The Thought Occurs

Friday 5 June 2015

Social Realism And SFL: Epistemological Differences

Social realism, in sociology, refers to the assumption that social reality, social structures and related social phenomena have an existence over and above the existence of individual members of society, and independent of our conception or perception of them.

In Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, human experience is construed (as ideational meaning) and social relations are enacted (as interpersonal meaning).  Social structures and related social phenomena are thus construals of language and enactments of language by humans, and thus crucially dependent on the construing and enacting of the humans involved.