The Communicative Construction of Reality

Hubert Knoblauch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429775338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume advocates a shift from the social constructivism found in the work of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger, to a communicative constructivism that acknowledges communication as an embodied form of action in its own right, according to which social actors, in engaging in communicative action, construct a material social reality that guides, delimits, and enables actions. A study of the importance of understanding the role of communication in an age in which digitization and mediatization have extended the reach of communication to a global level and brought about the emergence of the communication society, The Communicative Construction of Reality shows how communication society does not merely replace modern society and its hierarchical institutions, but complements it in a manner that continually results in conflicts leading to the refiguration of society. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in the sociology of knowledge, communication, and social theory.

III Social theory

Communicative action

The step from social to communicative constructivism follows, on the one hand, the requirements of a theory which poses the question: what constitutes sociality? On the other hand, it is based on the necessity to modify and develop the theory of social construction. Finally, it should be clear by now that this step is also a result of the empirical research that developed in the context of The Social Construction of Reality and The Structures of the Lifeworld. Empirical research also undoubtedly reflects the changing ways of how we can observe interaction, as for example, by audio and video recordings of everyday conduct. While this improvement appears to be of a purely technical nature, it also directs attention to phenomena that, before, had only been treated speculatively by classical social philosophy. Thus, the numerous social-philosophical analyses of the “gaze” used to be based solely on reconstruction of gazing in memory. More recently, we have been able to record gazes and examine them in great detail as an empirical phenomenon.¹ Even if the subjective aspect of gaze still requires reflection, this can now be related to empirical findings. Social theory itself is not empirical, but, unlike social philosophy, it must make reference to empirical observations. One reason for the shift to communicative construction is, therefore, to acknowledge and to incorporate the contribution made by qualitative empirical social research when dealing with basic communication processes. As we shall see, the changing social significance of communication, not only to social research but also to society in general, which we will discuss in the final chapter, is yet another reason for this shift toward communicative action.

1 For example, analyses of the earliest films of human and animal movements in the 19th century, undertaken by Muybridge (2007), have helped to clarify the question of whether horses are galloping on the ground, or, figuratively speaking, “flying”.

The shift from social to communicative construction finds a common reference point in the concept of “communication”. In order to avoid confusion with Luhmann’s (1996) concepts of communication, and in order to acknowledge the role of subjectivity in communication, we propose the concept of communicative action. This concept is also inspired by empirical studies, such as the analysis of natural conversations, which have replaced the reflections of philosophers of language on sentences invented by themselves with the analysis of natural spoken exchanges (Sacks et al. 1978). Instead of analyzing “language” in a detached manner, conversation analysts address the peculiarities of actual conversations, which one must include in what we call “communicative”: prosody, rhythm, and paralinguistic features. The concept of “symbolic interaction” seems to be too simple to catch these processes, since one can hardly distinguish between the symbol and the interaction: is voice quality a feature of the speaker or a symbol? The communicative aspect of language use has emerged even more strongly since interactions have been able to be recorded audio-visually using video devices and analyzed on a routine basis. The communicative aspects are not limited to bodily gestures, but also extend to clothes, tools, and things.

As obvious it is that we are dealing here with communication empirically, so too is it clear that the concept of communication has been hitherto unsatisfactory. The various sociological communication theories have rarely addressed these kinds of empirical phenomena at all and have failed to provide adequate concepts to grasp them.² Although the concept of communication had been placed at the center of sociology by pragmatist approaches since Mead, it has often been reduced to mere interaction. Communication is hardly used as a basic concept anymore, with the exception of Habermas’ (1984) “theory of communicative action” and Luhmann’s communication theory (1984). However, these theories cannot be applied unmodified to the above-mentioned empirical observations of processes of communicative action, nor do they comply with “social constructivism”.

2 Another reason for this concerns the autonomization of communication studies and their growing distance from sociology.

1. Communicative action

The problem of conceptualizing communicative action, which emerged from the empirical communicative turnaround outlined in the previous chapter, was reinforced by the emergence of some new social theories. These new theories increasingly directed attention to new empirical phenomena and used new methods, but in theoretical opposition to social constructivism, they failed to take systematic reference of it, or confused it with constructivism. These theories include “post-phenomenology”, science and technology studies, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis (which only recently turned theoretical), actor network theory, discourse analysis, and recent approaches in practice theory. All these approaches and theories have developed conceptual tools that overlap not only with the great framework of “social construction” but also with the analytical approaches of the empirical works derived from it.

The empirical studies undertaken in the course of the communicative turn have proved to be a fertile ground for theoretical concepts. Thus, the analysis of communicative genres yielded a series of terms, such as “events” or “aggregates”, which formed an initial framework for “communicative constructivism” (Knoblauch 1995).³ Terms adopted from other theories, such as “performance”, “practices”, or “sequences”, proved particularly helpful for the analysis of communicative processes. Yet, as already mentioned, these various concepts lacked theoretical integration. In addition to this gap, these empirical approaches focused on phenomena of limited research range, such as “conversation”, “multimodality”, and “configuration”. Frequently, the link between these concepts remains highly eclectic or sometimes lacks integration, so that corresponding theories are not sound. This is often complemented by the use of metaphors, so that some of these theories can no longer be described as analytical in a specific sense, because they lack (occasionally deliberately) the coherence and consistency required for scientific theories (see, for example, Lury & Wakeford 2012).⁴ In addition, the goal of developing a theory inductively from empirical data has proved to be quite deceptive. The grounding of theory in empirical research leaves open the question of whether and how fundamental concepts of theory can be generated methodically on the basis of empirical research, the methodology of which, again, requires descriptive terms.⁵ Because a systematic justification of these concepts is not yet on the horizon, something presupposed for empirical justification, the summarizing and synoptic view on those empirical studies that have contributed to the communicative turn appears justifiable. This is what we are attempting to do here.

3 The book Die kommunikative Konstruktion kultureller Kontexte (Knoblauch 1995; 2001) is an attempt to summarize these concepts.

4 This applies to the Heideggerian refusal to undertake scientific analysis, as well as to subsequent metaphorical approaches, such as those of Sloterdijk (2004). In media science, the notion of “vapor theories” has been suggested, which build on vague metaphors.

5 Thus, in “grounded theory”, social-theoretical concepts are inscribed into the coding schemes for empirical analysis (Glaser & Strauss 1967). This also seems to apply to Clarke’s (2005) “situational analysis”, even if this approach includes terms from the analysis of postmodern societies.

The theoretical problems mentioned above are exacerbated because the various theoretical approaches are rarely compared in an explicit and systematical way, as far as the differences between the concepts and their respective order are concerned. Habermas’ theory of communicative action is certainly an exception in this respect, as it is built on the basis of extensive discussions about a broad range of other theories.⁶

6 As the reception of his book shows, such an approach is easily criticized for reconciling approaches which are hardly compatible in a way that does not do justice to any of them. Habermas’ critics, therefore, argue that his rendering of these theories is partly incorrect and, therefore, the conclusions drawn, misguided.

No extensive systematic comparison of theories is provided here in the way that Parsons (1937) did in The Structure of Social Action. Rather, in this first social-theoretical chapter we will pursue a different path: starting from the theoretical framework of The Social Construction of Reality, the basic concepts of our social theory are outlined here in such a way as to consider the concepts and theorems of other theories, so to speak, on a side track. These discussions serve to specify and determine what we mean by sociality. As a starting point and as a reference, we take the theory of The Social Construction of Reality and will modify and rebuilt it. On the one hand, these modifications follow the requirements arising from empirical research of communication processes inspired by social constructivism, as well as by methodologically related approaches. On the other hand, the modifications follow the requirements emerging from the theoretical criticism of social constructivism, as discussed above. Taken together, both lead to a reformulation of social theory.

The social theory proposed here revolves around the concept of communicative action. This notion has been used by Schutz, Luckmann, and Habermas, but in the form proposed here it takes on a new meaning, which needs to be clarified. Following on, the various aspects constituting communicative action will be explained. Above all, the transition from the subject as agent of social action, understood in essentialist terms, to a relational notion of communicative action based on reciprocity will be elaborated. Subjectivity, however, does not cease to exist, but is recognized formally, with respect to its positionality and affectivity. Its material core is the lived body, which acts performatively so as to produce objectivations that relate actors and stabilize their reality. Communicative action is, in essence, a triad of subjects and objectivations, which, in turn, can be converted into signs. Thus, the life-world is also communicative.

(a) One-sided and communicative action

One of the starting points of my argument is that, empirically, social action must always be communicative. Only if social action is carried out in a manner so others can notice, can it be part of social reality and, if the meaning of this action is to be perceived by others, it must necessarily be communicated. To illustrate this first step, we should like to distinguish communicative action from a type of action that is often found in various sociological theories, although not always explicitly called so: one-sided (social) action. One-sided social action means that an allegedly individuated ego primarily faces the world and, only as part of it, other actors. This notion of one-sided action can be found in various theories most explicitly in phenomenologically oriented sociology, namely “one-sided social action” (Schutz & Luckmann 1984). We refer to them, because they themselves consider it to be a basic type of social action that they compare to reciprocal forms of social action. (Other one-sided theories of action do not permit such comparisons.)

By definition, one-sided social action is oriented only to others who do not even need to notice or experience its performance. As an example of this type of action, we may think of the case of cursing someone who is absent. Schutz and Luckmann (1984) also offer an example of a Last Will and Testament, in which someone gifts something to a beneficiary who is only born after the testator’s death. This example already indicates the problem: the writing of a testament is, indeed, a clearly communicative action which, in addition, presupposes a series of institutional regulations (such as inheritance law). Even if the heirs are no longer able to benefit from a personal encounter with the inheritor, the act is explicitly communicative when formulating the will, in a way which, in its form, indicates who should respond to the action. (For example, is the will legally binding and notarially regulated?) On the other hand, it would presumably be difficult if a grandmother only thought to leave an inheritance to an heir without informing anyone about it. From a phenomenological point of view, this case could be called one-sided social action – but unfortunately this action would lack any consequences: no one knows of the inheritance, unless the testator makes some hints or other “signs”.

When thinking about actions without signs one should consider the classic case of omission: the testator decides on her beneficiaries but does not reveal any hints during her lifetime (in order not to trigger any expectation). But this case, too, is by no means straightforward. For family relations can already establish reciprocity on the basis of linguistic categories. Thus, the very fact that she is a relative may raise the expectations of other relatives, by virtue of the kinship categorical system (and, even more, its legal ramifications).⁷ But if “one-sided social action” does not have consequences for others in any way (even if it may only be a certain mood or a covert strategy), then it is not part of social reality. If it has consequences that can be perceived in some way (even if only physically), it must be communicative in some way.

7 The problem that one-sided action may consist in omission of behavior will be addressed in detail below (Chapter III.4.ff.). This also applies to the problem of thinking, which we shall also briefly discuss below (Chapter III.7.c.).

Against the background of one-sided action, the starting point of communicative action becomes clear: the social world cannot be traced back to one-sided actions and their intentions. By contrast, communicative action does not concern a solitary individual relating to an environment and to others with sociality a mere section of it. Even though we are by no means claiming that action does not require intentionality, we turn against the assumption that social action is first and foremost an intentional (and, thus, not only linguistically, but also logically and constitutionally) solitary action.

This notion that the meaning of actions, even signs and symbols, is created by a lonely “I” dealing with the “world”, is found in a multitude of social and cultural theories, not only in phenomenologically inspired approaches and action theories of any kind, but also, for example, in Rousseau, with his “great individual”, and with Nietzsche’s “superhuman”, who seem to be free to choose the possibility of sociality before being socialized. It is part of rationalist theories of action, which regard the solitary self as the sole authorit...