Theories of Social & Cultural Reality

1. Theories of Social & Cultural Reality

2. The Social Construction of Reality

3. My meanings and understanding come from my communication with others. • Primary thinkers: The Social Construction of Reality • Peter Berger • Thomas Luckmann

4. Basic Idea of SC • Illustrationof a classroom exercise in which students arrange a group of objects in different categories (size, use, color, etc.). • Language gives me labels to distinguish the objects in my world.

5. Common Assumptions of SC • Communicative action is voluntary. • Knowledge is a social product • Knowledge is contextual • Theories create worlds • Scholarship is value laden.

6. Communication Perspective • SC enables communication to be viewed as a perspective, rather than a subject matter. • Barnett Pearce • Communication and the Human Condition • Perspective: A way of looking at or thinking about something. • How should we look at something? • Whenever I look at something in terms of how it is constructed in interaction among people, I am taking a communication perspective. • Pearce’s Model (The Resource-Practice Loop) • Resources: all the building blocks I work with in life (ideas, values, stories, symbols, meanings, institutions, etc. used to build my reality). • Practices: what I do or perform (behaviors, forms of expression, actions). • Resources & practices are closely connected through my interaction with others.

7. The SC of Self • Rom Harre: explains how I account for my behavior in particular situations. • Ethogeny • Developed by Harre & Secord • Ethogeny: the study of how I understand my actions with a predictable sequence of acts, called episodes (an event with a beginning & end that all people would agree on). • Helps determine what the episode means and how people understand the acts involved in it. • Structured Templates • These are theories about the course of action anticipated in the episode. • Example: 2 people have a theory of what it means to be “in love” and how that should be acted out. • Episodes are governed by rules.

8. Concept of Self • Also important to Symbolic Interactionism. • I learn to understand myself by using a theory that defines myself. • The two sides of Personal Being: • Person (Public): • a publicly visible being that is characterized by certain attributes and characteristics established within a culture or social group. • Governed by my cultures theory of personhood. • Self (Private): • My private notion of my own unity as a person. • Governed by my theory of of my own being. • Learned through my interactions with others.

9. The self consists of a set of elements that can be viewed spatially along three dimensions. • Display: whether an aspect of myself is displayed publicly or remains private. • Realization (the source): the degree to which some feature of myself is believed to come from me or the group of people around me. • Individual realization: elements coming from me. • Collective realization: elements coming from others. • Agency: the degree of active power I attribute to myself. • Active elements: such as speaking or driving • Passive elements: such a listening or riding.

10. Common elements in theories of the self: • Self-consciousness: • I think of myself as an object. • Double Singularity Principle (Harre): the consistency with which I define and practice I1 & I2. • The group’s idea of self must treat each I as a consistent unity. • I must see me as me, not as Batman, etc. • Agency: • I have certain powers to do things. • Seen when I plan something. • Autobiography: • A sense that I have a history and a future. • Seen when I tell you about me.

11. The SC of Emotion • Emotions (James Averill) • Are belief systems that guide my definition of the situation. • Consists of internalized social norms and rules governing my feelings. • Syndromes: Averill’s label for emotions. • A set of responses that go together. • Socially constructed. • Each emotion has an object. • How an emotion is labeled plays a role in how the emotion is experienced.

12. 4 Rules That Govern Emotions • Rules of appraisal. • Tells me what an emotion is, where it is directed, & whether it is positive or negative. • Rules of behavior. • Tells me how I should respond to the feeling: to hide it, express it in private, or vent it publicly. • Rules of prognosis. • Defines the progression and course of emotion. • How long should it last, what are its different stages, how does it begin, how does it end? • Rules of attribution. • Dictates how an emotion should be explained or justified. • What do I tell other about it? How do I express it publicly? • Example: “She was acting like a jerk and that made me mad.”

13. Accounts in Social Construction • Accounts: how I justify or explain my behavior. • John Shotter: • Communication-Experience Loop • Communication determines how reality is experienced. • The experience of reality affects communication. • I am inseparable from society. I am not independent.

14. Rules & Social Action Rules: Guidelines for action & meaning.

15. Rule-Governing Approach • Susan Shimanoff • Rule: “a following prescription that indicates what behavior is obligated, preferred, or prohibited in certain contexts.” • Rules must be followable. • Rules are prescriptive • Rules are contextual • Rules specify appropriate behavior. • Rules are best stated in the if-then format.

16. How to Find a Rule: • If you can answer yes to all three questions, you have found a rule: • Is the behavior controllable? • Is the behavior criticizable? • Is the behavior contextual? • Finding rules is not always easy. • Overt sanctions are the easiest to find. • Repairs, such as apologizing, often show that a rule has been violated.

17. How People Use Rules • Rule-fulfilling & rule-ignorant behaviors • Acting without knowing the rule. • Conforming & error behaviors • Governed by rules, although I am not thinking at the time about whether or not I am following the rule. • Rule-following & rule violation behavior • I consciously follow or violate a rule. • Positive reflection or negative reflection • Following or violating

18. Coordinated Management of Meaning • Barnett Pearce, Vernon Cronen, & colleagues. • This is the most comprehensive rule theory of communication. • CMM integrates work from: • System theory • Symbolic interactionism • Ethogeny • Speech acts • Relational communication

19. I act & interpret on the basis of rules. • Two types of rules: • Constitutive rules • Rules of meaning • To interpret or understand an event or message • Regulative rules • Rules of action • To determine how I should respond. • These rules are always chosen in a context. • Context: a frame of reference for interpreting an action. • Four typical contexts: • Relationship context: the mutual expectations of all involved. • Episode context: the event itself. • Self-concept context: my sense of personal definition. • Archetype context: an image of general truth.

20. Text-Context Loop Patterns • Text: an event or action being interpreted. • Loop: each is used from time to time to interpret the other (Reflexivity). • Charmed Loop: each context confirms the other. • Strange Loop: each context disconfirms the other.

21. Logical Force • Logical force: rules tell us what interpretations and actions are logical in a given situation. • Four types of logical force: • Causal Force (Prefigurative) • I feel I am being pressured to spend the weekend with my in-laws. • Practical Force • I act to achieve a goal (study to get an A, pass the course, etc.). • Contextual Force • Pressure from the context. I may go to grad school because I feel this is just who I am (self-concept context). • Implicative Force • Pressure to change the context in some way, such as the context of family expectations.

22. The Coordination Process • Coordination: involves the meshing of my actions with those of another to the point of feeling that the sequence of actions if logical or appropriate. • It is possible with CMM for me to have a perfectly satisfactory coordination with you without understanding you.

23. Language & Culture Sociolinguistics: any study of language that makes use of social data, or, conversely, any study of social life that makes use of linguistic data.

24. Linguistic Relativity • Sapir Whorf Hypothesis • The way I see the world is shaped by the grammatical structure of language. • Study of the Hopi Indians. • Reality is already imbedded in the language and therefore comes preformed (in contrast to the social constructivist approach).

25. Elaborated & Restricted Codes • Basis Bernstein • Shows how the structure of language used in everyday talk reflects and shapes the assumptions of a social group. • Basic Assumption: • the relationships established in a social group affect the type of speech used by the group. • Further, the structure of speech used by the group makes different things relevant or significant. • I learn my place in the world by virtue of the language codes I use. • Codes: sets of organized principles behind the language employed by members of a social group.

26. Elaborated Codes • Provide a wide range of ways to say something. • More complex. • I can make my ideas and intentions explicit. • Require more planning. • Appropriate for groups who don’t share my assumptions. • Restricted Codes • Have a narrower range of options. • Easier to predict what form it will take. • Do not allow for me to expand on what I mean. • Appropriate for groups in which my assumptions are shared.

27. Open and Closed Role Systems • Open-role system • Expands the number of alternative for individuals in the group. • Use of elaborate codes. • Person-centered families. • Closed-role system • Reduces the number of alternative for the participants. • Use of restricted codes. • Position families.

28. Commentary & Critique

29. SC fills in the gaps left by symbolic interactionism. • SC is popular because of its intuitive appeal. • What is the role of interaction? • SI assumes that language is an outcome of interaction (thought-language). • Sapir & Wharf: language precedes interaction (language-thought).

30. Opposition to SC • Because SC conflicts with the concept that reality is objective and independent. • Many believe that the rock exist before we even begin talking about it. • Structuralists contend that human experience is largely universal, owing to a common biological inheritance and common cognitive structure. • Chomsky: language structures are universal. • Osgood: the dimensions of meaning are universal.

31. Ellis’s Challenges to SC • Communication cannot proceed without assuming that we live in a world of a priori realism. • We must assume that we are all talking about the same thing. • Based on two principles: • Semantic Realism • Words have standard meanings. • When I say “football” to Craig, I assume that he knows what I am talking about. • These meanings are fairly stable. • Meaning itself is real. • Coherentism • Meanings must be verifiable in experience. • A table is a table because I can see it and touch it. • This does not mean that the table exist objectively, but that we can all assume it does based on our common experience of “tableness.”

32. Facticity of Objects • Social constructivists do not deny that the locomotive exits. • The issue is not whether the locomotive exists apart from human construction, but how it it seen, what it is, and how it relates to other objects in my experience. • The locomotive can never be viewed as meaningful apart from human experience.

33. A Serious Question • If reality is socially constructed, then how can we produce generalizable knowledge? • If communication is context bound, then how is theory possible? • Cappella: “In short, when competing knowledge claims are generated, how will they be adjudicated?” • Good communication theory should not attempt to achieve a standard set of criteria. • It should be judged in terms of its utility and its potential for enriching human experience.

34. The Basic Issue of SC Is communication a tool for communicating accurately about the world, or is it the means by which the world itself if determined?