Citizen Participation in a Democratic society 1

Citizen participation in a Democratic Society

Democratic and knowledge societies require critical individuals who are able to assume their

 participatory roles as citizens. I will support this claim on the basis of three main arguments:

first, citizens interact through discourses – some of them arguments, that must fit validity claims;

second, citizenship relates to how individuals are able to understand and produce meanings in

communicative interaction through language to build social identities, and third, citizens‟

 participatory role in the public sphere might be expressed in the „knowledge society‟ through

 participation mediated by technological and digital resources. I will describe succinctly that

these aspects of citizenship and social interaction supply a basic support for the ability to

 produce and value arguments in society.

Firstly, in democratic states citizens have the right to be represented in the power spheres,

 but also have the right to have their voices heard. The point is that as Van Dijk (2005) affirms

“…people do many social and political things when engaging in text and talk ” (p. 2), and

argumentative language is a way to convince others of particular perspectives and intentions

about the world. It means that being citizens in a democracy either in the public or in the private

spheres involves people in producing and valuing the validity of discourse content and

arguments produced. Habermas observes (1984) three validity claims: “propositional truth,

normative rightness and expressive sincerity (p. 104). If citizen‟s arguments are related to these

claims, they will answer basic inquiries such as: is content expressed in arguments true? Or,

given a normative context, do actions in arguments correspond with a legitimate counterpart in

social reality? (Habermas, 1984). What is implied here is that citizens that participate in

argumentative language exchanges are able to build convincing pieces of discourse and judge

others‟ arguments supported on validity principles as those by Habermas.

 

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Secondly, it is equally important the fact that producing and understanding social

meanings is on the basis of people‟s communicative interaction mediated by language (Halliday,

1978) and this supports how individuals shape their social identity in their communities. This

may be grounded on individuals‟ personal needs and expectations as well as on how they

integrate to more institutionalized social relationships: family, school, mass media, labor and

 professional fields. For instance, interactions entail, as Kramsch (1986) points out, “negotiating

intended meanings” (p. 367) in particular contexts and under specific circumstances where one

has to deal with “judging intentions and negotiating points of view” (Kramsch, idem). That is,

expressing one‟s own arguments and valuing others‟ have to do with individual and social

identity issues. Buckingham (2008) has emphasized “uniqueness” and “social” senses of

identity (p. 1) to refer to how citizens manage to shape their own perceptions, knowledge and

interpretations of context realities, while embedded in diverse social interpersonal relations with

others. This takes place through the interactional mediating role of the language in the

construction of “objective and subjective meanings” of reality (Berger and Luckman, 2011).

Finally, not only language has a mediating role in how citizen‟s arguments are built.

Knowledge society (NS) has driven citizens to assume new roles around new information and

knowledge mediating instruments, introducing citizens in diverse forms to connect to

information sources and knowledge processes. This sets forth the option to gain access to

information and knowledge, but also to produce them. How people access, select, classify, use,

distribute, share and store new information and knowledge is a vital aspect of citizen formation,

 but just a facet of the phenomena in dealing with knowledge society. As stated by Müller and

Schocker (2010) there are more complex conditions in the relationship between “human agency

and societal structures” on the web (p. 19). This means that citizens have the option to be active

 

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 participants in this KS: to be heard, to be read, to be critical and to be valued and criticized in

the public sphere.

In summary citizens become active participants in the public sphere of society when they

have guaranteed conditions and resources to express and share their own perceptions, ideas and

arguments. This is what I consider a potential possibility to get engaged also in a social

construction of shared meanings about sociocultural, political, economical standpoints that affect

communities directly. However, validity of citizens‟ arguments has to do not only with context

conditions, but with how they have been able to both having opportunities to be active

 participants in public discussions and becoming literate users of mediating languages necessary

to participate in such processes. Henceforth, citizens construing their identity: the „why‟ and

„how‟ of their expected roles in society.

Iván Potier Hurtado

COL. ENRIQUE OLAYA HERRERA JM

BOGOTÁ-COLOMBIA

 

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References

Berger, P.; Luckman, T. (2011). La construcción social de la realidad. Madrid: Amorrortou.

Buckingham, D. (2008). Introducing identity. In: Author (Ed.). Youth, identity, and digital

media. (pp. 1-24). [Reader Digital version]. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.001

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action. Reason and the rationalization of

society. (V. I). [Adobe digital version]. Retrieved from:

http://blogs.unpad.ac.id/teddykw/files/2012/07/Jurgen-Habermas-Theory-of

Communicative-Action-Volume-1.pdf  

Dijk, V. (2003). Discourse as Social Interaction. Volume 2. London: Sage Publications.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994). El lenguaje como semiótica social. Bogotá: FCE.

Kramsch, C. (1986). From language proficiency to interactional competence.The Modern

 Language Journal, 70 (4). Retrieved from:

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.unisabana.edu.co/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/326815.pdf

Müller, H., A.; Schocker-v., M. (2010). Research on the use of technology in task-based

language teaching. In: M. Thomas, H. Reinders (Eds.). Task-based language learning and

teaching with technology (pp. 17-40). New York, NY: Continuum International

Publishing Group.