Symbolic Interactionism
Research Report
By: Carla D'Achille
George Herbert Mead was a social psychologist and also taught at the
University of Chicago where he was a professor of philosophy. One of his
beliefs was that "the true test of any theory is whether or not is useful in
solving complex social problems." (Griffin, 1997) One theory that he felt
did this was his symbolic interactionism theory. During his time at the
University of Chicago, his students took notes and decided to put together
a book of what they had learned from Mead, Mind, Self, and Society.
Mead had never put a term to his study of human interaction, although after
his death it was finally identified as "Symbolic Interactionism", the name
awarded by his friend Herbert Blumer.
I have read parts of the book Mind, Self, and Society and found more in
depth what George Mead had discovered.
There are three basic principles that involved with symbolic interactionism.
Meaning
Language
Thought
I will go into these three principles in more detail using information
from the two books A First Look at Communication Theory, and Mind, Self, and
Society.
MEANING
"Meaning- making is a community project." (Wagner)
Meaning is something that has to be assigned. Who assigns meaning? Who
other than the people who are communicating it, humans. I feel that this is
one thing that leads to confusion between two individuals. I know from my
personal experience through talking with others, I would say one thing
meaning it one way and they would take it in a totally different way. I all
depends on how each individual assigns meaning. For example, I would give
one of my guy friends a compliment by asking them if they had lost weight,
and they would get upset. I had meant that they looked as if they were
toning up, but to them, since they had been working out and trying to gain
body mass, this means that they are not accomplishing their goal. It is just
the different meaning that each one of us had assigned to that. It is all
in how s people interpret things.
In Mind, Self and Society, it states that "Meaning arises and lies within the
field of relation between the gesture of a given human organism and the
subsequent behavior of this organism as indicated to another human organism
by that gesture. Meaning is implicit -if not always explicit- in the
relationship among the various phases of the social act to which it refers,
and out of which it develops." So I feel that this shows the reason why
people understand the meaning or don't. It is all how their meaning affects
the interpretation of what is being said. This also goes along with
language. Blumer believes that "Meaning is negotiated through the use of
language." (Griffen, 1997)
LANGUAGE
"Language is a process of indicating certain stimuli and changing the
response to then in the system of behavior." (Blumer, 1934) We, as human
beings assign symbols, or language to communicate. "Mead believed that
symbolic naming is the basis for human society." (Griffen, 1997) Human
beings understand each other through the communication of symbols or in other
words, language. I feel that this can also be a cause of miscommunication. Mead also felt that this is where humans make assumptions about what has been said. I know that there have been many instances where I have assumed that when someone had told me something, that the way I interpreted it was what they had meant, and have been WRONG!! Especially in the English language where so many word can have so many different meanings.
As said Mind, Self, and Society, "There is a certain range possible within
the gesture as to what is to serve as the symbol." So there can be many
different meanings assigned to a symbol. "Communication gives to us those
elements of response which can be held in the mental field. We do not carry
them out, but they are there constituting the meanings of these objects
which we indicate."
THOUGHT
"An individual's interpretation of symbols is modified by his or her own
thought process." Everyone reflects on what they have heard and thinks about
what they are going to say next based on how they interpret what has been
said to them. I feel that this is involved with every interaction that one
has with another person. The term assigned to this definition is minding. Mead believes that
"we naturally talk to ourselves in order to sort out the meaning of a difficult situation."
(Griffen, 1997) "The essence of the self, as we have said, is cognitive: it lies in the
internalized conversation of gestures which constitutes thinking, or in terms of which thought
or reflection proceeds. And hence the origin and foundations of the self, like those of thinking
are social." (Blumer, 1943) This is another good definition that shows the process of thinking
, just as vital to the communication process as language and meaning.
CITATIONS:
Griffin,EM.(1997).A First
Look At Communication Theory New York:McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Blumer, Herbert. "Mind, Self, and Society." 1943.
To return to our homepage click here!
Rick Baker had also done a research report only on the theory of Uncertainty Management. If you take a look at this page, you will find similiar concepts as this Symbolic Interactionism theory!
This page was last modified on:
February 21, 2000