COMM 318001 Communication

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COMM 3180-01Communication Social Behavior

• May 25, 2005
• Language in Action
• Institutionalization

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Discourse and RealityClouds Fighting Words

• How would you characterize Clouds argument?
  What view of ideology does she take? How does
  she view the relationship between discourse and
  reality?
• If you were to adopt a different perspective on
  ideology and the relationship between discourse
  and reality, how might you make sense of the
  strike at Staley?
• Which take do you agree with more? What are the
  strengths and weaknesses of approaching the
  Staley strike from these perspectives?

3
Burkes Unending Conversation as a Metaphor for
(Human, Social) Life

• Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late.
  When you arrive, others have long preceded you,
  and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a
  discussion too heated for them to pause and tell
  you exactly what it is about. In fact, the
  discussion had already begun long before any of
  them got there, so that no one present is
  qualified to retrace for you all the steps that
  had gone before. You listen for a while, until
  you decide that you have caught the tenor of the
  argument then you put in your oar. Someone
  answers you answer him another comes to your
  defense another aligns himself against you, to
  either the embarrassment or gratification of your
  opponent, depending upon the quality of your
  ally's assistance. However, the discussion is
  interminable. The hour grows late, you must
  depart. And you do depart, with the discussion
  still vigorously in progress.
• --Kenneth Burke, Philosophy of Literary Form
  (1941), pp. 10-11

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Berger and LuckmannThe Social Role of Language

• Language typifies experience
• Language transcends the here and now
• Language integrates zones of everyday life into
  a meaningful whole
• Language transcends different spheres of
  reality (i.e., interpretation of dreams)
• Language serves as collective repository of
  objectivated meanings and expereinces.

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From Language to (Inter-)Action

• Typificatory Schemes
• Typifications
• Reciprocal typifications
• The double nature of typification in everyday
  interaction
• We interact with others as types
• We interact within typical situations
• Objectivation
• Signs, or language, as mode of objectivation

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Relevance Structures

• Knowledge of everyday life.
• Individual differences in relevance structures.
• Social differences in relevance structures.

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Society and Human Nature

• World-Openness
• Underdeveloped instincts
• Organismic development outside the womb
• Ability to fashion environment
• World-Closedness
• If we didnt have social systems, wed live in
  chaos.
• Once social systems develop, the must be
  relatively closed

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Understanding Institutionalization

• What is an institution?
• Characteristics of institutions
• Habitualization
• Reciprocal Typifications
• History
• Control power in the last instance

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Institutionalization as a Process

• Three dialectical moments
• Externalization Society is a human product.
• Objectivation Society is an objective reality.
• Reification
• Legitimation
• Internalization Humans are social products.
• Sedimentation
• Roles

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Structuration Theory

• Anthony Giddens
• The Duality of Structure
• Structure is both enabling and constraining
• Structure is both an outcome of and a resource
  for action.

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Returning to Burke Life as a Conversation