TITLE:
The Social Representations of Health: A Common Symbolic Place
AUTHORS:
Evangelia Briseniou, Nikolaos Skenteris, Chrissi Hatzoglou, Elena Dragioti, Epaminondas Diamantopoulos, George D. Tsitsas, Mary Gouva
KEYWORDS:
Social Representations, Language, Health, Psychology, Health Attitudes
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.11 No.10,
October
29,
2020
ABSTRACT: Background: There are relatively limited studies exploring the
relationship between social representations and language although language is a
system that lives in the symbolic universe of the people, where every word has
the dual nature of both signified and signifier. Aim: This study aimed
to identify and investigate the common social representation of eight words
representing health and lifestyle factors in a convenience sample of 288 adults
from general population living in Greece. Methods: The participants were asked to express three
consecutive words associated with eight different life experiences using the
free association method. The frequency of all word combinations was calculated
regardless of the position that they have been said and the undirected graph of
the words was created. The position of each word in the graph and its
relationship with the other words of the same word group was characterized by
its centrality. Repeated measures analysis of variance was applied to
investigate the word position and category effects in the centrality of the
spoken word controlling for gender, age, family situation, and educational level. Results: In all eight-word categories,
a decreasing order of centrality was observed
in the spoken words a finding that supports the hypothesis that there are common reflections on the language of the
representations concerning the questioned life experiences. No
significant differences were reported for sociodemographic
factors highlighting the character of language as a social symbolic system adopted by all members of society regardless of their
particular characteristics. Conclusions: We concluded that the
understanding of the relationship between social representations of health and
the language is intrinsically related to the behavior that language as a common
way of communication can bring to psychosomatic health.