DISS: Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic Interactionism

• a sociological framework that focuses on different meanings individuals attached to objects, peoples and interactions or interpretations

•  framework that actualizes the nature of humans to make sense of their actions and interactions through external cues from everyday life and environment (Vejar, 2015)

George Herbert Mead

• Gestures, according to Mead, the following are important in communication

• posture, tone of voice, voice interactions, hands and facial movements, conveys significance, they can either accentuate or contradict what we are saying

Self (Mead’s concept)

• The part of individual personality composed of self awareness and self image

• the subject of one’s own experience of phenomena, perceptions, emotions, thoughts

• definition of one’s character, abilities, attitude, specially in relation to persons or things outside oneself

Self-knowledge

uses to describe the information that an individual draws upon when finding the answer to the question “What am I like?”

Self-concept

embodies the answer to the question “Who am I?”

Self-esteem

a confidence and satisfaction in oneself

Social Self

engages face to face, in relation to others

Looking Glass Self Theory

defined by what we think what other people think of ourselves

Threefold Gesture

• Play Stage

• Game Stage

• Generalized Other

Play Stage

young children identify key features with their environments, such as father, mother or occupational gender specific roles to which they have been exposed and replicate the behavior correspond with such roles

 Game Stage

children extrapolate from the vantage point of the roles they have simulated by assuming the roles that their counterpart concurrently undertake

Generalized Other

widespread cultural norms and values we use as reference in evaluating ourselves

Three Overarching Principles

• meaning

• socialization

• cultural dimension

Meaning

• an important element of human existence

• a concept that is both subjective and individualistic

• people consequently act in accordance with the meanings they construe (interpret)

Socialization

• people identify and mold their symbolic references though socialization

• the act of establishing an intricate series of relationships they come to certain symbolic determinations, which create a study platform on which subsequent behavior is structured

Cultural Dimension

intertwines with the symbolic educational development

According to Mead...

1. Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings the ascribe to those things.

2. The meaning of such thing is derived from, or arises out of the social interaction that one has with others and the society.

3. The meaning are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters.

Symbol

• a stimuli that is abstract and arbitrary to which meaning is applied

• things that are used to represent other things

Gestures

unintentional acts without conscious meaning that evoke immediate and automatic responses in the observer (Mead)

Sign

• a stimulus having a fixed single and concrete meaning regardless of context

• the meaning associated with it does not change regardless of where it occurs or who observes it

• Associate a particular meaning to a given sign by exposure to the sign and what it represents

Three Core Principles According to Blummer

• meaning

• language

• thought

 Meaning

suggests that people act and behave towards other people and things based upon the meaning that they have given

Language

• provides meaning to humans by means of symbols

• differentiate social relations of humans from the level of communication of animals

Thought

implies the interpretations that we have assigned to the symbols