Talk:Symbolic interactionism/Archive 1

Previous comments
what is the easier way to understand symbolic interactionism?


 * I must say I am puzzled, as sociologisy, I only knew symbolic interaction. Where the interactionism came from? Dorit 18:29, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The statement that interactionism ignores material reality outside of interaction is completely absurd. Is this from some introductory textbook or just a snap judgment from this author?

Frankly, what would any of us know about the world we live in if we didn't interact with other people? For sure, the world is something, but exactly what it is, is something we agree on with other people. After I finished reading this page it is much more clear as to what symbolic interactionism is. I was confused at first but I put it into simpilest terms. We learn and undestand the worls and society by how we interact with others and how others state their opinions on certain things. Thus, society is something to agree upon.

This article is questionable. Not only does the content seem dubious, but I'm not sure that I can even find it (the content). Here's a reproduction of the first paragraph:

"Symbolic interactionism is a sociological and criminology perspective (paradigm) which examines how individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others. Of particular interest is the relationship between individual action and group pressures."

I'm no sociologist, but the entire paragraph seems to be a no-op. What does it accomplish?


 * doesn't the entire field of sociology examine how individuals and groups interact?
 * what does it mean to focus on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others? isn't it pretty well accepted that a significant proportion of personality traits are learned via social interaction? in fact, isn't that once again, almost (not quite, but almost) the basic premise on which the entire field of sociology is founded?
 * 'of particular interest' to whom? the author? critics?  proponents of the theory?
 * and what is the relationship between individual action and group pressures? (according to the theory, of course)

Reading further, the whole article is ripe with red flags that it was written from a very narrow perspective. How about two examples:

"Researchers investigate how people create meaning during face-to-face interaction, how they present and construct the self (or "identity"), and how they define situations of co-presence with others."


 * 1) people cannot create meaning.  to suggest this is like suggesting that Isaac Newton created gravity.
 * 2) * 'meaning' is a by-product of observation (incidentally, it is a by-product that only exists in the context of observation). it is not directly created by anything.
 * 3) similarly, people cannot construct 'self.'  to suggest it implies that 'self' is manually and intentionally built.  which then implies that people don't have self until they are able to manually build one.
 * 4) similarly:  what does it even mean to 'define situations of co-presence with others?'  the word situation is unavoidably linked to coincidence--which renders the whole sentence as nonsense... leaving the reader irate and unwilling to consider investigating possible meaning of 'co-presence.'

"Symbolic interactionism allows researchers to understand how individuals negotiate, manipulate, and change the structure and reality to a certain extent."


 * Unless I missed something huge, symbolic interactionism must be a theory (as opposed to a law). Ambiguity in what would be necessary to definitively prove or disprove it guarantees that it will never become a scientific law.
 * Given my previous point, its presumptuous to assert that symbolic interactionism 'allows researchers to understand'
 * Researchers ought to be (and most likely are) explicitly acknowledging the set of assumptions they are taking on (in this case, the assumption would be that symbolic interactionism is a correct theory and that it is relevant to some hypothesis they're testing).
 * There is a basic logical fallacy in the idea that one can use an unproven assumption to conclude anything real. Conclusions are not equivalent to hypotheses.  Maybe the sentence would be self-consistent if it read "Symbolic interactionism allows researchers to speculate further about ..."  or "Research suggests that, given , ."
 * The structure and reality(?) of what?
 * Woah, hold on--change... reality? Are they going Back to the Future?

Kierah 03:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Putting the cleanup tag on this. I think the initial part of this article could be broken up into sections a bit better.

"people cannot create meaning." you're implying that when people stop at a red light it is because red inherently and by observation means 'stop' not because people have attributed the meaning to it? In effect, people have created a meaning for something that previously just meant 'red'. The whole point of Symbolic Interactionism is that it's not the material object, it's the meaning we bring to it that matters.

"the word situation is unavoidably linked to coincidence" what? Just...what? and the word what here is unavoidably linked to 'wtf?' how in ANY WAY is 'situation' related to or linked to 'coincidence' ? THAT is nonsensical. Situations could be linked to 'events' or something like that, but coincidence has nothing to do with it. sorry. But no, I have no idea what 'co-presence' is, but I DID get far enough to ask the question of 'what the heck is co-presence?'.

Aside from these two silly comments, I agree with most of the rest of what you said. - Elin

-

I changed he/she to a single gender-neutral pronoun. - Osaria no mames —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.37.68.78 (talk) 23:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

- Theres no proper definition here. This article needs a lot of work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.157.1.180 (talk) 17:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Anarchism
Why is Anarchism in the "See Also" section? How is it in anyway related to symbolic interactionism? Davedim (talk) 11:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I came to the talk page looking for an answer to this very question! Anyone? 9emini (talk) 00:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming it was a comment on how interactionism has become many different interpretations to many different fields. Too chaotic for the disciplined disciplines. No matter, it's removed now. Thank you for pointing it out. ---Sluzzelin talk  00:28, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Need to rewrite
There is my attempt to make a basis for the rewrite of this article at User:Ceplm/Symbolic_Interactionism What do you think?

Ceplm (talk) 21:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Symbolic Interactionism is NOT especially important for urban sociology. I suggest that this claim be removed. EvolutionRevolution (talk) 06:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Your suggestion is very much better than what's on the site now, but it's still pretty confusing. I've tried to get my head around this, and a lot of what I've read gives the SI name, and a bunch of background, but is _extremely_ weak at actually offering a definition of SI, preferring, instead, to talk around a definition and expecting the reader to somehow just figure it out.

Maybe an example would help. Take something mundane, like "a paved road" and examine the symbolic interactionism that people and society have with it. I have a hunch (but I'm no expert), that SI is a fancy term for "group-think." I also have a hunch that any given society might have subcultures in it that have different SI interpretations of things like "a mohawk hair cut" "a dandelions" or "The Louvre." The whole concept seems to try to "nail down" a concept that is, by its very nature, completely transient and amorphic. I currently liken it to picking up seawater in my two hands and offering descriptions of the sea based on the water rapidly draining from the seam where my hands abut one another.

Reorganization of the page
I am a graduate student in the Communications, Culture and Technology Department at Georgetown University. As an assignment for our class, I have been tasked with updating and clarifying this page. I have been working on reorganizing this page in my sandbox for the past few weeks. After reading over the page I found some redundancy and some disorganization that often comes from multiple wiki users posting content. I did my best to cut out the redundancy, organize the page and preserve the insightful contributions each user made to the page. Please reference my sandbox at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bgwiki15/sandbox and provide me with any feedback you have about my proposed restructuring of the page. I also plan to add a section on Social Interactionism and new media. If I do not hear back from anyone in the next few days. I will plan to go ahead and most my sandbox and see what sticks on the page. Thanks in advance for you help in make this page better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bgwiki15 (talk • contribs) 14:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I did not hear back from anyone, so I went ahead and made the changes to the page. I have added a new media section. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Bgwiki15 (talk) 21:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Article tagged for review
This article on an important subject in sociological theory and method still suffers from numerous problems including repetition, unclear phrases and linguistic issues, lack of references etc and needs a complete rewrite which brings out the key ideas and contributions to the topic in a way which is logically structured (and does not merely arise from social interaction ;) ).

Some of the material, if it has any merit, relating to applications of SI or the SI perspective on certain issues should be turned or incorporated into a separate article (the topic on new media for instance).--Fbunny (talk) 11:28, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the German version of the article might be a good starting point for a rewrite. Fbunny (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

July 2014 reorganization
See my edit for the summary and the brief parts of history I changed. There was discussion about how Mead talks about the self above the actual summary of Symbolic Interaction by Blumer. I moved Mead's bit there down to history since it really is part of that, and doesn't help to explain the basic concept of SI. I highlighted Blumer in the summary and added an example to clarify. Please feel free to give me feedback on the example. It was based on an example my professor gave us once back in college, so I'm not sure if it needs (or how it would be) cited.

Otherwise, I plan on further cleaning up this page more in the future when I have more time. Wilmat13 (talk) 15:50, 18 July 2014 (UTC) Update: I removed the example temporarily until I was sure if it needed a citation or not (see above). Here's the example: "Consider the following example: Suppose a boy is playing with a yo-yo. His younger brother approaches and sees his older brother playing with the yo-yo. He watches his hand motions, how the yo-yo moves up and down, and how occasionally he makes the yo-yo do a trick. Later, the younger boy tries to play with the yo-yo by himself. He knows what do do with it because he has assigned meaning to the yo-yo as an object, through social interaction with his brother. This is why the term "symbol" from Symbolic Interactionism is used. The symbol is the yo-yo, and the boy interacts with it based on the meaning he assigns to it. If the boy found another yo-yo, perhaps made of a different material or colored differently, but still had the same shape... he would still know what to do with it because it looks like a yo-yo."Wilmat13 (talk) 01:09, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Roma A
Hey! I suggest you could try to work on the introduction of the page. It has too much of information but not articulate enough. --Hayday13 (talk) 15:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)User:Hayday13

Peer Review from MC
Hello!

I like how you edited the intro, but I do think the actual definition of the theory could be a little higher up. Linking to Mead's page was a great idea, since is a huge part of comm theory. I also like how you elaborated on Blumer's role in this theory.

There are some typos in the History section (ex. "Given that Blumer was the first one use symbolic interaction term..." should probably be "Given that Blumer was the first one to use the term, symbolic interaction, ..."), and each section should be edited for typos/awkward wording.

I like the addition of Weber, but I do think some explanation of action theory is needed.

There is some inconsistency in how citations are formatted. Some are just numbered while others include APA style citations. I think one format should be used throughout (and I'd go with the numbered citations, but that's just me).

I think the Five Central Ideas section needs to be broken up with white space to make it easier to read.

Overall, it is a very dense and informative page. Some images or more indentations/smaller paragraphs would help it aesthetically.

I love all your additions! Recognizing all the people that worked on this theory is important.

--Kekile (talk) 16:56, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Class Peer Edit
The biggest problem I incurred when reading this page was that while I feel I have a good general sense of what the theory is, I still feel that I lack a quick, easy to understand definition of the theory.

This source provides some insights into possible definitions or way on conceptualizing the theory to make a easy to understand definition.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=45876a94-c891-4bcf-b803-b4f49fe04f4f%40sessionmgr4008

Other than that, the biggest struggle I had with this page was the size of the paragraphs. I believe the average person coming to this page would suffer from information overload; therefore, the page should be reformatted to have shorter, easier to comprehend paragraphs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.161.133.194 (talk) 18:02, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

My concern
I'm not certain, but I think the 5th claim made in flies in the face of sociology. If symbolic interactionism says this, then it is not sociology. Other sources about symbolic interactionism I've seen claim that humans are active participants, but the meanings they ascribe to things create concepts like conditioning. &thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 21:12, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

This article is really, really bad (but why?)
The article is plagued by meaningless phrases, uncomfortably long paragraphs (yet with low information density), and the complete lack of overarching structure.

Some parts read like an advertisement. Some parts don't, but still suffer heavily from neutrality issues. Some parts read like they were written by someone who was told the right buzzwords but not what the topic was actually about. Just enough parts are vaguely understandable that the page has managed to remain in existence.

This page has had issues for several years. It seems that no one has managed to fix them. Sometimes, one area sees a mild improvement, but other simultaneously experience the opposite.

Why? Is the article very difficult to fix, or is it continuously being "unfixed", by attracting low-quality edits? Is there something about this topic that makes is particularly difficult to write clear sentences in proper English?

Perhaps lazy professors love to make their (possibly uninterested) students edit this particular article, with wildly varying results. Or maybe this article exemplifies the result of 1000 people making minor edits without caring about (or even reading?) the article as a whole. (That result can be summed up as "emergent mud".)

Surely there is some reason for the horrible state that this article seems to be stuck in.

Unfortunately, I do not know. Takatiej (talk) 15:20, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I think the problem is people bringing the POV from the sources and into the article without checking to see if edits need to be made to meet our guidelines. The cited sources also seem to assume the reader had at least a basic knowledge of sociology and an intermediate to advanced knowledge of the social sciences. I also wonder if new editors who are sociologists are adding content with no knowledge of Wikipedia policies (especially NOR, NPOV, NOTJOURNAL, V). I've added a few cleanup templates to the article due to what I'm seeing in the article and on the talk page.&thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 21:43, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

United States Education Program article

 * I was wondering why the author stated 5 central ideas per Joel M Charon for this article and not the 7 central assumptions as stated by Lynn H Turner and Richard West list 7 in Theories of Relational Communication (page 32)? Thank you --Halas2019 (talk) 03:41, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Communication
Are there plans to add more information on how symbolic interaction relates to the study of Communications? --Road2tip (talk) 05:39, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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