Communication and Socialisation

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Communication and socialisation
Articles
Masculinity in Question
Return of the Lady
Stupid White Men

Exam Questions for Communication and Socialisation

The aspects of communication and socialisation which you will be expected to be able to discuss for this synoptic paper are:

• Communication and social interaction
• Communication and cultural transmission
• Gender, class and ethnicity

What is socialisation?

The learning of culture or the process of transmitting our norms and values
All of the ways in which we are 'inducted' into society/made a 'full' member of our society.

Bernstein called it " the process whereby a child acquires a specific cultural identity...whereby the biological is transformed into a specific cultural being ".

Socialisation is about learning the unwritten rules of social behaviour (appropriate strategies). It's about learning where we 'fit in'. e.g.

Communication is vital to this process because it 'models' power relationships and gives access to power through knowledge. It is problematic because of our three 'friends':

• Gender
• Class
• Ethnicity

For example

• Women are socialised into passivity, desexualised and disempowered (feminists would argue).
• Middle class kids are advantaged socially by the development of 'context-free thinking' through 'elaborated code' (their broader language experience).
• Black people are forced to engage with a society that associates blackness with 'evil', 'unwholesomeness'.

Try this video clips on the National Geographic site about Sexual Identity - one about a woman who has become a man and how she feels about her male body, the second about a third 'gender' in Thailand, men who act as women and are accepted men/women - something halfway between the two. What do these programmes make you think about the nature of femininity and masculinity?

Are these absolute ideas or just norms that we agree on within our culture?

ACTIVITIES

1. How does socialisation affect the individual? Is it a good thing (bonding, becoming part of social norms) or a bad thing? (control, manipulation by others)
   Consider formation of self image, self esteem and identity and how socialisation affects these. Read the articles in the left-hand margin above for ideas.

1. Look at such aspects as clothing, body adornment, language, personal possessions, division of labour (who does what jobs), reflection of norms in mass media
   How do these things (developing self image and identity through clothing etc) affect people differently depending on whether they are female, male, black, white, working class or middle class etc.