Symbolic Interactionism

Observation #1
January 25, 2015
Symbolic Interactionism

I have this friend; I'll call her Julie.  When Julie speaks, she speaks loudly.  As a quieter individual, I prefer to not draw attention to myself, but when I am with Julie, that becomes nearly impossible as she seemingly screams as loud as she can during mundane conversations.  This overwhelming quality of Julie immediately caused me to dislike her and find her extremely annoying.  On the other hand, the other members in my friend group find her lovable and friendly; therefore, I am around her far more often than I would desire.

Despite my friend group encouraging me to look past her loud, egotistical exterior, I find it extremely difficult to look past the initial labels I placed upon Julie.  In our text, it is said that "humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people things" (55).  When I assigned terms such as "loud" and "annoying" to Julie, I became overly aware of these character traits in her.  When she wished me a merry Christmas, I saw it as a fake attempt to win my friendship.  My friends, on the other hand, see her more like a lost puppy looking for a group to call her family.  Though my friends and I interact with Julie together, they interpret her actions differently than myself.

In our discussion of Mead, we discussed the relations between meaning, language and thought.  In particular, we discovered that thought modifies meaning.  When my friends hear about Julie, they have thoughts of how friendly she is and become happy.  When I hear about Julie, I quickly become annoyed and only think about how loud she is.  It is important to note; however, that Julie is not inherently any of these qualities, but rather our terms to describe her relative to others.  To my friends, Julie may not be as loud as most of the people they know, but to me, she is one of the loudest people I know.  Through symbolic interaction, my friends and I have come to our own interpretations of Julie.  It does not matter who the real Julie is, because our interpretations each have their own real consequences on how we act towards her.


Bonus Content:  My junior year, we had to write a "Who am I" essay.  I thought this tied in with our opening activity that day extremely well!

Who am I?  I am Smacky Browning.  I am a statistic.  I am more.  To me, I am many.  To you, I am one.  The life I live is short, but the impact I make is long.

I am a seeker of knowledge.  I am a student.  I know statistics.  I am a statistic.

I am Max, but I am not your dog.  I have the most common dog name.  I am not your buddy - that is the third.  That was a statistic. I am a statistic.  Therefore, I am that.

I am now.  I am the present.  I am the poorly wrapped gift held sentimentally by some.  I live for the future.  In the future, my present will be a statistic of the past.  I am a statistic.

I am here.  Turn around.  Ninety-five percent of people just turned around.  You are a statistic.  I too am a statistic.

I am a writer.  I am a friend.  I am a comedian.  I am German.  I am sitting in a chair.  Americans sit in chairs more than Germans.  I am a statistic.

I am orange.  I am a finely tuned mixture of anger and joy.  My favorite color is orange.  I am my favorite color.  Some call me narcissistic.  I am a statistic.

I am easily annoyed.  I am easily annoyed.  I repeat for emphasis.  My computer can copy and paste.  I am a statistic.  I copied that sentence from above.

I am I.  I am the nominative singular pronoun. I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. Am? No, is.  I know the alphabet.  I comes before you, but I do not come before you.  You are a statistic, but I am a statistic.  Therefore, I am you.

I am bored.  I am doing homework.  Homework is boring.  The connection is obvious.  I am obvious.  I am black and white.  No, I am orange.  No, I am a statistic.

I am short.  I am lazy.  No longer will they call me a statistic.  I am a stat.

I am redundant.  I am repetitious.  I am excessive.  I am extra.  I am wordy.  I am reiterating.   I am the 13,312,165th person to search in dictionary.com today.  I am a stat.

I am me.  I am the key.  I am free.  I am rhyming.  I am a bee.  I am black and yellow.  I am now singing.  That is a popular song. No, I am orange.  I am a stat.

I am a victim.  Procrastination and addiction fight me to the death.  Thank you, Facebook.  You made a stat.  I am a stat.

I am a nerd.  I know math.  I am imaginary.  No, i is imaginary.  Therefore, I am not a statistic.