The Processes of Social Construction in Talk

Abstract

Sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to the idea that many aspects of human life are socially constructed. However, there has been far less attention to the concrete interactional processes by which this construction occurs. In particular, scholars have neglected how consensual meaning is constructed in verbal interaction. This article outlines nine generic construction tools used in everyday talk, based on a review and synthesis of past work. These tools fall into three general categories: building blocks, linking devices, and finishing devices. The authors argue that scholars must pay greater attention to the interactional nature of social construction, and discuss three interactional processes that are central to the social construction of meaning in talk: challenge, support, and non‐response. The article presents concrete illustrations of these processes using examples from focus group discussions about gender and violence. These micro‐interactional processes often reproduce, sometimes modify, and (more rarely) resist larger institutions and structures, and thus are indispensable to understanding social life.

Ontario Kindergarten Teachers’ Social Media Discussions About Full Day Kindergarten

“…The discussions were read line by line and coded under either anticipated themes (identified by previous research) or emergent themes. This was done by examining how information was presented in the discussions according to the use of key words, phrases, themes, metaphors, and analogies; by keeping alert to the ways in which ideas and patterned ways of thinking were imported from elsewhere; and by being prepared to draw upon a larger meaning through a connection to other discourses (Hollander & Gordon, 2006). Initial codes were applied to later data and additional codes were developed as new themes emerged, and some initial codes were revised.…”

Guys and dolls: a qualitative study of teachers’ views of gendered play in kindergarten

“…Thus, I began by using the relevant academic literature on gender in kindergarten and gender and play to establish themes to organise the data. These themes were continually refined, meaning that the final outcome moved beyond the initial categorisation (Hollander & Gordon, 2006;Pope, Ziebland, & Mays, 2000;Strauss & Corbin, 1998). During the process of my analysis, I moved from a description of the data, which involved organising it to show themes, to interpreting the themes to examine how underlying ideas and factors could be identified as influencing the content (Braun & Clarke, 2006).…”

Allies Within and Without

“…This focus on interaction is largely missing from many social constructionist works, which "denaturalize" large systems like gender or race while obscuring the ways in which social inequalities are maintained and re-produced on meso and microlevels of interaction. 4 In a general sense, social researchers understand that social inequalities are maintained on institutional/systemic levels, interactional levels, and internalized/individual levels. I argue here that it is these latter two domains of social construction that have been the least explored in research on age as a social inequality.…”