Lesson 13
Symbolic Interactionism
Robert Wonser
SOC 368 – Classical Sociological Theory
Spring 2014
Basic Tenets of Symbolic
Interactionism
 The foundation of society is language
 Human beings are primarily symbolic
creatures
 Society is the exchange of meaningful
symbols
 It is through symbols that humans create
society, meaning, and reality
 Emphasis on conversation, face-to-face
interaction, and the negotiation of reality
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Central Topics of Symbolic
Interaction
the formation of identity
the nature of the self
“looking-glass self”
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Central Topics
self-fulfilling prophesies and the
power of labelling
the dynamics of interaction
the “social construction of
reality”
emotions
habits
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Thomas Theorem
“If situations are defined as real
they will have real
consequences.”
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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All macro-level social reality – culture,
social structure – is a product of
interaction
Much of social life involves role-taking and
role-playing
A micro perspective
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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George Herbert Mead
 society is “symbolic interaction”
 language is the most significant human invention
 language helps to create the “self,” the “mind,”
and “meaning”
 I, me, generalized other
 the most effective means of social control is “self
control”
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Herbert Blumer and “Processual”
Symbolic Interactionism
Herbert Blumer, one of Mead’s most
influential students coined the term
“symbolic interactionism.”
Blumer develops symbolic interactionism
to reflect three basic principles:
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Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism
Human beings act toward things on the
basis of the meanings which these things
have for them.
The meaning of a thing for a person grows
out of the ways in which other persons act
toward the person with regard to the thing.
The use of meanings by the actor occurs
through a process of interpretation.
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For Blumer, all of human social life is a
process by which meanings are negotiated
and interpreted, a product of “joint action.”

Social structures and culture have only a
weak influence on individuals.
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“Structural” Symbolic Interactionism
Some of Mead’s students, however, argue
that Blumer has produced a version of
symbolic interactionism that overly
emphasizes process.
Instead, they argue that social life,
especially the self, is highly structured.
Manford Kuhn’s Twenty Statement’s Test
“I am”

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 For example, Sheldon Stryker argues that the self is
hierarchically organized along a set of identities that
vary in terms of:
Commitment
Salience
 The more commitment an individual has to an
identity the greater the salience of the identity.
 The higher an identity in the salience hierarchy, the
more likely that identity will be performed, and
performed well.

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Three tenets of Symbolic
Interactionism
 Symbolic Interactionism, the process by
which things are socially constructed:
 1)Human beings act toward ideas, concepts
and values on the basis of the meaning that
those things have for them.
 2) These meanings are the products of social
interaction in human society.
 3) These meanings are modified and filtered
through an interpretive process that each
individual uses in dealing with outward signs
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Symbolic Interactionism: An
example
Are these the same? Do they have
the same meaning? What do you
think of when you see each?
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Phenomenology and the Social
Construction of Reality
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
(1966)
Ask the questions:
How does a body of knowledge come to
be accepted as “reality?”
How do we create a shared reality that is
experienced as objectively factual and is
also subjectively meaningful?
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How does the “social construction of
reality occur?”
 Externalization – the creation of new social
elements of reality that become new elements of
that reality.
 Objectification – the perception of an ordered
prearranged reality that appears to be
independent of human beings themselves
(reification).
 Internalization – the process by which
individuals internalize the objectified reality
(conformity to a reified reality).
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 Reification is “the apprehension of the products
of human activity as if they were something else
than human products – such as facts of nature,
results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of
divine will. Reification implies that man is
capable of forgetting his own authorship of the
human world, and further that the dialectic
between man, the producer, and his products is
lost to consciousness. The reified world is, by
definition, a dehumanized world.”

Berger and Luckmann,
 The Social Construction of Reality
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