Theories About Symbolic Activity

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Chapter 5

• Theories About Symbolic Activity

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Symbolic Interactionism

• George Herbert Mead
• Mind, Self, and Society (1934)
• Mead thought that symbols were the basis of
  individual identity and social life. In his
  opinion, individuals can acquire identity only by
  interacting with others. As we do so, we learn
  the language and the perspectives of our social
  communities

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Mind
• Mead described mind as the ability to use
  symbols that have common social meanings. As
  children interact with family, peers, and others,
  they learn language, and concurrently they learn
  the social meanings attached to particular words
  (p. 90).

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Mind
• The ability to use symbols that have common
  meanings allows individuals to share ideas and to
  communicate about ideas rather than simply
  behaving toward one another as animals do (p.
  90).

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Self
• Mead regarded self as the ability to reflect on
  ourselves from the perspective of others. Before
  children develop a concept of themselves, they
  first experience others acting toward them,
  labeling them, defining them (p. 91).

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Self
• The concept of the looking glass self calrifies
  Meads view of the human self. Symbolic
  interactionists explain that we learn to see
  ourselves mirrored in others eyes. In other
  words, our perceptions of how others see us are
  lenses through which we perceive ourselves. We
  learn to see our selves in terms of the labels
  others apply to us (p. 91).

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Self
• Self-fulfilling prophecy

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Symbolic Interactionism

• I vs. Me
• The I is impulsive, creative, spontaneous, and
  generally unburdened by social rules and
  restrictions. Thus, the I is the source both of
  creative genius and individuality and of criminal
  and immoral behavior

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Symbolic Interactionism

• I vs. Me
• The ME is the socially conscious part of the
  self, who reflects on the Is impulses and
  actions

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Symbolic Interactionism

• I vs. Me
• The ME is analytical, evaluative, and above all
  aware of social conventions, rules, and
  expectations. The I might think it would be
  great fun to go skinny-dipping on a crowded
  beach, but the ME would probably remind the I
  that skinny-dipping is not generally socially
  approved (p. 92).

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Particular Others
• Generalized Other
• Role Taking

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Dramatism

• Dramatism begins with the premise that life is a
  drama and that it can be understood in dramatic
  terms. Thus, communicators involved in
  situations are seen as actors performing dramatic
  scenes on the metaphorical stage of life (p. 97).

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Dramatism

• Kenneth Burke
• Substance
• Consubstantiality
• Communication is the primary way that we
  increase our identification, or
  consubstantiality, with others and diminish our
  division, or separateness, from others (p. 98).

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Dramatism

• Guilt as the motive for action.
• Hierarchy
• Perfection
• Negative Terminology

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Dramatism

• Reducing Guilt
• Mortification
• Victimage/Scapegoating

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Dramatism

• The Dramatistic Pentad (Hexad)
• The act
• The scene
• The agent
• Agency
• The purpose
• Attitude

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Narrative Paradigm

• Walter Fisher
• We continually weave discrete events and
  experiences together into coherent wholes that
  have all the features of stores a plot
  characters action a sequence of beginning,
  middle, and end and a climax (p. 105).

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Narrative Paradigm

• Rationalism vs. Narration (see pg. 107).
• Narrative Rationality
• Coherence Do all parts of the story seem to
  fit together believably?
• Fidelity Fidelity concerns whether a story
  rings true to listeners in terms of their own
  experiences, values, beliefs, and self-concepts