Symbolic Interactionism is characterized by certain ideas about communication and society. Barbara Ballis Bal summarizes these:
1. People make decision and act in accordance with their subjective understanding of the situations in which they find themselves.
2. Social life consists of interaction processes rather than structures and is therefore constantly changing.
3. People understand their experience through the meaning found in the symbols of their primary groups, and language is an essential part of social life.
4. The world is made up of social objects that are named and have socially determined meaning.
5. People’s action are based on their interpretations, in which the relevant objects and actions in the situation are taken into account and defined.
6. One’s self is a significant object and like all social objects is defined through social interaction with others.
According to symbolic interactionism, the, you are always attempting to achieve goals by interacting with other people. Your experience is shaped by the meanings that are created by using symbols when communicating in groups.
Early interactionism was divided into two school. The Chicago School, led primarily by Herbert Blumer, continued the Work of George Herbert Mead. Blumer believed above all that the study of human could not be conducted in the same manner as the study of thing. Researchers should try to empathize with the subject, enter his experiment, and attempt to understand the value of each person. Blumer and his follower avoided the quantitative and scientific approaches and stressed life histories, autobiographies, case stusies, diaries, letters, and non directive interviews. Blumer particularly emphasized the importance of participant observation in the study of communication. Further, the Chicago tradition saw people as creative, innovative, and free to define each situation in unpredictable ways. Self and society were viewed as process, not structure; to free the process would be to lose the essence of social relationships.
The second tradition, the Iowa School, took a more specific approach. Manford Kuhn and Carl Couch, its leader, believed that the interactionist concept could be operationalized. Although Kuhn accepted the basic tenets of symbolic interactionism, he argued that objective methods are more fruitful than the “soft” methods employed by Blumer. As we will see later in the chapter, Kuhn was responsible for a well-known measurement technique called the Twenty Statement Test.
The basic ideas of these early school of interaction live on today and have been adopted by many social scientists. Yet symbolic interactionism has change significantly since its early years, as Gary Fine suggest. It has expanded by adopting insights from other theoretical areas and has increasingly contributed to the work of other areas of social science.
Today, according to Fine, symbolic interactionism has incorporated the study how groups coordinate their actions, how emotions are understood and controlled, how reality is constructed, how self is created, how large social structures get established, and how public policy can be influenced.
Summary
Symbolic intercationism is a study about communication in society. There are two tradition in this study, The Chicago School and The Iowa one. According to The Chicago School, participant observation is important way in communication research because self and society were viewed as a process. This school viewed people as creative, innovative and unpredictable in defining situation. This tradition stressed in using life histories, autobiographies, case studies, diaries, letter and nondirective interviews and avoided quantitative and scientific research. In other hand, The Iowa used more scientific approach in their research. They believed that the concepts of interactionist could be operationalized. They said that objective methods are “better” than The Chicago’s. Now, this study has expanded to other social studies. That’s why it has been adopted by many social scientist and has a significant contribution for the work of their areas.
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