>>> Item number 28980 from WRITERS LOG9404D --- (70 records) ----- <<< Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 18:35:01 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: TECH: Types of Labels George A. Kelly, in "A Theory of Personality" (Norton 1963, ISBN 0-393-00152-0) suggests that there are several dimensions of use for "constructs". Constructs are one of the key concepts of his theory, dealing with the way people impose order on the world based on their anticipations (to oversimplify - he spends quite a bit of time defining and refining this). In essence, they are labels for sets of experience. Some of the important dimensions he lists are: impermeable constructs - e.g. if these people are my family, there are no others. The label and the set of members are believed to be completely defined, with the person unwilling to allow any other pieces into the set. (note that if "my family" is such a construct, a person could say "You are a part of my family, but your son isn't." and mean it!) permeable constructs - these are labels for sets where the existence of members implies that there are other members. Probably the simplest example is from mathematics - the set of integers, where no matter how many you list, there are others. Perhaps a human parallel would be the implications of "strangers are just friends we haven't met yet." preemptive constructs - if something is labeled this way, it is only that. I.e., becoming a member of this set means that all other memberships are discarded. I suppose the way some people deal with job titles fits into this area - if you are a manager, you can't do other things (no matter if you did them before your promotion or not!). Or the question that came up a while ago as to whether some word was a verb or a noun - the underlying rationale of this type of construct is that things should only belong to one type, one party, one faith, etc. constellatory constructs - if something belongs to this set, it belongs to these other sets also (and implies it cannot belong to any others). E.g., if you are a Republican, then you must believe in right-to-life, trade wars, etc. propositional constructs - if has these properties, may be called by this label (among other things). this is the scientific, logical approach - and may be the least used, or at least least influential approach. As I understand it, he is not saying that all thinking "falls" into one of these categories automatically, rather he is suggesting that the ways we use words and concepts can be usefully considered in terms of these dimensions. Perhaps one way to use them in writing is to consider something like a conflict over being part of the family, and give the different members different types of thinking for what being part of the family means. For example, what kinds of thinking lie behind each of these? "He crossed you off the will, John. You aren't part of the family anymore." "If you're going to be part of this family, you've got to go to church and vote Democrat." "If you're going to be part of this family, you can't be a gang member!" "If you want to be part of this family, all you have to do is ask. We don't want you to give up your life, but we hope being a part of our family will add to yours." "Any friend of John's is a friend of mine." Something to think about, maybe... tink