Alfred Schutz on Communication: Implications for Korean Society

Abstract

We, as human beings, are born into and living in the world already inhabited by other human beings. But the world of others we are living in is not simply a world of pure strangers totally independent and disconnected from one another; and now the world of others transforms into the social life-world as the sphere of "We," on the basis of the intersubjective interconnection between/among its members. The "others" in the daily social life-world exist from the outset as "fellow men," intersubjectively networked in "a worldcommon to all of us" (Schutz, 1970, p. 163). The daily life-world for Schutz denotes, therefore, a socially constructed world of mutual relationship and an order of intersubjective commonality. And from this social world of everyday life, there automatically originates "the communicative common environment" which can be principally characterizedby "the possibility of intercommunication" oriented toward mutual understanding among its members (Schutz, 1970, p. 164). In the social life-world, as Schutz (1970) describes: "[t]hus, relationships of mutual understanding and consent and, therewith, a communicative common environment originate······. The persons participating in the communicative environment are given one to the other not as objects but as counter-subjects, as consociates in a societal community of persons. Sociality is constituted by communicative acts in which the I turns to the others, apprehending them as persons who tum to him, and both know of this fact."(p. 165).