Socio-Cultural Perspective - Essay Example

There are many approaches to the study of social psychology depending on the area of focus. For example, the evolutionary perspective emphasizes the importance of genetic influences on social behavior whereas the social learning perspective stresses the importance of unique experiences. Socio-cultural Perspective: Stresses on the importance of social norms and culture. It proposes that children learn behavior, norms and values of the society through problem-solving interactions with peers and adults. Evolutionary Perspective: Argues that social behaviors develop through genetic factors and inheritance. It emphasizes the role of biology and gene transmission across generations to explain current behaviors. Social Learning Perspective: Stresses the importance of unique experiences in family, school, community, etc. According to this viewpoint, we learn behaviors through observing and mimicking the behavior of people around us. Social-Cognitive Perspective: demonstrates an information processing model of social behavior, where we notice, interpret, and judge the behavior of others. New experiences may either be assimilated (using already held beliefs to interpret the event), or accommodated (which involves changing existing beliefs in response to the event.) By understanding the processing of information, we can better understand how patterns of thoughts impact behavior. One of the most important features of the social constructionist perspective is that much attention is given to the influence of the specific dialogues on the possible meanings. For example, to do justice to the self-understanding of the believing community, we cannot avoid the language of revelation. For practical theological discourse about revelation, this means that we have to consider the various dialogues in which different sets of criteria function. We encounter other branches of theology and engage in conversations with the social science and also connect with the church and the society in the process. A second important aspect of a social constructionist perspective is the emphasis on the performative dimension of language. Instead of asking what revelation is, what content is revealed, and how we can evaluate competing claims to revelation, a social constructionist practical theology will delve into what it means when someone invokes the language of revelation. This is not to be confused with relativism. The psychodynamic perspective originated from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and lays emphasis on the unconscious components such as conflicts and instinctual energies. "psychodynamics" is a general term which incorporates all the components but keeps the unconscious as a primary element. The reason why scientifically oriented psychologists dismiss this perspective is its emphasis on the unconscious which can neither be observed nor measured. A language-centered perspective toward the social-rhetorical construction of knowledge can be constructed by juxtaposing Kenneth Burke's philosophy of language with Thomas S. Kuhn's philosophy of science. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions has "had a wider academic influence than any other single book of the last twenty years" (Gutting v). In particular, Kuhn is honored as "father of current social constructionist thought" in a variety of disciplines (Bruffee 779). Therefore, a cross-fertilization of these two important thinkers' viewpoints should be a fruitful endeavor. Recently, J.E. McGuire and Trevor Melia have argued against opinions regarding "rampant rhetoricism" in rhetoric of science scholarship ("Rhetoric"). They argue that while the form and validation processes of science display rhetorical qualities, the "content" of scientific discourse ( which scientific language is about) is ontologically different from that of other forms of discourse, and, hence, in an important sense, science qua science is non-rhetorical ("Some" 97). Those who describe rhetoric as epistemic emphasize that language "embodies and generates knowledge" that is relative to specific "discourse communities" (Berlin 167; cf. Fulkerson). Knoblauch and Brannon put it as- "discourse enacts the world" (60). Since language is a public phenomenon, the "reality" encountered and shared through discourse can be explained by social construction. Therefore, "creating discourse is equivalent to the process of coming to know, whether it happens in physics laboratories or law courts or in writing classrooms" (Knoblauch and Brannon 52). Social constructionism has without doubt proved to be one of the most important and influential perspectives in recent composition theory (Berlin 165-79; Dowst 65-86; Knoblauch and Brannon 51-73). It is arguably the case that most research concerning social constructionism is concerned with its social and pedagogical implications rather than its theoretical articulation and defense. As a consequence certain theoretical questions have remained unanswered such that it is not surprising that social constructionism has been the target of criticism lately (see Petraglia).While it has been noted that "concepts, ideas, theories, the world, reality, and facts are all language constructs generated by knowledge communities," the task of articulating how language makes sense out of our experiences remains largely unfinished business (Bruffee 777). The necessity of such an articulation is evidenced by an important series of essays by Thomas Kent in which he critiques social constructionist's notions of discourse communities ("Very Idea"), discourse production ("Externalism"), and the role of consensus ("Hermeneutical"). Kent has saliently and specifically critiqued accounts of discourse production that rely on notions of discourse communities, conceptual schemes, and language as an activity that organizes and "represents" reality. Kent also pointed out that one of the short-comings of social constructionism is that its proponents have not yet explained "how communication operates as a public phenomenon" ("Externalism" 61). Probably a Burkean-Kuhnian perspective provides the basis for responding to portions of Kent's critique, and human understanding is better understood as a matter of social construction. . All "meaningful" human experiences are formed experience, organized through a continual process of abstraction, bordering, and categorization (Gregg 25-51). A difference in the way a language encodes a domain of experience influences how individuals conceive "reality" in that particular domain. Burke suggests that this process is unavoidable: If language only enables us to address limited facets of "reality" at any given instance, then traditional understanding of "truth" and knowledge is jeopardized. The issue of mental pain occupies a large fraction of current psychoanalytic thinking as it helps investigate the nature and development of character and personality Drawing on the work of Melanie Klein in particular, psychoanalysts have been exploring the ways in which an individual, the family, the community or society at large may be influenced or held in abeyance to the extent that pain is variously modulated, modified or evaded. The concept of language and speech implies a psychodynamic or psychocentric orientation. For instance, modern linguists generally see their work on language in relation to a "cognitive psychology" (Chomsky, 1968; Steinberg and Jakobovits, 1971), while psycholinguists see their work on speech as related to a "psychology of learning and motivation" (Jakobovits and Miron, 1967; Gardner and Lambert, 1972; Staats, 1975). Language teachers are exposed to the psychodynamic orientation through the professional literature (Jakobovits, 1970; Rivers, 1968; Stevick, 1976). The perspective of psychocentric orientation is familiar to the concepts of language and culture. The present day views on communication and cognitive processes are preceded by a history in literary criticism, historical reporting, and biography which are a few important areas of culture where the psychocentric view has prevailed. a detailed outline of the psychodynamic approach to language teaching is summarized in Earl Stevick's influential book Memory, Meaning and Method: Some Psychological Perspectives on Language Learning (Newbury House: Rowley, Mass., 1976, 177 pp., paperback). In his book, Stevick repeatedly refers to "Transactional Engineering in Language Teaching" as a psychodynamic approach. This is a misunderstanding of the approach as purpose here is to point out some of the misconceptions of the psychodynamic approach about the nature of language use in face-to-face interactions. The Humanistic Revolution in psychology has influenced language teaching by spawning several unconventional approaches like Encounter Groups, Teacher-as-Facilitator, and Relevance in Foreign language Learning, Individualized Instruction, and the Silent Language Teacher. Zen Buddhism has conquered a platform for itself in the form of a newly-heard-of method called "The Silent Way" and proceeds on what might be called a "psychodynamic" (as Stevick describes it: e.g. p. ll9ff.), or as "psychiatric" orientation to the student or learner. In 1957, when Skinner's Verbal Behavior and Chomsky's Syntactic Structures were published, American academic psychology was mostly divided into two monolithic blocks: the Freudians or Neo-Freudians and the Experimentalists (which included Behaviorists and Cognitivists). Those days of pre-Humanistic Psychology and pre-Generative Linguistics, language pedagogy centered around the Audio-lingual orientation of the Post War Era . But along came "The Third Force" which was a revolution in American Psychology and an alternative branching off Freud, off Skinner: "Humanistic Psychology", to wit: Maslow, Rogers, Psychosynthesis, Easalon, EST, transpersonal psychology, personal growth, encounter group, bio-feedback, States of Consciousness, Group Facilitation, empathy, peak experience, primal, meditation, Zen, my Guru, the Child-in-You, your personal space, your intimate enemy, your inauthentic games, your inner criteria, your deeper performances, self-actualization, and many others constitute the Third Force arsenal of instruments for 'psychologizing' the people. These are now proposed as a new orientation in language teaching. According to a "Psychodynamic Interpretation of Language Learning" language is "purposeful behavior between people" and language learning is "slowed down when the learner is busy defending himself from someone else" (Principles I and II, p. 120). Also "the teacher must help the student to maintain interpersonal purpose on one or (preferably) more of the levels that we have listed (p.49f.) -- [referring here to Maslow's "hierarchy of needs": physical needs, security needs, belongingness needs, social position needs, and self-actualization needs; (p.50);] this is called "Help the student to stay in contact with the language" (p.121); (2) the teacher must engage in "personal activation" whereby his "whole personality makes an impact" and to "try to supply missing motivations" to his students (p.122). In the last chapter of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B.F. Skinner attempts to grasp the elusive question he formulates as "What is Man": "As a science of behavior adopts the strategy of physics and biology, the autonomous agent to which behavior has traditionally been attributed is replaced by the environment in which the species evolved and in which the behavior of the individual is shaped and maintained." (1971, p.l75). 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