Communication as World Building

Communication as World Building

The social constructionist perspective takes a very different view of communication. In this view com­munication becomes a means of world building. Figure 2.2 illustrates an example of a social con­structionist model. According to this model, com­munication is not something that goes on between individuals; instead, communication is something that surrounds people and holds their world together. Through communication, social groups create collective ideas of themselves, of one another, and of the world they inhabit.

Figure 2.1 – The Social Con­structionist Model

Elements of a Social Constructionist Model

According to the social constructionist model, communication is a process whereby people in groups, using the tools provided by their culture, create collective rep­resentations of reality. The model specifies four of these cultural tools: languages, or symbolic codes; the ways we’ve been taught to process information, or cognitive customs; the beliefs, attitudes, and values that make up our cultural tra­ditions; and the sets of roles and rules that guide our actions. These tools shape the ways we experience and talk about our world.

The social constructionist perspective maintains that we never experience the world directly. Rather, we take those parts of it that our culture makes signif­icant, process them in culturally recognized ways, connect them to other “facts” that we know, and respond to them in ways our culture considers significant. According to this perspective, we construct our world through communication.

This perspective points out that most of what we know and believe about the world comes to us through communication rather than through direct experience. If everyone around us talks about the world in a certain way, we are likely to think of the world in that way and fail to question whether we are seeing things accurately. Thus, when we later encounter people who communicate in different ways, we will have problems during interaction.

Let’s take an example. Eric has been with his company for thirty years and has five more to go until retirement. When he first started working, there were very few women in managerial positions, but now he finds himself work­ing with many women managers. Eric thinks of himself as fair-minded and easygoing. He has nothing against the fact that “girls” are now moving up in the company, but he does finds it hard to understand why they get so upset over “nothing.” When he calls his female secretary “Honey,” (which he’s done for twenty years), he doesn’t understand the prickly reaction of his new colleague Cindy. After all, he’s just trying to be nice. It’s the way he always talks to women.

Cindy is fresh out of business school and eager to make her way in the pro­fessional world. She is appalled (потрясен) by Eric’s behavior. When she hears the way he talks to his secretary, she feels embarrassed and demeaned herself. Furthermore, when Eric treats Cindy like an idiot by explaining everything to her as though she were a child, her blood boils. Cindy has come of age in a time when discussions of feminism and sexism are common. She’s sensitive to issues Eric doesn’t even notice.

Eric’s attempts to communicate with Judy fail because the two colleagues don’t share collective representations of reality. When Eric was growing up, no one talked about sexism and sexual harassment, so for him these concepts have limited meaning. His views of male/female roles used to work, but now they are outmoded. As a result he says things that are completely inappropriate in a modem office. In a very real way, Eric and Cindy live in two completely different worlds.

Improving Our Social Constructions

The social constructionist model emphasizes that we should take responsibility for the things we talk about and the way we talk about them. Our constructions of reality, accord­ing to the model, often distort our communication. Thus, we may accept cultural myths and stereotypes without thinking. Given the fact that symbols have the power to control us, it is useful to develop the critical ability to “see through” cultural constructions and to avoid creating them through our own talk. The ability to decipher our biases is a useful skill.

And whereas the psychological model suggests that individuals create communication, the social constructionist model suggests the opposite, that communication creates individuals. To be successful communicators, it maintains, we must be willing to follow cultural rules and norms. We must take our parts in the social drama our culture has laid out for us. We must also carefully consider whether those roles enhance our identities or inhibit them. If a role is outmoded or unfair to others, we must be willing to abandon it and find a new and more appropriate way of communicating.

Criticizing the Social Constructionist Perspective

For many of you, this model may seem to depart radically from commonsense ideas about communication. To say that we live in a symbolic rather than a physical, world seems to contradict our most basic notions about the nature of reality. For if we can never gain access to reality but can only experience con­structions of it, then how can we tell the difference between truth and illusion? The social constructionist model raises important philosophical questions as it emphasizes a relationship recognized since ancient times: the relationship be­tween rhetoric and truth.

Another troublesome aspect of the social constructionist position is that it defines good communication as socially appropriate communication. Scholars who take this perspective often talk of humans as social performers. To communicate successfully, one acts out a social role over which he or she has little con­trol. For many, this view implies that the good communicator is a social au­tomaton rather than a sincere and spontaneous self. Many people criticize the social constructionist perspective because it places too much emphasis on the social self and not enough on the individual self.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04