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Discourse

Discourse

In semantics, discourses are linguistic units composed of several sentences — in other words, conversations, arguments or speeches. The study of discourses, or of language used by members of a speech community, is known as discourse analysis. It looks at both language form and function, and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It is a cross-disciplinary field, originally developing from sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology and social psychology. In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; in other words, it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two distinctly different discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself. The social conception of discourse is often linked with the work of the French social philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and the Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns of Jürgen Habermas. In computational linguistics practice, a discourse may lightly refer to a cohesive piece of text, such as a newspaper article or a book paragraph. Category:Discourse analysis category:semantics category:sociolinguistics category:anthropology

Semantics

In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or "significant meaning," derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. It should not be confused with the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski, a somewhat different discipline. Semantics is often opposed to syntax, in which case the former pertains to what something means while the latter pertains to the formal structure/patterns in which something is expressed (for example written or spoken). Semantics is distinguished from ontology (study of existence) in being about the use of a word more than the nature of the entity referenced by the word. This is reflected in the argument, "That's only semantics," when someone tries to draw conclusions about what is true about the world based on what is true about a word. Several more particular senses of the word can be identified:

In linguistics

Semantics is a subfield of linguistics that is traditionally defined as the study of meaning of (parts of) words, phrases, sentences, and texts. Semantics can be approached from a theoretical as well as an empirical (for example psycholinguistic and neuroscientific) point of view. The decompositional perspective towards meaning holds that the meaning of words can be analyzed by defining meaning atoms or primitives, which establish a language of thought. An area of study is the meaning of compounds, another is the study of relations between different linguistic expressions (homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, paronyms, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, exocentric, and endocentric). Semantics includes the study of thematic roles, argument structure, and its linking to syntax. Semantics deals with sense and reference, truth conditions, and discourse analysis. Pragmatics is often considered a part of semantics, but otherwise is treated as a branch of its own.

In mathematics and computer science

"Semantics" is also used as a term in mathematics and computer science.

In logic

Many of the formal approaches to semantics applied in linguistics, mathematical logic, and computer science originated in techniques for the semantics of logic, most influentially being Alfred Tarski's ideas in model theory and his semantic theory of truth. Also, inferential role semantics has its roots in the work of Gerhard Gentzen on proof theory and proof-theoretic semantics. One of the most popular alternatives to the standard model theoretic semantics is truth-value semantics.

Conversation

For the movie from Francis Ford Coppola, see The Conversation. A conversation is civil communication by two or more people, often on a particular topic. William F. Buckley's Firing Line, the Dick Cavett Show, and many other television programs described as "talk shows" are exercises in conversation. Conversations are the ideal form of communication from at least one point of view, since they allow people with different views of a topic to learn from each other. A speech, on the other hand, is an oral presentation by one person directed at a group. Conversers naturally relate the other speaker's statements to themselves, and insert themselves (or some degree of relation to themselves, ranging from the replier's opinions or points to actual stories about themselves) into their replies. For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions. A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speakers know. For this to happen, conversers must find a topic on which they can relate in some sense.

Conversational Phenomena

Conversers will often find that the conversation suddenly dies when everyone simultaneously runs out of things to say. A remedy for this phenomenon is to have another topic readily at hand. Another oddity about conversations is how broadly the subject can change over the length of the conversation, even in as little as a few minutes. For example, people can start the conversation with something as highly-technical as SQL joins, and end up all the way at discussing the history of English dictionaries. Ho'oponopono is a Hawaiian word for a traditional form of conversation that two or more parties use to settle a particularly egregious dispute. In it the parties to the disagreement agree to stay in a single room with a moderator and negotiate until the argument is settled. Taboos Faux Pas

Types of Conversation

Modes of conversation include small talk, gossip, ribaldry, pillow talk, repartee, negotiation, interview, argument, and fully-fledged debate.

Topics of Conversation

Topics of conversation that are often contentious include religion, politics, and philosophy. Topics that are good for producing fruitful discussion include films, books, television or other arts, current events, projects, hobbies, one's work or school life, one's family, and mutual friends.

Famous Conversations

- Fictional conversations among Greek philosophers such as Socrates were recorded by Plato in the Dialogues of Plato, available [http://graduate.gradsch.uga.edu/archive/Plato1.html here]. It is believed that the early dialogues were largely based on the views of the historical Socrates, whereas the latter dialogues reflected Plato's own views.
- The Yalta Conference
- A 1941 conversation between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg that apparently destroyed their friendship is dramatized in the play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn.
- An interview between Dan Rather and Saddam Hussein on Feb 27th 2003, right before the American invasion of Iraq that year.

Literature on Conversation

Authors who have written extensively on conversation and attempted to analyze its nature include:
- Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death (Conversation is not the book's specific focus, but discourse in general gets good treatment here)
- Deborah Tannen - The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words, Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends, Gender and Discourse, I Only Say This Because I Love You, Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work, That's Not What I Meant!, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,

External links

- [http://www.turningtooneanother.net/howtostart.html Advice] on initiating conversations and links to [http://www.turningtooneanother.net/world.html conversational organizations.]
- [http://add.about.com/cs/addthebasics/a/communication2.htm Article on developing basic communication skills]
- [http://www.conversationcafe.org/ Conversation Cafè], devoted to creating a "culture of conversation." Category:Oral communication

Speech

One might be looking for the academic discipline of communications. ---- Speech can be described as an act of producing voice through the use of the vocal cords or other means, such as sign language, to create linguistic acts in the form of language that communicate information from an initiator to a recipient. In more colloquial terms, speech can be described in several different ways: #A linguistic act designed to convey information.
#Various types of linguistic acts where the audience consists of more than one individual, including public speaking, oration, and quotation.
#The physical act of speaking, primarily through the use of vocal chords to produce voice. See phonology and linguistics for more detailed information on the physical act of speaking. However, speech can also take place inside one's head, known as intrapersonal communication, for example, when one thinks or utters sounds of approval or disapproval. At a deeper level, one could even consider subconscious processes, including dreams where aspects of oneself communicate with each other (see Sigmund Freud), as part of intrapersonal communication, even though most human beings do not seem to have direct access to such communication.

Problems

There are several factors that can affect the quality of speech as such. Among these are: #Diseases and disorders of the lungs or the vocal cords, including paralysis, respiratory infections, and cancers of the lungs and throat.
#Diseases and disorders of the brain, including alogia, aphasias and speech processing disorders, where impaired perception of the message (as opposed to the actual sound) leads to poor speech production.
#Articulatory problems, such as stuttering, lisping, cleft palate, ataxia, or nerve damage leading to problems in articulation. Tourette syndrome and nervous tics can also affect speech.
#Problems in the perception of sound and auditory information can affect speech. In addition to aphasias, anomia and certain types of dyslexia can impede the quality of auditory perception, and therefore, expression. Hearing impairments and deafness can be considered to fall into this category. Thus, it is clear that speech has both expressive and receptive elements. The purpose of speech can be to convey meaning or to increase social bonds between individuals and/or groups (it is often both). For the latter, shallowness is not a problem. The success of a speech act depends on numerous factors, including the presence or absence of a variety of speech disorders, the ability of the speaker to express the intended message, and the ability and willingness of the audience to play the role of recipient. Glossophobia is the fear of public speaking.

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is a number of approaches to analysing language use above the sentence or clause level. The language in question can be written or spoken texts or systems of texts. The term discourse analysis first entered general use as the title of a paper published by Zellig Harris in 1952. Harris' method was more of an expansion of grammatical analysis than what is now commonly thought of as discourse analysis, and this portion of his work is now largely neglected, other than the title itself. Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology, each of which is subject to its own assumptions and methodologies. A system devised to analyze a text is called a text grammar. The following are some of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic discourse analysis:
- Interactional sociolinguistics
- Ethnography of communication
- Pragmatics, particularly speech act theory
- Conversation analysis, which is based on the theories of Harvey Sacks
- Variation analysis
- Discursive psychology, particularly as developed by Jonathan Potter and his student Derek Edwards.
- Critical discourse analysis, which combines discourse analysis with critical theory (particularly that of the Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as well as literary, semiotic and psychoanalytic influences from Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan), to create a politically engaged form of linguistic discourse analysis. Although each approach emphasizes different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction, and are concerned with the social contexts in which discourse is embedded.

References

- Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds) (1999) The Discourse Reader Routledge: London.
- Austin, J. L. (1962) How to do Things with Words, Oxford University Press.

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. It also studies how lects differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, economic status, gender, level of education, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social class or socio-economic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place (dialect), language usage varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies. For example, a sociolinguist might determine through study of social attitudes that Black English Vernacular would not be considered appropriate language use in a business or professional setting; he or she might also study the grammar, phonetics, vocabulary, and other aspects of this sociolect much as a dialectologist would study the same for a regional dialect. The study of language variation is concerned with social constraints determining language in its contextual environment. Code-switching is the term given to the use of different varieties of language in different social situations. William Labov is often regarded as the founder of the study of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latter's focus is on the language's effect on the society.

Sociolinguistic variables

Studies in the field of sociolinguistics typically take a sample population and interview them, assessing the realisation of certain sociolinguistic variables. Labov specifies the ideal sociolinguistic variable to
- be high in frequency,
- have a certain immunity from conscious suppression,
- be an integral part of larger structures, and
- be easily quantified on a linear scale. Phonetic variables tend to meet these criteria and are often used, as are grammatical variables and, more rarely, lexical variables. Examples for phonetic variables are: the frequency of the Glottal stop, the height or backness of a Vowel or the realisation of word-endings. An example for grammatical variables is the frequency of Double negative.

Sociolinguistic differences according to gender

Minimal responses

One of the ways in which the communicative competence of men and women differ is in their use of minimal responses, i.e., paralinguistic features such as ‘mhm’ and ‘yeah’, which is behaviour associated with collaborative language use. Men, on the other hand, generally use them less frequently and where they do, it is usually to show agreement, as Zimmerman and West’s (1977) study of turn-taking in conversation indicates.

Questions

Men and women differ in their use of questions in conversations. For men, a question is usually a genuine request for information whereas with women it can often be a rhetorical means of engaging the other’s conversational contribution or of acquiring attention from others conversationally involved, techniques associated with a collaborative approach to language use (Barnes, 1971). Therefore women use questions more frequently (Todd, 1983).

Turn-taking

As the work of DeFrancisco (1991) shows, female linguistic behaviour characteristically encompasses a desire to take turns in conversation with others, which is opposed to men’s tendency towards centring on their own point or remaining silent when presented with such implicit offers of conversational turn-taking as are provided by hedges such as ‘y’ know’ and ‘isn’t it’. This desire for turn-taking gives rise to complex forms of interaction in relation to the more regimented form of turn-taking commonly exhibited by men (Sacks et al., 1974).

Changing the topic of conversation

According to Dorval (1990), in his study of same-sex friend interaction, males tend to change subject more frequently than females. This difference may well be at the root of the archaic conception that women chatter and talk too much, and may still trigger the same thinking in some males. In this way lowered estimation of women may arise. Incidentally, this androcentric attitude of women as chatterers arguably arose from the idea that any female conversation was too much talking according to the patriarchal, Judeo-Christian consideration of silence as a womanly virtue.

Self-disclosure

Female tendencies toward self-disclosure, i.e., sharing their problems and experiences with others, often to offer sympathy (Tannen, 1991:49), contrasts with male tendencies to non-self disclosure and professing advice when confronted with another’s problems.

Verbal aggression

Men tend to be more verbally aggressive in conversing (Labov, 1972), frequently using threats, profanities, yelling and name-calling. Women, on the whole, deem this to disrupt the flow of conversation and not (Eder’s 1990) as a means of upholding one’s hierarchical status in the conversation. Incidentally, where women swear, it is usually to demonstrate to others what is normal behaviour for them (Eder, 1990).

Listening and attentiveness

It appears that women attach more weight than men to the importance of listening in conversation, with its connotations of power to the listener as confidant(e) of the speaker . This attachment of import by women to listening is inferred by women’s normally lower rate of interruption – i.e., disrupting the flow of conversation with a topic unrelated to the previous one (Fishman, 1980) – and by their largely increased use of minimal responses in relation to men (Zimmerman and West, 1975). Men, however, interrupt far more frequently with non-related topics, especially in the mixed sex setting (Zimmerman and West,1975) and, far from rendering a female speaker's responses minimal, are apt to greet her conversational spotlights with silence, as the work of DeFrancisco (1991) demonstrates. All of this suggests that men see conversation as a means by which to draw attention to themselves, either by interruption or by questionably undermining what the woman has to say by non-paralinguistic response.

Dominance versus subjection

This in turn suggests a dichotomy between a male desire for conversational dominance - noted by Leet-Pellegrini (1980) with reference to male experts speaking more verbosely than their female counterparts – and a female aspiration to group conversational participation. One corollary of this is, according to Coates (1993: 202), that males are afforded more attention in the context of the classroom and that this can lead to their gaining more attention in scientific and technical subjects, which in turn can lead to their achieving better success in those areas, ultimately leading to their having more power in a technocratic society. However, women have, on average, higher verbal intelligence than men (Eysenck, 1966:4).

Politeness

Politeness in speech is described (Brown and Levinson, 1978) in terms of positive and negative face: respectively, the idea of pandering to the other’s desire to be liked and admired and not to suffer imposition. Both forms, according to Brown’s study of the Tzeltal language (1980), are used more frequently by women whether in mixed or single-sex pairs, suggesting for Brown a greater sensitivity in women than have men to the face needs of others. In short, women are to all intents and purposes largely politer than men. However, negative face politeness can be potentially viewed as weak language because of its associated hedges and tag questions, a view propounded by O’Barr and Atkins (1980) in their work on courtroom interaction.

Complimentary language

Compliments are closely linked to politeness in that, as Coates believes (1983), they cater for positive face needs. Yet, because they do not account for negative face needs, they can be consternating for those not wishing to be imposed upon, especially where this is in a mixed-sex setting. Nevertheless, an increased use of compliments by a women in relation to men (Holmes, 1982) could be held by some men to be indicative of her supposed need for assurance, which may be interpreted as a sign of weakness, resulting in a poorer opinion of her.

Collaborative versus competitive

Women tend towards collaborative language, a fact manifest in their relatively high use of minimal responses, questions, hedges, listening and turn-taking to encourage the other to talk; whereas men generally employ competitive styles as suggested by their silent responses and tendency to interrupt, both of which can be considered ways of competing with the other participants for attention and dominance in the conversation.

Private versus public language

Women tend to conversation oriented towards the private life, as their listening and politeness propensities imply by their very nature as tools with which to be sensitive to private feelings and likeability; whereas men can be held to have a more public-oriented conversational technique - as is implied by their advice-giving response tendencies to questions, giving an outward and so more public impression of the man as knowledgeable - and by their verbal aggression propensities to outwardly and so publicly establish an hierarchy within the conversational setting.

Agreement versus dissent

Women tend generally to have an agreement motivation in conversation, suggested by their usual half-implicit agreement to maintain topic continuity in a conversation at a rate higher to that of men. Men, on the other hand, tend more towards challenge in conversational motivations, a fact hinted at by their tendency to challenge the other’s conversation topic with a higher rate of topic change.

Intimate versus detached

Women can be said to tend towards intimacy in conversing, as suggestive in their use of such politeness techniques as hedges, minimal responses and tag questions to cater for such intimate considerations as positive and negative face; whereas men may be held to exhibit independence and, indeed, distance in conversing, a fact implied by their reduced incidence of resorting to self-disclosure.

References

- Barnes, Douglas (1971), Language and Learning in the Classroom, Journal of Curriculum Studies. 3:1
- Brown, Penelope (1980), How and why are women more polite: some evidence from a Mayan community, pp. 111-36 in McConnell-Ginet, S. et al. [eds] Women and Language in Literature and Society. Praeger, New York.
- Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1978), Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena, pp 56-289 in Goody, Esther [ed] Questions and Politeness. Cambridge University Press.
- Coates, Jennifer (1983), Language and Sexism, LAUD Paper No. 173, University of Duisburg.
- Coates, Jennifer (1987), Epistemic modality and spoken discourse, Transactions of the Philological Society, 110-31.
- Coates, Jennifer (1993), Women,Men and language. London: Longman
- DeFrancisco, Victoria (1991), The sound of silence: how men silence women in marital relationships, Discourse and Society 2 (4):413-24.
- Dorval, Bruce (1990), Conversational Organization and its Development, Ablex, Norwood, NJ.
- Eder, Donna (1990), Serious and Playful Disputes: variation in conflict talk among female adolescents, pp. 67-84 in Grimshaw, Allan [ed]Conflict Talk, Cambridge University Press.
- Eysenck, H.J (1966), Check Your Own I.Q. St Ives: Penguin
- Fishman, Pamela(1980), Interactional Shiftwork, Heresies 2:99-101.
- Holmes, Janet (1988), Paying Compliments: a sex-preferential politeness strategy, Journal of Pragmatics 12:445-65
- Labov, William (1972), Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
- Leet-Pellegrini, Helena M. (1980) Conversational dominance as a function of gender and expertise, pp. 97-104 in Giles, Howard, Robinson, W. Peters, and Smith, Philip M [eds] Language: Social Psychological Perspectives. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
- O’Barr and Atkins (1980) ‘Women’s Language’ or ‘powerless language’?, pp. 93-110 in McConnell-Ginet et al. [eds] Women and languages in Literature and Society. New York: Praeger.
- Sacks et al (1974) A simple systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation, Language 50:696-735.
- Tannen, Deborah (1991), You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, London: Virago.
- Todd, Alexandra Dundas (1983), A diagnosis of doctor-patient discourse in the prescription of contraception, pp. 159-87 in Fisher, Sue and Todd, Alexandra D. [eds] The Social Organization of Doctor-Patient Communication, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington D.C.
- Zimmerman, Don and West, Candace (1975) Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation, pp 105-29 in Thorne, Barrie and Henly, Nancy [eds] Language and sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House
- Zimmerman, Don and West, Candace (1977), Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation, pp. 105-29 in thorne, Barrie and Henley, Nancy [eds] Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowly, Massachusetts: Newbury House.

Anthropology

Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, "humane") consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo). It is holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all humans at all times, and with all dimensions of humanity. A primary trait that traditionally distinguished anthropology from other humanistic disciplines is an emphasis on cross-cultural comparisons. This distinction has, however, become increasingly the subject of controversy and debate, with anthropological methods now being commonly applied in single society/group studies. In the United States, anthropology is traditionally divided into four sub-disciplines:
- physical anthropology, which studies primate behavior, human evolution, and population genetics; this field is also sometimes called biological anthropology.
- cultural anthropology, (called social anthropology in the United Kingdom and now often known as socio-cultural anthropology). Areas studied by cultural anthropologists include social networks, diffusion, social behavior, kinship patterns, law, politics, ideology, religion, beliefs, patterns in production and consumption, exchange, socialization, gender, and other expressions of culture, with strong emphasis on the importance of fieldwork, i.e living among the social group being studied for an extended period of time;
- linguistic anthropology, which studies variation in language across time and space, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture; and
- archaeology, which studies the material remains of human societies. Archaeology itself is normally treated as a separate (but related) field in the rest of the world, although closely related to the anthropological field of material culture, which deals with physical objects created or used within a living or past group as mediums of understanding its cultural values. More recently, some anthropology programs began dividing the field into two, one emphasizing the humanities and critical theory, the other emphasizing the natural sciences and empirical observation.

Historical and institutional context

:Main Article: History of anthropology The anthropologist Eric Wolf once characterized anthropology as the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences. Understanding how anthropology developed contributes to understanding how it fits into other academic disciplines. Contemporary anthropologists claim a number of earlier thinkers as their forebearers and the discipline has several sources. However, anthropology can best be understood as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment. It was during this period that Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior. Traditions of jurisprudence, history, philology and sociology developed during this time and informed the development of the social sciences of which anthropology was a part. At the same time, the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers such as Herder and later Wilhelm Dilthey whose work formed the basis for the culture concept which is central to the discipline. These intellectual movements in part grappled with one of the greatest paradoxes of modernity: as the world is becoming smaller and more integrated, people's experience of the world is increasingly atomized and dispersed. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed in the 1840s: :All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. Ironically, this universal interdependence, rather than leading to greater human solidarity, has coincided with increasing racial, ethnic, religious, and class divisions, and new – and to some confusing or disturbing – cultural expressions. These are the conditions of life with which people today must contend, but they have their origins in processes that began in the 16th century and accelerated in the 19th century. Institutionally anthropology emerged from natural history (expounded by authors such as Buffon). This was the study of human beings - typically people living in European colonies. Thus studying the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies was more or less equivalent to studying the flora and fauna of those places. It was for this reason, for instance, that Lewis Henry Morgan could write monographs on both The League of the Iroquois and The American Beaver and His Works. This is also why the material culture of 'civilized' nations such as China have historically been displayed in fine arts museums alongside European art while artifacts from Africa or Native North American cultures were displayed in Natural History Museums with dinosaur bones and nature dioramas. This being said, curatorial practice has changed dramatically in recent years, and it would be wrong to see anthropology as merely an extension of colonial rule and European chauvinism, since its relationship to imperialism was and is complex. Anthropology grew increasingly distinct from natural history and by the end of the nineteenth century the discipline began to crystallize into its modern form - by 1935, for example, it was possible for T.K. Penniman to write a history of the discipline entitled A Hundred Years of Anthropology. At the time, the field was dominated by 'the comparative method'. It was assumed that all societies passed through a single evolutionary process from the most primitive to most advanced. Non-European societies were thus seen as evolutionary 'living fossils' that could be studied in order to understand the European past. Scholars wrote histories of prehistoric migrations which were sometimes valuable but often also fanciful. It was during this time that Europeans first accurately traced Polynesian migrations across the Pacific Ocean for instance - although some of them believed it originated in Egypt. Finally, the concept of race was actively discussed as a way to classify - and rank - human beings based on inherent biological difference. In the twentieth century academic disciplines began to organize around three main domains. The "sciences" seeks to derive natural laws through reproducible and falsifiable experiments. The "humanities" reflected an attempt to study different national traditions, in the form of history and the arts, as an attempt to provide people in emerging nation-states with a sense of coherence. The "social sciences" emerged at this time as an attempt to develop scientific methods to address social phenomena, in an attempt to provide a universal basis for social knowledge. Anthropology does not easily fit into one of these categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains. Drawing on the methods of the natural sciences as well as developing new techniques involving not only structured interviews but unstructured "participant-observation" – and drawing on the new theory of evolution through natural selection, they proposed the scientific study of a new object: "humankind," conceived of as a whole. Crucial to this study is the concept "culture," which anthropologists defined both as a universal capacity and propensity for social learning, thinking, and acting (which they see as a product of human evolution and something that distinguishes Homo sapiens – and perhaps all species of genus Homo – from other species), and as a particular adaptation to local conditions that takes the form of highly variable beliefs and practices. Thus, "culture" not only transcends the opposition between nature and nurture; it transcends and absorbs the peculiarly European distinction between politics, religion, kinship, and the economy as autonomous domains. Anthropology thus transcends the divisions between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities to explore the biological, linguistic, material, and symbolic dimensions of humankind in all forms.

Anthropology in the U.S.

Anthropology in the United States was pioneered by staff of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology, such as John Wesley Powell and Frank Hamilton Cushing. Academic Anthropology was established by Franz Boas, who used his positions at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History to train and develop multiple generations of students. Boasian anthropology was politically active and suspicious of research dictated by the U.S. government or wealthy patrons. It was also rigorously empirical and skeptical of over-generalizations and attempts to establish universal laws. Boas studied immigrant children in order to demonstrate that biological race was not immutable and that human conduct and behavior was the result of nurture rather than nature. Drawing on his German roots, he argued that the world was full of distinct 'cultures' rather than societies whose evolution could be measured by how much or how little 'civilization' they had. Boas felt that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations like those made in the natural sciences were not possible. In doing so Boas fought discrimination against immigrants, African Americans, and Native North Americans. Many American anthropologists adopted Boas' agenda for social reform, and theories of race continue to be popular targets for anthropologists today. Boas's first generation of students included Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, and Edward Sapir. All of these scholars produced richly detailed studies which were first to describe Native North America. In doing so they provided a wealth of details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Their focus on Native American languages also helped establish linguistics as a truly general science and free it from its historical focus on Indo-European languages. The publication of Alfred Kroeber's textbook Anthropology marked a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of amassing material the urge to generalize grew. This was most obvious in the 'Culture and Personality' studies carried out by younger Boasians such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, these authors sought to understand the way that individual personalities were shaped by the wider cultural and social forces in which they grew up. While such works as Coming of Age in Samoa and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword remain popular with the American public, Mead and Benedict never had the impact on the discipline of anthropology that some expected. Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department, but she was sidelined by Ralph Linton and Mead was limited to her offices at the AMNH.

Anthropology in Britain

Whereas Boas picked his opponents to pieces through attention to detail, in Britain modern anthropology was formed by rejecting historical reconstruction in the name of a science of society that focused on analyzing how societies held together in the present. The two most important names in this tradition were Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski, both of whom released seminal works in 1922. Radcliffe-Brown's initial fieldwork in the Andaman Islands was carried out in the old style, but after reading Émile Durkheim he published an account of his research (entitled simply The Andaman Islanders) which drew heavily on the French sociologist. Over time he developed an approach known as structural-functionalism, which focused on how institutions in societies worked to balance out or create an equilibrium in the social system to keep it functioning harmoniously. Malinowski, on the other hand, advocated an unhyphenated 'functionalism' which examined how society functioned to meet individual needs. Malinowski is best known not for his theory, however, but for his detailed ethnography and advances in methodology. His classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific advocated getting 'the native's point of view' and an approach to field work that became standard in the field. Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown's success stem from the fact that they, like Boas, actively trained students and aggressively built up institutions which furthered their programmatic ambitions. This was particularly the case with Radcliffe-Brown, who spread his agenda for 'Social Anthropology' by teaching at universities across the Commonwealth. From the late 1930s until the post-war period a string of monographs and edited volumes appeared which cemented the paradigm of British Social Anthropology. Famous ethnographies include The Nuer by Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard and The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi by Meyer Fortes, while well known edited volumes include African Systems of Kinship and Marriage and African Political Systems.

Anthropology in France

Anthropology in France has a less clear genealogy than the British and American traditions. Most commentators consider Marcel Mauss to be the founder of the French anthropological tradition. Mauss was a member of Durkheim's Annee Sociologique group, and while Durkheim and others examined the state of modern societies, Mauss and his collaborators (such as Henri Hubert and Robert Hertz) drew on ethnography and philology to analyze societies which were not as 'differentiated' as European nation states. In particular, Mauss's Essay on the Gift was to prove of enduring relevance in anthropological studies of exchange and reciprocity. Throughout the interwar years, French interest in anthropology often dovetailed with wider cultural movements such as surrealism and primitivism which drew on ethnography for inspiration. Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris are examples of people who combined anthropology with the French avant-garde. During this time most of what is known as ethnologie was restricted to museums, and anthropology had a close relationship with studies of folklore. Above all, however, it was Claude Lévi-Strauss who helped institutionalize anthropology in France. In addition to the enormous influence his structuralism exerted across multiple disciplines, Lévi-Strauss established ties with American and British anthropologists. At the same time he established centers and laboratories within France to provide an institutional context within anthropology while training influential students such as Maurice Godelier and Francoise Heritier who would prove influential in the world of French anthropology. Much of the distinct character of France's anthropology today is a result of the fact that most anthropology is carried out in nationally-funded research laboratories rather than academic departments in universities.

Anthropology after World War Two

Before WWII British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct traditions. It was after the war that the two would blend to create a 'sociocultural' anthropology. In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended increasingly to model itself after the natural sciences. Some, such as Lloyd Fallers and Clifford Geertz, focused on processes of modernization by which newly independent states could develop. Others, such as Julian Steward and Leslie White focused on how societies evolve and fit their ecological niche - an approach popularized by Marvin Harris. Economic anthropology as influenced by Karl Polanyi and practiced by Marshall Sahlins and George Dalton focused on how traditional economics ignored cultural and social factors. In England, British Social Anthropology's paradigm began to fragment as Max Gluckman and Peter Worsley experimented with Marxism and authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach incorporated Lévi-Strauss's structuralism into their work. Structuralism also influenced a number of development in 1960s and 1970s, including cognitive anthropology and componential analysis. Authors such as David Schneider, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins developed a more fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of meaning or signification, which proved very popular within and beyond the discipline. In keeping with the times, much of anthropology became politicized through the Algerian War of Independence and opposition to the Vietnam War; Marxism became a more and more popular theoretical approach in the discipline. By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as Reinventing Anthropology worried about anthropology's relevance. In the 1980s issues of power, such as those examined in Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History - were central to the discipline. Books like Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter pondered anthropology's ties to colonial inequality, while the immense popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault moved issues of power and hegemony into the spotlight. Gender and sexuality became a popular topic, as did the relationship between history and anthropology, influenced by Marshall Sahlins (again) who drew on Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel to examine the relationship between social structure and individual agency. In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as George Marcus and James Clifford pondered ethnographic authority, particularly how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. This was part of a more general trend of postmodernism that was popular contemporaneously. Currently anthropologists have begun to pay attention to globalization, medicine and biotechnology, indigenous rights, and the anthropology of Europe.

Politics of anthropology

Anthropology's traditional involvement with nonwestern cultures has involved it in politics in many different ways. Some political problems arise simply because anthropologists usually have more power than the people they study. Some have argued that the discipline is a form of colonialist theft in which the anthropologist gains power at the expense of subjects. The anthropologist, they argue, can gain yet more power by exploiting knowledge and artifacts of the people she or he studies while the people she or he studies gain nothing, or even lose, in exchange. An example of this exploitative relationship can been seen in the collaboration in Africa prior to World War II of British anthropologists and colonial forces. More recently, there have been newfound concerns about bioprospecting, along with struggles for self-representation for native peoples and the repatriation of indigenous remains and material culture. Other political controversies come from American anthropology's emphasis on cultural relativism and its long-standing antipathy to the concept of race. As mentioned above, Boas was a well-known social reformer whose activism and anthropological teaching went hand in hand. The development of sociobiology in the late 1960s was opposed by cultural anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins, who argued that these positions were reductive. While authors such John Randal Baker continued to develop the biological concept of race into the 1970s, the rise of genetics has proven to be central to developments on this front. As genetics continues to advance as a science, biological anthropologists such as Jonathan Marks have continued to refine their opposition to folk notions of race while addressing recent developments in biology. Finally, anthropology has a history of entanglement with government intelligence agencies and anti-war politics. Boas publicly objected to US participation World War I and the collaboration of some anthropologists with US intelligence. In contrast, many of Boas' anthropologist contemporaries were active in the war effort in some form, including dozens who served in the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information. In the 1950s, the American Anthropological Association provided the CIA information on the area specialities of its members, and a number of anthropologists participated in the U.S. government's Operation Camelot during the war in Vietnam. At the same time, many other anthropologists were active in the antiwar movement and passed resolutions in the American Anthropological Association (AAA) condemning anthropological involvement in covert operations. Anthropologists were also vocal in their opposition to the war in Iraq although their was no consensus amongst all practitioners of the discipline. Professional anthropological bodies often object to the use of anthropology for the benefit of the state. Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe anthropologists from giving secret briefings. The British Association for Social Anthropology has called these scholarships ethically dangerous and divise For example, the British Association for Social Anthropology has condemned the CIA's Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, which anonymously funds anthropology students at US universities in preparation for those students to spy for the United States government. The AAA's current 'Statement of Professional Responsibility' clearly states that "in relation with their own government and with host governments... no secret research, no secret reports or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given." Anthropology is the study of human diversity--diversity of body and behavior, in the past and present. Anthropology consists of four subfields or subdisciplines: Physical anthropology--studies the diversity of the human body in the past and present. It includes how we acquired the structure of our body over time, that is human evolution, as well as differences and relationships between human populations today and their adaptations to their local environments. It also sometimes includes the evolution and diversity of our nearest relatives, the primates (apes and monkeys). Cultural anthropology--studies the diversity of human behavior in the present. This is what most anthropologists do and what most of the public sees when they look at "National Geographic" magazine or the "Discovery" channel on TV. Cultural anthropologists travel to foreign societies (although it is possible to do anthropology on your own society!), live among the people there, and try as much as they can to understand how those people live. Archaeology--studies the diversity of human behavior in the past. Since it studies how people lived in the past, these people are not available for us to visit and talk to...or at least, not people who are currently living in the same way that their ancestors did in the past. Therefore, archaeologists must depend on the artifacts and features that the people produced in the past and attempt to reconstruct their vanished way of life from those remnants of their culture. Linguistic anthropology--studies the diversity of human language in the past and present. While language is naturally a part of culture, it is such a huge topic that anthropologists have separated it into its own area of study. Linguistic anthropologists are concerned about the development of languages, perhaps even back to the first forms of language, and how language changes over time. They are also interested in how different contemporary languages differ today, how they are related, and how we can learn about things like migration and diffusion from that data. They also ask how language is related to and reflects on other aspects of culture. Other sciences study humans too, of course. History, economics, psychology, sociology, even biology and chemistry can study humans. How is anthropology different? The answer is the anthropological perspective, that is, the way that anthropology approaches the subject and thinks about or studies humans and their behavior. The anthropological perspective has three components: (1) cross-cultural or comparative--anthropology investigates humans in every form that they take. We are interested to see the entire spectrum of human bodies and behaviors, trying to learn the range of humanity--all the ways that we can be human. By seeing humans in their every manifestation, and comparing those manifestations to each other, we can ask what is possible for humans and what is necessary for humans. (2) holistic--anthropology tries to relate every part of culture to every other part. We understand that the various parts of culture are connected to each other and that certain combinations tend to occur or not to occur (for example, there are no hunting and gathering cultures that traditionally lived in cities...that's just impossible!). We are also interested in how a people's cultures is connected to their environment; again, without high technology, you are not going to see farming or cities in the middle of the desert or the arctic. (3) relativistic--this is the most profound yet controversial part of the anthropological perspective. Relativism means that the rules or norms or values of a culture are relative to that specific culture. In other words, say, monogamy may be normal or preferred in one culture, but polygamy may be normal or preferred in another. The point is that different cultures believe different things or value different things or even mean different things with perhaps identical-looking behaviors or objects. In one culture, waving your hand might be a greeting, and in another culture it might be an insult. When you go to another culture, or even just interact with another culture (for example, when you are doing international business), you cannot assume that other people understand things the same way you do. In fact, you should assume that they don't! And you certainly should not judge or evaluate them from your own culture's perspective--if you were in a headhunter society, you might think they were horrible people for keeping heads in their house, but if they came to visit you, they might think you were a horrible person for not having heads in your house! The point is that, if we want to understand other people properly, we must see what their behaviors or words or concepts mean to them, not what they would mean to us. Meaning is relative to the culture that creates that meaning. This is not to say that all things are true or even that all things are good. Some things are true (like the world being round) no matter what people think; those are facts. And "good" is a value judgment, so it has no place in anthropology. What we are saying in relativism is that all value judgments are made from cultural perspective, and if you were to take a different cultural perspective, you would understand or judge the exact same phenomenon in the exact opposite way! How does anthropology study culture? One other way that anthropology is unique among the sciences that study humans is by its emphasis on "fieldwork'" You cannot get to know another culture just by reading about it or watching movies about it. At best, you could learn what other people have already discovered, but you could not learn anything new. So anthropology requires actually going to that society and living with and living like that society as much as possible. This is called participant observation. This depends crucially on making friends with people in the society, who will teach you and include you in their activities--and informant. Then, as much as possible, you will try to eat their food, speak their language, and live their lives, often actually residing with a family in that society. It is not easy work, and it is not always fun, but there is no better way to learn.

Anthropological fields and subfields

- Biological anthropology (also Physical anthropology)
- Forensic anthropology
- Paleoethnobotany
- Cultural anthropology (also Social anthropology)
- Applied anthropology
- Cross-Cultural Studies
- Cyber anthropology
- Development anthropology
- Environmental anthropology
- Economic anthropology
- Ecological anthropology
- Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Gender
- Human behavioral ecology
- Medical anthropology
- Psychological anthropology
- Political anthropology
- Anthropology of religion
- Public anthropology
- Urban anthropology
- Visual anthropology
- Linguistic anthropology
- Synchronic linguistics (or Descriptive linguistics)
- Diachronic linguistics (or Historical linguistics)
- Ethnolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Archaeology

External links

- [http://www.aaanet.org/ The American Anthropological Association Homepage] - the webpage of the largest professional organization of anthropologists in the world.
- [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/09dbb3346fc1c2a4.html Race] - a book by John Randal Baker discussing the origins of racial classification and oppositions to the concept.
- [http://www.antropologi.info Anthropology.Info]
- [http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20001120&c=2&s=price Anthropologists as Spies] - an article by David Price examining the relationship between American Anthropology and US intelligence services.
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4603271.stm Pat Roberts Intelligence Program] - a BBC article on the program
- [http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology Social and Cultural Anthropology in the News] - (nearly) daily updated blog
- [http://www.anthrobase.com Anthrobase.com] - Collection of anthropological texts
- [http://www.cybercultura.it Cybercultura] - Collection of web resources about anthropology of cyberspace
- [http://www.anthropology.net Anthropology.net] - A community orientated anthropology web portal with user run blogs, forums, tags, and a wiki.

Social psychology

Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. As the mind is the axis around which social behavior pivots, social psychologists tend to study the relationship between mind(s) and social behaviors. In early-modern social science theory, John Stuart Mill, Comte, and others, laid the foundation for social psychology by asserting that human social cognition and behavior could and should be studied scientifically like any other natural science. On the one hand, Social psychology can be said to try to bridge the gap between sociology and psychology. It can be said to be co-disciplinary with sociology and psychology, providing overlapping theories and research methods in order to form a clearer and more robust picture of social life. However, social psychologists have different perspectives on what ought to be emphasized in the field, which leads to a schizm in the discipline between sociological social psychology and psychological social psychology.

Subfields

Social psychological work can be approached with the interests and the emphases of both psychology and sociology in mind. As a result, the discipline can be split in three general subfields, which concentrate on the relative importance of some subjects over others.
- As sociological social psychology, which looks at the social behavior of humans in terms of associations and relationships that they have. This type leans toward sociology. One offshoot of this perspective is the Personality and Social Structure Perspective, which emphasizes the links between individual personality and identity, and how it relates to social structures.
- As psychological social psychology, which looks at social behavior of humans in terms of the mental states of the individuals. Psychological Social Psychology is very similar to personality psychology because personality psychology looks at how the personality in people is developed, and how our attitudes and values are influenced and affected.
- As symbolic interactionism, one of the major perspectives of sociology, which looks at social behavior in terms of the subjective meanings that give rise to human actions.

SP's three angles of research

psychology Social psychology attempts to understand the relationship between minds, groups, and behaviors in three general ways. First, it tries to see how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other(s) (Allport 3). This includes social perception, social interaction, and the many kinds of social influence (like trust, power, and persuasion). Gaining insight into the social psychology of persons involves looking at the influences that individuals have on the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of other individuals, as well as the influence that groups have on individuals. This aspect of social psychology asks questions like:

- How do small group dynamics impact cognition and emotional states?
- How do social groups control or contribute to behavior, emotion, or attitudes of the individual members?
- How does the group impact the individual?
- How does the individual operate within the social group?

Second, it tries to understand the influence that individual perceptions and behaviors have upon the behavior of groups. This includes looking at things like group productivity in the workplace and group decision making. It looks at questions like:

- How does persuasion work to change group behavior, emotion or attitudes?
- What are the reasons behind conformity, diversity, and deviance?

Third, and finally, social psychology tries to understand groups themselves as behavioral entities, and the relationships and influences that one group has upon another group (Michener 5). It asks questions like:

- What makes some groups hostile to one another, and others neutral or civil?
- Do groups behave in a different way than an individual outside the group?

In European textbooks there is also fourth level called the "ideological" level. It studies the societal forces that influence the human psyche.

The concerns of social psychology

Some of the basic topics of interest in social psychology are:
- Socialization (investigates the learning of standards, rules, attitudes, roles, values, and beliefs; and the agents, processes, and outcomes of learning) and Sociobiology (looks at the native faculties of human systems, including genetics, and their effect upon temperament, attitudes, learning skills, and so on)
- Gender roles - the effects of role schemas on the perceived makeup of gender and the sexes
- Personal development and life course - the general facets of life in various societies, including personal careers, identities, biological development, and shifts in roles
- Intelligence
- Communication - delves into the learning and processing of verbal and non-verbal language, and the effects of social structures and societies on the use of both
- Social influence - looks at the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful persuasion, as well as compliance, obedience, and resistance to authority
- Impression management and Dramaturgy - investigates the use of self-presentation, along with tactical impression management, deception, and failed identities
- Sociolinguistics and sociology of language - looks at how societies affect language use, and vice-versa (respectively)
- Semantics - analyses the topic of meaning in general
- Pragmatics - analyzes the rules of usage, i.e. in conversation
- Social perception and social cognition - looks specifically at the types of schemas that people have; the ways they develop impressions of one another; and the ways that they attribute the causes of social behavior
- Self and Identity - the schemas that individuals have about themselves and about groups; the impacts that those ideas have on behaviors; the different kinds of identities that people tend to have.
- Attitudes - delves into the nature, types, and functions of attitudes, and their effects on behavior
- Attribution - the ways that people attribute causes and responsibilities to persons or situations
- Social emotion theories (as opposed to physiological-psychological emotion theories)
- Moral development - the development of frames of reference to make moral judgements (or to evaluate what is moral in other ways) in relation to others

Empirical methods

Social psychology involves the empirical study of social behavior and psychological processes associated with social cognition, social behavior, and groups. It makes use of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. European social psychology tends to be more interested in qualitative methods than is the case in the U.S. Quantitative methods include surveys, controlled experiments, and mathematical modelling. Qualitative methods include naturalistic observation / field research, participant observation, content analysis, discourse analysis, ethnomethodology and etogenia. There is also meta-analysis, which can be either qualitative or quantitative. Many researchers emphasize the importance of a multimethodological approach to social research, drawing from both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Relation to other fields

Social psychology has close ties with the other social sciences, especially sociology and psychology. It also has very strong ties to the field of social philosophy.
- Sociology is the study of group behavior and human societies, with emphasis on the structures of societies and the processes of social influence.
- Psychology is the study of the underlying psychological processes that make all behaviors and experiences possible. Some examples of the things it seeks to explain are: the attribution of mental states to others, the notion of a unitary 'self', sight and perception, personality and identity, warfare and violence, being hungry, waking up, love, etc.
- Social philosophy is the study of theoretical questions about the experience and behavior of persons. It involves questions related to the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and many other fields.

Social psychological theories

Some of the theories and topics within social psychology can fit, roughly, within the headings of psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology.

Psychological social psychology

- Personality psychology and social identity
- implicit personality theory
- the looking-glass self - the idea the actor has of their selves, as seen through the judgments of others (impacts self-esteem and the self-concept)
- the ideal self - the person that an actor aspires to be (sometimes influenced by role models)
- Helping - the effects that norms, motives, situations, and psychology of actors have on helping and altruism
- Arousal/cost reward model - an explanation of helping behavior that claims a decision to aid is based on a weighing of the costs and rewards involved, both for oneself and others
- Empathy-altruism model - explains helping behavior through the emotions of distress and empathy
- Interpersonal attraction and relationships - investigates the way that norms, propinquity, familiarity, availability, sameness, attractiveness, trust, and dependence have on friendly relationships.
- The matching hypothesis
- Aggression - the reasons and motives behind acts of hostility initiated by one person on another
- The frustration-aggression hypothesis - a highly controversial hypothesis that states that all aggression stems from frustration and vice-versa
- Power - the ability to cause a person to behave or think in a way despite resistance
- Authority and the authoritarian personality
- Social Dominance Orientation and the related concept of Right Wing Authoritarianism
- Dependency (sociology) - perceived or actual social dependency of person(s) upon other(s)
- Trust (sociology) - a belief in the competence and/or benevolence of another actor. In social cognition, it is important to understand how trust impacts how actors behave and think based on the behaviors and words of others.
- Persuasion - to change one's thoughts or behaviors based on the charismatic and/or reasoned input of others
- The elaboration likelihood model
- Indifference - apathy, especially to the suffering of oneself and others, or to norms
- Anomie, Alienation, Fatalism, and Depression
- Social Neuroscience, Social Cognitive Neuroscience - The study of how the brain processes, understands, and is affected by the social envrionment

Sociological social psychology

- Group cohesion and conformity - looks at the use of roles, an understanding of group structure, and the expectations of all actors involved.
- Hegemony is a related issue
- Consensus, Group structure, work performance, and decision making - looks at the effects of leadership styles, group size, group goals, communicative interaction, reward distributions, and decision making on the stability or polarization of groups
- Expectation states theory - proposes that status characteristics cause group members to form expectations over the expected results of a group task
- Collective behavior, Social movements, and aggregate behavior - the causes, meanings, functions, types, and structures of societies
- Bystander effect
- Drive Theory - looks at the effect of a passive audience on performance of a task
- Herd behavior as an unstructured collective behavior
- Intergroup behavior
- Social identity theory of intergroup behavior
- Social structure, population density and personality - the co-influence of health, alienation, status, and values on one's position in various group structures
- Dissent, Deviance and reactions to deviance - the role of habitual mindsets and social functions on the existence of norms, as well as the impact of labeling and social controls on deviance
- Anomie theory - considers some deviance to be a result of persons trying to achieve a cultural goal but lacking the appropriate resources or means
- Strain theory
- Differential association theory - understands deviance to occur when the definitions and meanings that support deviant acts are learned
- Control theory (sociology) - explains deviant behavior as influenced by ties to other persons
- J-curve theory - predicts social revolutionary change to occur when an intolerable gap develops between people's expected satisfaction of needs and their actual satisfaction of needs
- Labeling theory - believes that the reaction that people have to rule violations can have a compelling effect on deviants
- Routine activities perspective - considers how deviance occurs out of the routines of everyday life
- Intergroup conflict - the reasons and motives behind hostility between groups
- Realistic group conflict theory - sees group conflict as a conflict of goals
- Intergroup contact hypothesis - stresses the notion that group conflict could be defused if both groups had more contact with one another

Major perspectives in social psychology

- Reinforcement theory - understands social actions to follow largely out of direct rewards and punishments, called conditioning. In radical form, it presumes that all social cognition starts out blank and is created by conditioning.
- Cognitive Theory - places the thoughts, choices, and mental events at the core of human social action, emphasizing in particular the impact of schemas on personal behavior and worldviews. It looks especially at an information processing view of the mind, asserting that the mind is composed of many functional input/output sytems and relationships that can be fruitfully understood to underlie all of our more 'emergent' experiences and social phenomena.
- Game theory
- Discursive psychology - also described as the second cognitive revolution. Its main idea states that there is no "cognite level" as such, and that discursive phenomena like cognition should be studied only by observable methods like brain scanning and a careful analysis of everyday use of language.
- Role theory - considers most social action in everyday life to be the fulfillment of a certain kind of schema called roles.
- Social exchange theory - emphasizes the idea that, in relatively free societies, social action is the result of personal choice between optimal benefits and costs. See also rational choice theory.
- Social learning theory - in contrast to reinforcement theory, social learning theory attempts to explain all of human behavior by observation and mimicry.
- Symbolic interactionism - a version of cognitive theory that posits that mental events cannot be understood except in the context of social interaction.
- Psychosocial theory - explores and emphasizes the role of unconscious mental events on human social thought and behavior. Its psychological foundation is psychodynamic theory.
- Social representation theory - an attempt to understand how people represent ideas of the world and themselves in similar ways.
- Evolutionary theory - attempts to explain the biology and physiology of persons, as well as their effects on social action, in the context of gene transmission across generations. In evolutionary psychology, it may take the cognitive perspective and form hypotheses about function and design by acknowleding the evolutionary causal process that built these cognitive mechanisms.
- Sociobiology - attempts to explain all of the theories mentioned in terms of biology and physiology.

Models of social behavior

Hedonistic theory of action

Finding its roots explicitly from the philosophy of Epicurus, followed by philosophers like John Locke and Ludwig von Mises (among many others). The hedonistic theory of action (or psychological hedonism) states that human action occurs when:
- The actor is compelled to increase their pleasure by achieving a goal, or
- The actor is compelled to relieve the burden of uneasiness by achieving a goal.

: Psychological hedonism has a fundamental place in most theories of action, most notably behaviorism, praxeology, and psychosocial theory.

: Psychological hedonism helps to explain the motivations behind all social action.

Emotion theories

Philosophical approaches to the emotions have been around for a long time, written with explanatory depth in such writers as Thomas Hobbes and Aristotle. Social psychological approaches use these perspectives as launching points from which further theories might proceed. There are many ways in social psychology that have been used to study emotions. There is the social constructionist approach of James Averill and Rom Harre and the realist approach of Paul Ekman and his study of facial expressions. In cognitive emotion theories there are especially the contesting works of Lazarus and Zajonc. The main debate in the cognitive school has been about the sequence of events. Does cognition trigger emotion or does emotion trigger cognition? Social constructionist emotion research uses cultural evidence and review of historical documents. For instance, it's hard to find a western equivalent for Japanese emotion of amae. Another example often used is the emotion of acide, which has disappeared from european discourse in the 15th century. Lately Antonio Damasio has revived Willam James' emotion theory as an updated version. The original theory of Willam James was that we first experience physical feelings in our bodies that we afterward interpret as emotions. If one sees a bear in the woods and decides to make a run for it then one interprets oneself as being scared because one's heart, respiration, and feet are functioning faster.

Psycho-social theory of the self

Erik Erikson conceived of a psychosocial developmental theory as an extension of Freudian psychodynamic developmental theory. The psychosocial model is meant to be used to explain the most important variables in bodily development, and how they might relate to socialization. It includes:
- The erogenous zones on the body which provide stimulation. For example, the oral, anal, and phallic zones. Can also be expanded to non-erogenous zones of the body, including cerebral-cortical, loco-motor, sensory-motor, respiratory, muscular, and kinesthetic
- The psychosexual mode, or the actions associated with each zone. For example, retention and elimination for the anal zone
- The psychosocial modality, or the social analogy that can be associated with each respective mode. For example, "anal-retentiveness" To which, Erikson added:
- The meaning, or preferred external objects associated with each mode and zone With this addition, Erikson made steps towards a developmental theory that was both psychological and sociological.

: Psychosocial theory helps to explain what kinds of goals the social actor may develop.

The "unit act" model of action

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons created a model of human social action which stressed that the most basic interesting event to recognize is goal-directed social action. It was further refined by his student Robert K. Merton. In this model, social actions are made up of and involve:
- The actor or agent performing an action
- The (immediate) goal, or a future state of affairs that is desired
- The situation in which action is located, including both:
- The conditions of action (the things about a situation that the actor cannot influence or change). This includes such things as the normative background (or the relevant norms), and the human ecology of the setting
- The means of action (which the actor has some degree of control over)
- And to this, we can also include:
- the actual consequences of the action
- the motives of the actor
- the end-goal, or the broader state of affairs that the actor is trying to reach by means of the immediate goal

: This model can be used as a basis for the explanations of anomie theory and realistic group conflict theory. It also overlaps significantly with the semantic tool of thematic roles.

Theories of context

1. Objective Factors in Context In attempting to understand the objective factors that are in play when people influence one another, the communication-persuasion paradigm begins with this model.
- The source is the person who is trying to influence another person. What makes a good persuader are how credible, trustworthy, attractive, and competent they are
- The message is what the source is trying to convince the target of. Relevant factors include how far the message departs from the target's ideas, whether or not there is an appeal to emotion, and whether or not there is a balance of perspectives
- The target is the person who the source is trying to convince of something. Important to them are the relevance of message to person, their personal desire for cognition, and amount of distractions present
- The channel is the venu that the message is delivered
- The impact is the reaction from the target. This may include an attitude change, a rejection of the message, a counterargument, a suspense of judgment, and/or an attack on the source Trying to explain the conditions where any particular message will have social influence, Latane, Jackson, and Sedikides emphasized the importance of three characteristics of the sources in their social impact theory.
- Social Strength of the actors involved, for example power and social status
- Immediacy, or the physical / psychological distance between actors
- Number of Sources Present For functionalism, the achievement of goals relative to the normative background is important. To the extent that a) an action is beneficial towards the achievement of a goal, and b) the goal and/or means fit the normative background of some group or society, the act is considered functional in that respect / relative to that goal. Conversely, to the extent that a) the act is an obstacle to achieving a desired goal, and b) the goal fits the normative background of some group or society, the act is considered dysfunctional in that respect. 2. Subjective Factors in Context Symbolic interactionism stresses the importance of the way the actor subjectively perceives persons in the world.
- the generalized other - the actor's notion of the normal expectations of others
- the opinions of significant others - the actor's idea of the expectations of special persons; ie, parents, children, spouse, friends

: Theories of context help to explain the normative and situational backgrounds within a social action.

Social behaviorism

Although this theory carries within it the word behaviorism, it has very little if anything to do with behaviorism per se. Social behaviorism is a theory developed by George Herbert Mead, and it emphasizes the relevant social context of the learning environment. If it needs to be contrasted with something, then Vygotsky's theories resemble Mead's theories more than do Watson's or Skinner's theories.

Behaviorism in this wider sense is simply an approach to the study of the experience of the individual from the point of view of his conduct, particularly, but not exclusively, the conduct as it is observable by others. The behaviorist of the Watsonian type has been prone to carry his principle of conditioning over into the field of language. By a conditioning of reflexes the horse has become associeated with the word "horse." and this in turn releases the set of responses. We use the word, and the response may be that of mounting, buying, selling or trading. We are ready to do all these different things. This statement, however, lacks the recognition that these different processes which the behaviorist says are identified with the word "horse" must be worked into the act itself, or the group of acts, which gather about the horse. They go to make up that object in our experience, and the function of the word is a function which has its place in that organisation; but it is not, however, the whole process. (Mead, 1934)

Social behaviorism is influenced by Darwin's theories, Wilhelm Wundt and the pragmatic philosophy of the Chicago school (James, Dewey, Shibutani, etc.). Yet social behaviorism contrasts with cognitive psychology and Darwinian theories in one important aspect. Social behaviorism doesn't consider mind as something that is pre-existing to interaction. Also of noteworthy is the fact that social behaviorists refuted the behaviorist notion of language far before Chomsky did, though Chomsky is the one who is usually credited for this shift of paradigm.

Contrary to Darwin, however, we find no evidence for the prior existence of consciousness as something which brings about behavior on the part of one organism that is of such a sort as to call forth an adjustive response on the part of another organism, without itself being dependent on such behavior. We are rather forced to conclude that consciousness is an emergent from such behavior; that so far from being a precondition of the social act, the social act is the precondition of it. The mechanism of the social act can be traced out without introducing into it the conception of consciousness as a separable element within that act; hence the social act, in its more elementary stages or forms, is possible without, or apart from, some form of consciousness. (Mead, 1934)

Well-known cases, studies, and related works

Famous experiments in social psychology include:
- the Milgram experiment, which studied how far people would go to avoid dissenting against authority even when the suffering of others was at stake. (At the time a poll of psychiatrists showed a belief that only 1% of the populace would be capable of continuing to cause pain to an extreme point.) Coming soon after World War II, it suggested that people are more susceptible to control by authority than was then assumed in the Western democratic world.
- the Asch conformity experiments from the late 1950s, a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups on the perceptions/cognitions and behaviors of individuals.
- the Stanford prison experiment, where a role-playing exercise between students went out of control.
- The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno - looked at the attitudes, values, and mental habits of what he called the "authoritarian" personality
- The Open and Closed Mind by Milton Rokeach - a followup on the authoritarian personality that clarified cognitive differences
- The Kitty Genovese case - looks at aggregate group behavior in a time of crisis — the bystander effect, showing the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility.
- Amal and Kamal - Indian children who had no human contact.
- Bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura
- Facial expression studies of Paul Ekman
- Emotions of Ifaluk of Micronesia by Cathrine Lutz. Cathrine Lutz made a fundamental field research revealing many problems of traditional emotion research.
- Presentations of everyday self t

Discourse

Semantics

In linguistics

See also

In mathematics and computer science

See also

In logic

See also

Conversation

Conversational Phenomena

Types of Conversation

Topics of Conversation

Famous Conversations

Literature on Conversation

See also

External links

Speech

Problems

See also

Discourse analysis

References

See also

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistic variables

Sociolinguistic differences according to gender

Minimal responses

Questions

Turn-taking

Changing the topic of conversation

Self-disclosure

Verbal aggression

Listening and attentiveness

Dominance versus subjection

Politeness

Complimentary language

Collaborative versus competitive

Private versus public language

Agreement versus dissent

Intimate versus detached

References

Further reading

See also

Anthropology

Historical and institutional context

Anthropology in the U.S.

Anthropology in Britain

Anthropology in France

Anthropology after World War Two

Politics of anthropology

Anthropological fields and subfields

External links

See also

Social psychology

Subfields

SP's three angles of research

The concerns of social psychology

Empirical methods

Relation to other fields

Relevant issues in social philosophy

Relevant issues in psychology

Relevant issues in sociology

Social psychological theories

Psychological social psychology

Sociological social psychology

Major perspectives in social psychology

Models of social behavior

Hedonistic theory of action

Emotion theories

Psycho-social theory of the self

The "unit act" model of action

Theories of context

Social behaviorism

Well-known cases, studies, and related works