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Characteristics Of Symbolic Interactionism

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The present essay examines the intellectual origins of Symbolic Interactionism and it provides examples. Also, there is a discussion of the key assumptions and characteristics of this approach to the analysis and understanding of social life.
Symbolic Interactionism is a social school of thought in sociology that analyzes social behavior in terms of how people interact with each other by using symbols. It explains the importance of symbols and meanings in human interaction. Also, how people communicate and interact with each other depends on how they interpret factors such as language and actions. According to Blumer, people act towards things based on the meaning those things have for them; and these meaning are derived from social interaction …show more content…

One of them is the Chicago School, which is specialized in urban sociology and has focused on human behavior as determined by social structures and physical environmental factors, rather than genetic and personal characteristics. It interest in how people interpret their world and how meaning and interpretation guides peoples behavior. The other one is the philosophy of pragmatism. According to this idea, the truth or meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences rather than anything metaphysical. In other words, something is true only insofar as it works.
One of the main characteristics of Symbolic Interactionism is social interaction. This is the process whereby humans exchange ideas, meanings and symbols through any form of communication, fox example language, body language and media. Generally, social interaction includes the acts that people perform towards each other and the responses they give in return. In one form or another, social interaction makes up a major part of human …show more content…

They present this image to others using techniques of impression. However, the image that they present is not the same as the expectations of the audience. When somebody wishes others to think of him as a particular person, he try to present exactly that image to them. However, according to Symbolic Interactionism the images of self can be imposed on a person by the audience. According to Mead, we are both subjects and objects. He explains this by saying that if i look in the mirror, I’m a subject looking in the mirror, and the object I see in the mirror is “me”. This helps to the development of “me” that we learn to see and evaluate from what others have told us about how we look in general. So we can say for sure that an individual can only develop a self throughout social interaction and social

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