Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through Language / Edition 1

by John Shotter

Overview

‘[An] immensely thoughtful, informative and persuasive treatment of the "rhetorical-responsive version of social constructionism" via an eclectic blend of, principally, European and American linguistics, philosophy and social psychology... Shotter's book is most important for continuing the work begun by Billig and others bringing recognition via recollection to the rhetorical corpus' - Discourse & Society

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803989337
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/20/1994
Series:	Inquiries in Social Construction series , #11
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction
A Rhetorical-Responsive Version of Social Constructionism
PART ONE: A RHETORICAL-RESPONSIVE VERSION OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
The Conversational Background of Social Life
Beyond Representation
Situating Social Constructionism
Knowing ‘From Within'
Dialogue and Rhetoric in the Construction of Social Relations
PART TWO: REALISM, THE IMAGINARY AND A WORLD OF EVENTS
The Limits of Realism
Social Life and the Imaginary
Linguistic Relativity in a World of Events
PART THREE: CONVERSATIONAL REALITIES
In Search of a Past
Therapeutic Re-Authoring
Real and Counterfeit Constructions in Interpersonal Relations
The Manager as a Practical Author
Conversations for Action
Rhetoric and the Recovery of Civil Society
Epilogue
Rhetorical-Responsive Social Constructionism in Summary Form
Afterword - Roy Bhaskar

Editorial Reviews

‘I like this book, will recommend it to colleagues and students, and expect it to become a staple citation in articles and books I publish... Sometimes books an academic reads enable a person to make connections among previously disconnected pieces of experience, recurring preferences and passions, and particular life decisions. Reading Conversational Realities accomplished this for me... it is theoretically rich, philosophically thoughtful and experientially evocative' - Human Studies

‘[An] immensely thoughtful, informative and persuasive treatment of the "rhetorical-responsive version of social constructionism" via an eclectic blend of, principally, European and American linguistics, philosophy and social psychology... Shotter's book is most important for continuing the work begun by Billig and others bringing recognition via recollection to the rhetorical corpus. He claims to target his recovery of these materials toward psychologists; readers in related disciplines will certainly also benefit' - Discourse & Society

‘This book is fascinating... It is important for several reasons. First, it provides an overview of an approach to the social sciences known as social constructionism... Second, Shotter maintains that the fundamental human reality is persons in conversations... Third, Shotter is concerned with practical implications, not just theoretical conceptions' - Studies in Second Language Acquisition

From the Publisher