I Vocabulary

1. to summarize – суммировать, резюмировать, подводить итог

2. vital – (жизненно) важный, насущный

3. concept – понятие, идея

4. to take for granted – считать доказанным; принимать на веру

5. theological explanation – теологическое (богословское) объяснение

6. contention – спор; раздор, разногласие

7. existence – бытие, существование

8. to exist – существовать

9. discourse – речь, дискурс

10. to presuppose – предполагать

11. cooperation – сотрудничество, взаимодействие

12. meaning – значение; смысл

13. brain – мозг

14. ability – способность

15. internalize – перенимать, усваивать, впитывать

16. conduct – руководство, управление

17. to clarify – прояснить; пролить свет

18. awkward – неуклюжий, неловкий

19. assumption – предположение, допущение

20. to possess – владеть, располагать, обладать

21. generalized other – обобщенное другое

22. consistent manner – постоянная манера

23. oversocialized – чересчур социализирован

24. prior (existence) – прежнее, предшествующее (состояние)

II Comprehension check

1. What was George Herbert Mead? Why are his key concepts important?

2. What was the central question that influenced his research?

3. How can mind find expression in Mead’s opinion?

4. What are the major forms of symbolic communication in Mead’s opinion?

5. When does a gesture become a significant symbol?

6. What did Mead explain with the concept of role and role taking?

7. Why do people act as mirrors for each other?

8. What is a role?

9. Why do we seldom think about roles in play?

10. What does our interaction with others continually inform?

11. Why do we modify our behaviour as we move from role to role?

12. What general rules do we learn to guide our conduct in the presence of other people?

13. What is the “I”?

14. What is the “ME”

15. What people are dominated by the “I”?

16. What people are dominated by the “ME”?

17. What does symbolic interaction approach focus on?

III Translate the sentences from Russian into English

1. Социологические теории личности изучают взаимодействие личности и общества, личности и группы.

2. Теория зеркального «Я» (Г. Кули, Дж. Мид). Сторонники этой теории понимают личность как совокупность отражений реакций других людей.

3. Самосознание развивается в результате социального взаимодействия, т.к. индивид обучается смотреть на себя глазами других людей.

Text 3

Embarrassment

Many symbolic interactionists argue that the separation of mind and body is false. When we are thinking, when we are conscious, when we are self-conscious, this activity of the self occurs in the brain. However complex our brain, it is still an organ of our bodies and is influenced by the way we treat our bodies. Not enough food or sleep, too much alcohol or food, and too much stress influence how we feel and think. Sometimes it is hard to concentrate and be rational. Frequently when we feel bad, we don’t care how we look – we don’t care how others see us. These examples illustrate the influence of the body on mental activity.

Sometimes we judge a task so important that we work late into the night even though we’d rather go to sleep – differed gratification. We will use ideas from symbolic interactionism to explain how our conscious self can influence our body responses. To do this, we will sociologically analyze the experience of embarrassment.

What happens to your body when you are embarrassed? You blush. What is it about embarrassing situations that cause the psychological response of blushing? Embarrassment is a social experience. It only occurs when others are present or when you think they might be present. Things you do in the privacy of you room might suddenly be very embarrassing if you became aware that you were being secretly observed. Thus the first consideration in our analysis is that embarrassment is a social event.

The second element is that something unexpected suddenly happens. Embarrassment results when our public self suddenly realizes that we are being seen in an unexpected and uncomplimentary way. Embarrassment may be socially defined as being caught out of role. When this happens we blush. In such situations we sometimes smile, laugh, or in some other way make light of the embarrassing thing that just happened. It is a way of establishing role distance between the self and the stupid, uncomplimentary, embarrassing event.

When we laugh at ourselves we are saying to others that this was funny or unimportant. It is not what I normally do. We are trying to restore ourselves to a normal situation of self-control. This analysis illustrates how the concept of role can be used to explain even a momentary experience. However, role has become one of the most important concepts in sociology for explaining many aspects of our relationships with others.