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Hi,
I'm not really replying to contribute to this current thread, because I
haven't read Saussure and I'm not sure I can understand exactly what is
being discussed here, but I think that it is hitting, at least
indirectly, on something that I am finding a bit perplexing in my
research. Please forgive this tangeant, which is a bit long winded,
but I'm hoping some of you may be able to help me solve this problem:
I am doing my PhD in Children and Adolescent Mental Health, looking at
how children construe their experiences of psychiatric services. I
have not fully decided on the methods I will be using yet, however, I
want to look at both language and meaning. I'm using two separate
theoretical frameworks to approach these issues: 1) Discourse Analysis:
to explore how power relationships are expressed between "service
users" and professionals. 2) PCP: to explore the meanings that
"service users" place on their experiences, which will include the
experiences of communicating with professionals.
Now (Discourse Analysis and power relationships aside), a problem
arises in assuring that I am capable of coming to an understanding of
what the children tell me. I think that PCP, in terms of eliciting
constructs, rep grids, etc are very useful in providing me with the
"meaning" of their experiences,(if they choose to tell me). However, I
think that I (and we) need to make a distinction between "meaning" of
words and what the words actually "refer to" in the real world (as
Frege does). So what I am saying is that understanding language =
grasping meaning AND grasping reference.
Here is an example from previous research that I undertook with
'children in need', which consisted of unstructured interviews:
A large majority of the children I interviewed told me that they become
distressed by interactions with adults (parents, teachers and support
staff) because they are always 'shouting' at them. What 'shouting'
meant to these children varied in different contexts from: "the teacher
shouts because she is frustrated with me" "people shout because they
are angry" "shouting upsets me" "It makes me cry" "I can't get my
homework done because parents are shouting" "if there were no shouting
it would be peace and quiet and I would be okay", etc...
On the surface, this seems quite clear. However, after writing up my
research and writing a report, including several recommendations to
staff regarding the way they interact with children, for the support
service that I was doing the research for, I came to the realisation
that the recommendations regarding "shouting" were irrelevant and will
not change the way the children and staff communicate. Firstly, while
I was interacting with children and staff I did not notice any
shouting. Also, one of the staff members works in the schools and
mentioned not hearing teachers shouting at the children or certainly
not as regularly as was reported by the children. The children could
not have been fabricating this because too many of them mentioned it as
a serious issue for them and most of the children in the study did not
know each other.
. A month later, I was doing some temporary therapeutic group work at
one of the support services where I did part of the research. A scene
arose between a staff member and a child with behaviour and emotional
problems. Once the child began to assault the staff member, I removed
him from the group and had a one-to-one session with him. He indicated
that he became frustrated because the staff member was "shouting" at
him. I witnessed the entire scene and the staff member did not raise
her voice once.
I'm left thinking that despite knowing what meaning children place on
"shouting", I haven't a clue what the word refers to, for them. For
me, it refers to "raising ones voice" and it means, depending on the
context, that the person who is shouting is "angry" or "full of joy".
Although eliciting bi-polar constructs may go some way to grasping
reference, it is not foolproof. For instance, if I had elicited
constructs in this previous research the children may have provided:
"shouting"-------------"quiet"
If I were asked I would say:
"shouting"-------------"whispering"
The first construct does not tell me if shouting refers to raising
one's voice, or 'telling someone off' in a normal voice, or what...(I
still don't know), etc. Common sense does not necessarily work when
you are communicating with someone from a different culture or
sub-culture to yourself because language use may differ between these
groups.
So, my final question is: Does PCP have a solution to determining the
reference of words?
Thank you for reading this long explanation and I look forward to any
suggestion of methods or further reading on the issue.
Brenda.
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From: Esteban Laso[SMTP:eslaso@ibm.net]
Sent: 04 June 1998 18:22
To: pcp
Subject: Re: Social Constructionism
I would say "yes, it is, but not precisely". A language, to Saussure,
is a
system composed of simbols which are meaningful only because a given
group
has chosen to use them; there is no connection between the simbols and
the
objects they stand for. But the spoken language, or parole, can be used
to
communicate because of the system itself, the langue, which is in turn
a
system of differences. No sign has a positive meaning; they mean
because
each one is different from the others. This is somewhat parallel to
Kelly's
notion of a system of dichotomic constructs where the meaning of any
given
pole is defined by his opposite.
So anything that can be a difference is a sign, but only by being part
of a
system of differences. Since the words used by your subject in
expressing a
construct are the material form of his concepts, they are signifiers
-not
necessarily signs. But signifiers, for Saussure, were the mental
acoustic
images of words, not words themselves; so it's a signifier, but not
precisely.
Comments?
Esteban Laso
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