Feb Blog Post

The term Social Construction is, on some level, self-evident: It suggests that our social reality emerges through our actions and that our world and the social rules we live by are the product of our communication both verbal and nonverbal. (Chapter 6, 104-105)

We are bound by social constructs, yet we are the ones who build those very constructs. Every day we perform actions and we make decisions, we all do this and when we combine all our decisions and we construct society around us. Yet we as individuals often feel bound by it. I know I did as a teenager. As children, it is natural for us to develop a subconscious awareness of these social patterns and we learn to adapt and conform to fit in with the rest of society or at least to try to.

The verbal aspect of social construction is probably the most obvious, we see it every day on a massive scale, we often drown in all the noise. We are taught early on to pick up verbal cues such as DON’T TOUCH THAT or as discussed in class “talk quietly in the library”. We are taught by those around us how to act and interact with those around us usually in a verbal manner.

These same people are naturally giving us nonverbal cues as well but at least, in the beginning, we don’t recognize all of these actions however, we might miss the angry looks if we shout out or laugh in the library or when someone slaps our hand when we try to grab a snack half an hour before dinner. These are all things we learn from the experience of having them happen to us. In addition, these actions are paired with a verbal command as mentioned before at least the first time this allows us to associate the action with a word we do understand.

These two actions drive the mentality that we are creators of our own society. We use a combination of verbal cues and associating verbal cues to establish the social norms. It can difficult to remember that you will often encounter people who don’t understand something you consider to be a norm. Something I struggle with is recognizing that, in the moment and not getting frustrated or being amused but supporting those people in understanding what I am trying to communicate