Week 2 - Everyday conversations Flashcards
What is Social Constructionism?
The view that reality is constructed by and through social processes and the associated us of language.
How is knowledge built?
It is built from the linguistic expressions of particular communities
What about FACTS about human behaviour?
Facts about human behaviour do not exists!
- They can be disputed, represented in different ways, challenged, and reinvented
What should social science be about?
How language, signs, and symbols are used to construct particular views of life and people (reality)
Where the idea about constructionism come from?
origins of connections to social constructionism can be claimed in many areas
- Marxist thought (power) e.g. Marx, Althusser, Gramsci…
- Philosophy e.g. Wittgenstein
- Pragmatism (Use of knowledge)
- Microsociology (Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology) e.g. Mead, goffman, garfinkel
- Linguistics ; especially structural linguistics e.g. de saussure
- Structuralism / Post structuralism and Postmodernism
How does social constructionism link to psychological research?
- From a constructionist perspective as (social) psychologists we cannot know an objective reality
BUT….
- We can claim to understand processes involved in how phenomena are socially constructed - how psychological realities are created
-Social constructionisms is associated with qualitative approaches in psychology
How do we speak of things? Wittgenstein (1929)
- Language games
- Each language game contributes to a form of life
- Individuals never control language but thought is dependent upon socially constructed meanings
- Importance of context
- Each ‘language game’ contributes to a form of life
- Individuals never control language, thought is dependent upon socially constructed meanings
Psychhistory - the (crisis) in social psychology
Each variant of social psychology not only describes
social phenomena but also, as part of a culture creates and re-produces the social phenomena
it studies
- Many theories in psychology are underpinned by the assumptions of natural science
- Assumes that the Mind and Behaviour can be studied in the same way as the physical universe
BUT…
- The meaning of things which underpin behaviour emerge in everyday talk and text - shops, hospitals, courts, media reports, schools, marketting, online posts, gossip…
By focusing on language we also focus on POWER
Some language use by some people is given more importance in constructing reality
What are qualitative approches?
- Gathering ‘naturalistic data’ from interviews, focus groups, internet blogs, and discussion posts, observations and conversations (‘natural settings’)
- Systematically interpreting this talk or text - the talk and texts from our evidenced
- (Narrative Analysis, Discourse
Analysis, Grounded Theory, Thematic Analysis)
Qualitative research looks at the quality of behaviour and experience, rather than its quantity
We systemically interpret data through coding talk and text
- We are not ‘reading’ peoples thoughts
but - Systematically using evidence from talk and test
What is constructionist qualitative research in psychology
We typically analyse talk and text to see how language is at work to construct forms of knowledge/through which people experience and understand their
world)
Exploring psychological processes such as:
▪ Identity (Identities) formation and change
▪ Emotional change and transitions
▪ Psychological interventions
Why does this matter?
- Understanding how people construct the world is important as people act in the world according to these constructions.
- Our social constructionist explanations can show how dominant ideas about psychological experience is reconfirmed in everyday life – BUT also how areas are contested and challenged and therefore
changed.
Simply saying…
In using constructionist approaches we are attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the
meanings people bring to them…
peoples talk help them construct their identity
