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.