ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the view that language is at the heart of social constructionism process. It argues that language and the use of it, far from simply describing the world, both constructs the world as people perceive it and has real consequences. The chapter outlines two major differences between mainstream psychology and social constructionism with respect to language. Philosopher Wittgenstein argued that a language consists of many smaller and simpler language games within which social interaction endowed words with their particular, contextual meaning. The structuralism and poststructuralism see language as the prime site of the construction of the person. Discursive psychologists have emphasised the performative and action-oriented nature of language. They have investigated the way that accounts are built in interactions to suit particular purposes fashioning identities, justifying our actions, blaming others and so on and argue that people draw upon shared cultural linguistic resources for these purposes.
