enable us to routinely
make sense of the new sensory information we take in.

5. Symbol Interactionism
Herbert Blumer
1900-1987
Symbol Interactionism
▲ Theory that people give meaning
to symbols and that those
meanings come to control those
people.
▲ Developed during the 1920s to
1930s as a reaction to and criticism
of behaviorism
▲ Named by Herbert Blumer in 1969

6. Baseball playing (or any given team sport)
-Roles & Rules
-Community &Mini-democracy
 Socialization process
Unlike animals conditioned to respond to
stimuli in a predetermined manner,
humans are socialized in ways that permit
more or less conscious interpretation of
stimuli and planned responses.
Symbol Interactionism
George Herbert Mead
1863-1931

7. Behaviorism
 The notion that all human
action is a conditioned
response to external
environmental stimuli.
 We are conditioned to act
in certain ways by positive
and negative stimuli-we act
to gain rewards or avoid
punishments.
Pragmatism
 Philosophical school of
theory emphasizing the
practical function of knowledge
as an instrument for adapting
to and controlling reality.

8. Michael Solomon (1983)
1. Cultural symbols are learned through
interaction and then mediate that interaction.
2. The "overlap of shared meaning" by people
in a culture means that individuals who learn
a culture should be able to predict the
behaviors of others in that culture.
3. Self-definition is social in nature; the self is
defined largely through interaction with the
environment.
Applications of Symbolic Interactionism
Michael R. Solomon

9. Applications of Symbolic Interactionism
Don F. Faules & Dennis C. Alexander (1978)
Communication and Social Behavior: A Symbolic Interaction Perspective
1. People's interpretation and perception of the environment depend on
communication.
2. Communication is guided by and guides the concepts of self, role, and
situations, and these concepts generate expectations in and of the
environment.
3. Communication consists of complex interactions "involving action,
interdependence, mutual influence, meaning, relationship, and situational
factors".

10. Symbolic Interactionism Case study
Cultural:
Dragon
Religious:
Lord’s Cup & Bread
The "overlap of shared meaning"
by people in a culture means that
individuals who learn a culture
should be able to predict the
behaviors of others in that culture.
Think:
How will people from
different cultural
backgrounds interpret the
dragon symbol?
Think:
How will people from different
religious backgrounds interpret
the cup & bread symbols?

11. Alfred Schütz
1899-1959
 We conduct our lives with little effort or
thought because we have developed
stocks of social knowledge that we
use to quickly make sense of what goes
on around us and then structure our
actions using this knowledge.
 Typifications enable us to quickly classify
objects and actions we observe and then
quickly and routinely structure our own
actions in response.
Typifications
Social Constructionism
“Mental images" that enable people to quickly
classify objects and actions and then
structure their own actions in response.

12. Additional Terms
Sign
In symbolic interaction, any element in the environment
used to represent another element in the environment
Natural Signs
In symbolic interaction, things occurring in nature that
represent something else in nature.
Artificial signs
In symbolic interaction, elements that have been
constructed to represent something else in the social
world.
Signals (more explicit)
In symbolic interaction,
artificial signs that produce
highly predictable responses.
Symbols (more implicit)
In symbolic interaction,
artificial signs for which there
is less certainty of response

13. Additional Terms
Social constructionism
• School of social theory that argues that individuals' power to oppose or
reconstruct important social institutions is limited.
Social construction of reality
• Theory that assumes an ongoing correspondence of meaning because people
share a common sense about its reality.
Phenomenology
• Theory developed by European philosophers focusing on individual experience of
the physical and social world.

14. What are the differences among these terms?
1. Schemas
2. Stocks of social knowledge
3. Symbols
4. Signs
5. Signals
6. Point of references

15. The End