September Blog Post: Social Constructionism

Throughout all of our readings in the beginning of this semester, one of the sentences that stood out to me immediately was in a brief introduction to social constructionism in chapter two of Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction. Authors John T. Warren and Deanna L. Fassett state that in social constructionism, “we no longer consider communication something that just is, something static and stationary we can easily examine; rather, we view it as a process, as a messy enterprise that we all engage in, searching for meaning in ourselves and in each other as we make our way through the world” (29). The primary focus of social constructionism is to analyze the ways in which people communicate both verbally and non verbally to create their unique perceptions and meanings of the world around them.

The idea of social constructionism and that “communication is live and adaptive” has been reflected through a lot of concepts both in and out of class(30). For example, think back to one of our recent classes where we talked about social construction and gender. I've seen this video on the internet for a while now before I knew anything about social construction and I think this little girl hits the nail right on the head. It's sad that we have these kind of gender stereotypes built from social construct and that the public is so quick to judge anything that may seem out of the "norm". We also see less controversial topics of social constructionism in everyday life. For example, we drive on the right side of the road in the United States and we stop when we see a red light. Even our money has socially constructed value. You can see from these examples how communication creates these perceptions.

Overall, I just thought this statement was very powerful. I especially enjoyed the end of the quotation where it states we view communication “as a process, as a messy enterprise that we all engage in, searching for meaning in ourselves and in each other as we make our way through the world” (29). I think this piece just kind of captures what a part of our life is about and I thought that was really cool. Looking at the sentence I chose and the idea of social constructionism in general, I think that I will be more aware of the fact that everyone perceives things a certain way. I am now more aware of why I think the way I do when it comes to controversial topics such as gender. I think overall, I just gained a better understanding of the concept as a whole.