1. Shared Symbols and Society
Symbolic Interaction
Key Assumptions
How Meaning Is Made
Shared Symbols and Society

2. We (grow to) know who we are as a thing.
Key Assumptions
We (grow to) know who we are as a thing.
We react to (other) things based on the meaning those things have for us.
The meanings of things are determined by (our) social interaction in a society.

3. How Meaning Is Made Shared Symbols
VOCAL
GESTURES
Don’t Require
As Much Role
Taking
Meaningful
Gesture
Significant
Symbol
Role
Taking
Shared
Symbols
A Response To
The Movement
Random
Movement
The development of meaning relies on symbols shared by many people in a culture.

4. Shared Symbols And Society
Other Things
1. We don’t respond to stimuli. We respond to stimuli’s meaning.
2. We don’t behave towards symbols based on the concrete properties of objects.
3. There are hundreds of physical gestures with very different cultural (societal) meanings.
4. There are paralinguistic signals that also have meaning.
5. We have to be careful with our assumptions about how universal the meaning of a symbol is.
Shared Symbols And Society