The linguistic turn and social Psychology
Date
2001
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Free State
Abstract
This article investigates some of the implications of the linguistic turn in modern philosophy for the development of social psychology. The linguistic turn, according to which language does not primarily mirror reality or our experience but is co-constructive thereof, gave rise to productive developments in social psychology. Wittgenstein’s insight that the meaning of words depends on their use value in specific language games made it possible to see social cognition as an interactive and social achievement, rather than as a selfenclosed mental process merely directed at the social environment. Post-structuralist developments like those of Derrida and Foucault, based on the structuralist linguistics of De Saussure, make the psychological subject, experience, social institutions and knowledge products of more fundamental textual processes. Despite contradictions these approaches underlie the development of what may be called a discursive social psychology: a discipline focusing on the different discursive aspects of social psychological life, which refuses to restrict that life to individual levels of analysis.
Description
CITATION: Painter, D. & Theron, W. 2001. The linguistic turn and social Psychology. Acta Academica, 33(3), doi:10.38140/aa.v33i3.647.
The original publication is available at https://journals.ufs.ac.za
The original publication is available at https://journals.ufs.ac.za
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Citation
Painter, D. & Theron, W. 2001. The linguistic turn and social Psychology. Acta Academica, 33(3), doi:10.38140/aa.v33i3.647.