ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the theory’s major assumptions can be used to examine cross-cultural issues in social work assessment. It explores cultural differences in client help-seeking behavior and how language serves as a cultural product central to social worker-client communication processes. The chapter suggests that people differ largely because they have learned varying symbolic vocabularies for interpreting life experiences through social interaction. It examines that clients derive their meaning of life events through social interaction and clients act toward things or events on the basis of the meaning they have for them. The chapter discusses behavior is symbolic and largely rests on linguistic processes, the self is a social structure that arises through social interaction, and client change results from the development of new systems of meanings through an interpretive process. Collective behavior is the term used to refer to the social aspects of behavior and the social context that gives behavior meaning.
