Sociology Journal

The social construction of reality is a process when humans assign meaning to the world they live in. There are many different things people give meaning to and it differs from person to person. One example of how humans give meaning to things is the color spectrum. In the United States the color spectrum is divided into seven colors which are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These basic colors are universal throughout the US and everyone knows the names of these colors when they see them because they all were given significance through the processes of categorization and meaning. Categorization is taking parts of the world and placing these parts into groups. Every concrete thing in the world has color and as humans we are able to specify the colors on a deeper level using the process of naming. Naming is a process where symbols are attached to specific things in the certain category that was created. An example of this is the more specific colors there are in the world such as magenta and periwinkle. Categories are dissected over and over again to account for the wide variety of things such as color. On another level of categorizing things in the world there is the categorization of animals. There are millions of different species in the world and every animal has been categorized and named to give a deeper meaning to these animals. Instead of calling every dog a dog, humans have created names for every type of dog on the planet to make better meaning for these animals. The social construction of reality shapes the world into what it is today, without it there would not be names to colors or breeds of dogs. Giving meaning to things in the world creates less confusion for humans and gives a lot of things a purpose in the world.