Transcript Symbolic Interactionism by George Herbert Mead

Symbolic Interactionism
by George Herbert Mead
Chapter 4
Interpersonal Messages
• Symbolic Interaction seeks to explain
human communication between people who
have some form of a relationship.
• Symbolic Interactionism is a broad theory
that links language with perception,
thinking, self-concept, and culture.
• Mead’s focus is language and how humans
communicate with words.
• Mead looks at how we label people &
actions, especially our own.
“Father of Sociology”
• George Herbert Mead taught in the
Philosophy department at the University of
Chicago in the early 1900s.
• Contributed founding theory for the
emerging new field of “Sociology”
• Never wrote up his theories, but his most
renown student, Herbert Blumer did.
• Mind, Self, Society is still in use today.
Blumer’s Contributions
• Three core principles of symbolic
interactionism.
– Meaning
– Language
– Thought
• These principles lead to conclusions about
the person’s self and socialization into the
larger community.
Meaning: The Construction of
Social Reality
• Starts with premise that humans act toward
people or things on the basis of the
meanings they assign to those people or
things.
• Stimulus• Interpretation
• Response
Language: The Source of
Meaning
• We need the ability to use language in order
to negotiate, interpret, and assign meaning.
• This leads to the second premise that
meaning arises out of the social interaction
that people have with each other.
– Meaning is negotiated through the use of
language
• Humans have the ability to name things
(objects), specify action (shout), refer to
abstract ideas (concepts).
Thought: The Process of Taking
the Role of the Other
• The third premise is that an individual’s
interpretation of symbols is modified by his
or her own thought processes.
• SI folks call this process minding.
– Example, how do you interact with strangers as
opposed to say your friends?
– When do we take the role of the other?
The Self: Reflections in a
Looking Glass
• Meaning, Language, and Thought together
lead to an understanding of what Mead calls
the self.
• Seeing the self is not necessarily an
introspective process. Instead we “paint our
self-portrait with brush strokes that come
from taking the role of the other”.
• This mental image is called the LookingGlass Self and is socially constructed.
Images in the Looking Glass Self
• SI-ers believe the self is a function of
language
– without talk there would be no self concept.
– one needs to be a member of a community
before consciousness of self is understood.
– The self is always in flux, recombining the “I”
and the “ME”
Community: The Socializing
Effect of Others’ Expectations
• Belonging to a community leads to the
development of a generalized other.
• Mead sees this as 1) an over-arching
looking - glass self that we put together
from the reflections we see in everyone we
know, or
2) The expectations of society that
influences our thinking.
Applications of SI
• Creating Reality (How do we do it?)
• Meaning-ful Research ( Real-life
observation and participation)
• Generalized Other (“Cipher in the Snow”)
• Naming (labeling)
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Expectations)
• Symbol Manipulation (e.g. texting)
Critique
A Theory Too Grand?
• Is the theory difficult to apply?
• Is the focus on language use overstated?
• Conversely, breadth and scope provide a
way to connect ideas that span disciplines.
• SI provides a foundation for theorists
working in communication.
• Is this a good theory? Why? Approach?