Symbolic Interactionism Flashcards, test questions and answers
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What is Symbolic Interactionism?
Symbolic interactionism is an important sociological concept that asserts that meaning is derived from the interactions between individuals, and that this meaning shapes our social behavior. Symbolic interactionism conceptualizes people as actors, or agents, who use symbolswords, gestures, objectsto create and interpret meaning in their social world. In turn, those interpretations lead to actions which shape our society.Symbolic interactionists view society as something created through the process of social interaction among individuals rather than something imposed by larger forces like economics or politics. They focus on how people act and interact with each other in order to develop a shared understanding of their environment and the meanings they ascribe to it. Central to this theory is the idea that individual actors are constantly constructing meaning through their interactions with one another and the objects around them. This construction of meaning can be seen in everyday life such as when two people engage in a conversation or when an individual interacts with a product they have bought such as a watch or phone. Symbolic interactionism has had a great deal of influence on both sociology and psychology over the years because it emphasizes how we create meaning based on our own experiences and interpretations of symbols within our environments. It also stresses how we use these symbols to create our own personal identitiesour self-imagewhich helps us make sense of our world around us and act accordingly within it. Symbolic Interactionism has been used to explain many different aspects of human behavior including gender roles, culture shock, language acquisition, identity formation, race relations, deviance/crime/punishment and more. For example, researchers may look at how different cultures respond differently during cross-cultural interactions due to differing symbolic understandings about appropriate behavior for certain contexts or settings (i.e., facial expressions). In conclusion, symbolic interactionism is an important sociological concept which highlights how individuals construct unique meanings out of their interactions with one another based upon shared symbols within their environment including language words gestures etc The theory has been applied extensively across many areas including gender roles culture shock language acquisition identity formation race relations deviance crime punishment.