1. Theories of Symbolic Organization
Chapter Six
Theories of Symbolic Organization

2. Social Scientific Approaches to Symbolic Organization
Metaphors for Understanding how people make sense of social lives
Consistency seeker (e.g., cognitive dissonance theory)
Naïve scientist (e.g., attribution theory)
Cognitive miser (e.g., schema theory)--efficiency

3. Schema Theory: What are schemas?
Schemas are templates that help us understand the social world (cognitive economy)—have been studied as what (content) and how (process of activation)
Many types of schemas – self, other people, roles, and events (Table 6.1)
Exist at various levels of abstraction and may be organized into memory organization packets

4. Schema Theory: How do schemas work?
When are schema developed and activated? When new situations arise or when the current situation “matches” an already developed schema
How are schema changed? Several models have been proposed: bookkeeping, conversion, and subtyping (most empirical support)

5. Schema Theory: Applications in Communication
Consideration of memory organization packets (MOPs) to understand conversation
Consideration of schemas that guide our expectations about relationships
Consideration of schemas in imagined interactions
Consideration of schemas we hold for mass communication programming

6. Schema What are some schemas for funerals? Are there MOPS?
How might the schema be altered?
Schema in the media:

7. Attribution Theory: Basis Concepts
Views people as “naïve scientists” who look for causal explanations in social life (“why” questions)
Locus of attributions can be internal (within the person) or external (within the situation)
Fundamental attribution error (negative vs. positive behaviors)
Attributions can also be seen in terms of the stability and controllability of social behavior

8. Attributions in Interpersonal Contexts
Part of day-to-day talk
Influenced by relationship quality (satisfaction)—see example, next two slides
Whether making an attribution in public or privately to partner
If we believe that resistance is based on controllable and internal attribution, we are more persistent in persuasive strategies such as guilt or appeals to altruism

9. Patterns of Attribution in Relationships: Satisfied
Partner’s Behavior
Your Attribution
Partner’s Response
Internal
Stable
Controllable
Positive
Positive
External
Unstable
Uncontrollable
Positive
Negative

10. Patterns of Attribution in Relationships: Dissatisfied
Partner’s Behavior
Your Attribution
Partner’s Response
External
Unstable
Uncontrollable
Negative
Positive
Internal
Stable
Controllable
Negative
Negative

11. Attribution Theory in Mediated Communication
Media provides attributions for events/behaviors
Movies influence viewers’ attributions
Third-person Effect
We assume that others are more strongly influenced by the media than we are (we have more common sense)

12. Interlude
Schema theory and Attribution theory in social scientific theory building
What are the variables?
What are some propositions?

13. Humanistic Approaches to Symbolic Organization
Humanistic approaches—not looking for cognitive structures or causal explanations
Looking for ways to making sense of or understand the social and symbolic world
Subjective and value-laden

14. Narrative Theory: Walter Fisher
The narrative paradigm can be distinguished from a “rational world paradigm.” (Table 6.3)
“Humans experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, as conflicts, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends.”
“…the narrative paradigm is a philosophical statement that is meant to offer an approach to interpretation and assessment of human comm.”

15. Narrative Theory: Analysis of Narrative Rationality
The “goodness” of a story can be judged in terms of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity
Narrative coherence considers the integrity of a story’s structure
Narrative fidelity considers whether the story “rings true” with the beliefs of listeners

17. Question to consider: Fidelity
In some measure, fidelity is a judgment call—what is truthful and humane in everyday lives and the world
Fisher: imagines an audience that believes in the values of truth, the good, beauty, health, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion, friendship, and oneness with the Cosmos
Do the stories of modern culture (rap music, reality tv, movies, etc.) offer this?

18. Narrative Theory: Applications and critiques
Applications have included consideration of parental support groups (Toughlove story) and of political party platforms
Some critiques of the narrative paradigm have been raised about its use in the analysis of a wide range of texts
Fisher, however, believes that all forms of communication be analyzed as stories

19. Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism
Wide-ranging influence in rhetoric and communication discipline
Burke’s work can be used to analyze
(1) language as a form of action
(2) human action as dramatic in form
(3) human action as rhetorical
(4) pluralistic and dialectical program for analysis of human behavior

20. Dramatism: Language as a Form of Action
Distinction between motion and action is what distinguishes humans from other animals—humans have agency
Humans engage in symbolic action
Several implications, including (1) separation from natural world, (2) reflexivity, (3) introduction of “the negative,” and (4) introduction of hierarchy

21. Humans are the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal inventor of the negative separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making goaded by the spirit of hierarchy acquiring foreknowledge of death and rotten with perfection (qtd. in Coe ).

22. Dramatism: Action as Dramatic
Can consider the “grand sweep” of life’s drama through the process of guilt and redemption
This process involves mortification and scapegoating
Can also consider smaller “dramas of life” through consideration of dramatistic pentad (act, scene, agent, purpose, and agency)—language as a terministic screen

23. Act: What happened. What is the action. What is going on
Act: What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts?
Scene: Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?
Agent: Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?
Agency: How do the agents act? By what means do they act?
Purpose: Why do the agents act? What do they want?
Of dramatism, Burke said: "If action, then drama; if drama, then conflict; if conflict, then victimage.
An example:

24. Question for Burke
How might a communication scholar analyze the Iraq War using the dramatistic pentad (act, scene, agent, purpose, and agency) from the perspective of someone
A. Opposed to the war (pull out now)
B. Supports finishing the war
ConsubstantiationIt’s more than credibility

25. Dramatism: Application
How does the speaker build (or not build) consubstantion?
Choose an “act” in the story (e.g., “this spectacle”)—who is the agent? Walk through the rest of the pentad. Who are the villains (devil-term)? Who can provide redemption?
Can you determine a pentadic ratio?