The Value of Words and Actions

I found Jerome Bruner’s, “Act of Meaning” to be disengaging and hard to follow. Bruner’s intended audience for this text was other psychologists who already have a solid understanding of the debated topic at hand. Due to the assumption that the audience is already familiar with past research in the field, Bruner references the work of many other psychologists without taking the time to fully explain their relevance. This assumption makes it difficult for readers who are not of the intended audience, like myself, to understand the Bruner’s text fully.

Of the ideas that I was able to grasp, I found Bruner’s commentary on the power of words and actions especially interesting. We have heard over and over throughout our lives the popular saying “it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.” Bruner explains in his writing that this is not only believed by society but also by many psychologists: “we have been taught to treat such ‘said’ accounts as untrustworthy” (Bruner 16). Bruner, on the other hand, disagrees with this mentality and explains why society should value what a person says, not only what the person does. He talks about how psychology is not dependent on one aspect but is the combination of several: “psychology is and must be based not only upon what people actually do, but what they say they do and what they say caused them to do what they did” (Bruner 16). Bruner highlights how without taking into account what a person says it is impossible to fully understand the thoughts and intentions of a person’s actions.

In Bruner’s text he explains how both a person’s words and actions are significant to the field of psychology because it incorporates both the mind and the body. Even though I did not fully understand all of his approaches to different psychological ideas, I was able to understand his view on the importance of both words and actions in psychology.