week 9

For week nine, we studied about symbolic interactionism. According Priest (1996, p.56) is the a subdiscipline where our sense of identifying comes from what we think of others thinks of us and what they expect us to be. It means that our identity comes from by what people think of us and what they want us to be. Humans are differentiated from animals by the extensive ability that we have to use symbols in communication. 


In this theory, we have another theory called "the looking glass" theory. In Griffin, (2009, p.63), “According to Mead, the self is an ongoing process combining the “I” and the “Me”.” The "I" is defined through pre-reflective action. "I" is an evolutionary process that works through memory. "Me" is the self with an identity. A self can only be describe through social interaction and language. The "Me" is able to create multiple-selves. Argyle (1973, p.356), stated that the “I” is the “concioius subjectand active agent in behavior, that takes decision” and the “Me” is our reaction to others by being a specific person (Argyle, 1973, p.356). In other words the "I” is the person true form, what he/she is really like, while the “Me” is the false identity of the person, where the person is being someone else to fit in with others.


The symbolic interactionism sees society as being made up of people that takes roles to form cooperative social action. According to Griffin (2009, p.65), with continuous symbolic interaction the "me" is able to formed. The "generalized other" are the commonsensical meanings generated by a culture. Griffin (2009, p.65) defined the "generalized other" as "organized set of information that the individual carries in his or her head about what the general expectation and the attitudes of the social group are." 


Criticism with Symbolic Interactionism is that its non-empirical. What is meant as empirical is the scientific methodologies: quantitative, classifactory, testable hypothesis and variables, and systematic. This theory is also criticized for overestimating the power of an individual. There's lack of methodology to show how an individual actually define or perceive meaning of symbols and language.  


For this theory, I'm going to use the movie "Mulan" as an example. In the beginning of the movie, we see that her family expects her to be a lady and nothing else. When she started to sing a song called "reflection", where the society sees her "I", but all 
she wants to be is "Me". Below are two different videos of the song "reflection" from Mulan. The first video is the cut scene from Mulan and the second video is the music video of "reflection" by Christina Aguilera. 

Reference:


 Argyle, M. (1973). Social Interaction. London: Tavistock Publication Ltd.

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.

Priest, S. H. (1996). Doing Media Research: An Introduction. California: SAGE publications.