Symbolic Interactionism In Communication

There are seemingly an overwhelming amount of ways to communicate with other individuals in modern society today: an individual has the ability to communicate with another individual half-way across the globe with the click of a button or a press of a key, electrical signals—or even smoke signals—could be utilized to warn individuals of danger or if help is needed, and even the act of drawing markings on paper is an avenue of communication. Yet through all of the possible ways to communicate, it is important to note that language serves as a linchpin for these methods of communication to succeed. Language allows an individual to assign value to the words shown on a digital screen, decipher a message relayed by Morse code, or even understand

In a sense, “language is everything” for a society (Borgstein 1). It makes up how we define and attach meanings to the objects, words, and gestures that we see and hear every day. This is highlighted in the theory known as symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is the theory that states that the society we live in today is created—and constantly built—by the people who reside in it and spread the knowledge of symbols and the symbols’ meaning. Most people will recognize what I mean when I gesture a thumbs-up because of its frequency throughout the media we consume and the people that we interact with. The act of giving someone a thumbs-up for doing a good job has become ingrained in our language and culture due to social interaction with it. My interactions with my friend and stranger through the experiment also highlights the conflict theory. The conflict theory states that the society we live in is in a state of never-ending conflict, and the people within it are competing for limited resources. In my case, my attempt to send a message was my conflict while the attempt to understand my message was the conflict of the person I was talking to. A desire to understand my message, or a desire to resolve the conflict then would be the possible limited resource in said conflict because it could possibly equate to satisfaction. Time would also be another limited resource while I attempted to communicate to both my friend and the stranger with just gestures. Another theory that aligned with my experiences with the experiment is the functionalist theory. The functionalist theory is the theory that parts of our society functions in tandem in order to resolve conflicts and maintain a state of balance. This was experienced through the teamwork that my friend and I—as well as the stranger and I—executed to resolve the issue that was created from the experiment. It is clear from this experiment