The Social Contructionist Perspective

In a very real way, the self is socially constructed. All aspects of a person is shaped and framed through communication, for communication guides the consciousness, mind and self of every human. People show themselves to be locals, by co-coordinating their actions in ways that are deemed locally appropriate and natural in a given environment. Communication is viewed as forming persons and worlds. The social constructionist perspective dictates what is “real,” in other words, what is “of existence” in a given social sphere. Language in most instances is thought of as standing in for, or representing, how things are to be. Reality is what we say it is. If we say it is different, then it is different. If I say in the morning, that I am a man, then that is what I am; if I then say in the afternoon that I am a woman, then I am. This caricature is both right and wrong. At the level of principle it is right; it is through ascribing meanings to ourselves and the surrounding world that we can understand and act in the world, and in that sense both ourselves and our world are the meanings we ascribe to them. Meanings are contingent and therefore changeable and, if they change, the subject and the surrounding world also change, making available other possibilities for thinking and acting. But, in a given situation, most meanings are relatively stable and individual subjects have only limited possibilities for manipulating them. Changes in meaning ascriptions are collective social processes