The Social Function of Symbols

The Social Function of Symbols

Citation: Bartlett, F.C. (1925). 'The social functions of symbols', Astralasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy 3: 1-11.

CONTEMPORARY psychological discussion contains a great many references to symbols. It is perhaps natural that these should be mainly concerned with the parts which the symbol may play in the mental life of the individual, and further that, whether they deal with the individual life, or with the influence of symbols upon social activities, they should be largely preoccupied with problems of interpretation. When we have learned what a symbol stands for, however, even more important questions concerning what it actually does, both within the personality and within the group, remain to be considered. I propose to discuss certain of these in the present paper. And since it is obvious that nearly all social products-fashions, folk tales, customs of all kinds, institutions and traditions-are apt to contain much symbolism, I shall deal with my problems solely as they affect social psychology.

First some characterisation of the psychological nature of the symbol is necessary. Symbols must he distinguished from mere signs. Anything that stands for something else is a sign, but a symbol must possess at one and the same time a double or a multiple significance (1). Further, the whole of this double or multiple significance must be effective, when the symbol is used, even though part of it is in no way being thrust upon the attention. Thus all symbols possess both a "face" and a "hidden" value, and it is one of the great achievements of psychology to have shown how the "hidden" value is generally, from the point of view of function, the more important. A flag, for example, is a very common symbol. Whenever we see a flag we see it in a particular perceptual setting, and this contributes a part of its face significance or value, the rest coming from other circumstances of the moment, and from a more or less vaguely realised relationship between the coloured bunting that we see and certain ideas concerning group ascendancy or peculiar group functions. But if the flag really does operate as a symbol, behind this face value lie a mass of undifferentiated feelings and impulses which do not rise into consciousness, which we could not adequately put into words even if we wanted to, which repre- [2] sent the influence of much earlier experience, and perhaps the operation of tendencies not arising from individual experience at all, and which, though they go unattended to, powerfully influence our behaviour.

In the second place it is important to notice that the hidden values of symbols constantly tend to become less and less capable of exact definition. There is a natural history of symbols. Its starting-point is when certain material of cognition appeals at one and the same moment to more than one reaction tendency. When I was a boy I knew a field, all humps and hollows with little level stretches, where our best games could be played. Thither we often went, my playfellows and I. But as often as we went there we were trespassing, and well we knew it, and many a time did we make a violent and fearful exit, pursued by angry shouts and a cracking whip. So the field, its green grass, its hills and its hollows, appealing at once to the play tendencies, the fear impulses, and the desire for adventure, quickly became a symbol, and often intruded itself into my dreams. Generally it came as a fine and happy place, a place for games, but immediately behind there was fear, and the picture of a man's face that held me in terror. Then as time went by the fear of the face began to be built together with the fear of other threatening things.

When, after the common allusive fashion of boys, we shouted one to another "Hilly Park!" nobody could quite tell what the hidden significance would be, but only that it must have something to do with the sentiment of the forbidden thing. When the symbol first arises its whole significance, the hidden as well as the face meaning, can be put into definite pictures, for it is drawn immediately from particular events of personal experience. But as time goes on, if the symbol still persists, its face value or its hidden value (or both) always tends to get more abstract. The exact nature of the psychological process according to which this takes place deserves much more study than it has been given. A very great part of it is due, however, to the organisation of images by the growth of sentiments and ideals. The symbol now does more than evoke a particular concrete image and its significance: it stirs up some sentiment, and the manifold significance of a sentiment, though it is very apt to make use of images for its expression, yet can never be wholly expressed in terms of any particular representation. There is no important, or persistent, social symbol which has not struck the roots of its hidden significance deep into some common sentiment or other (2). [3]

Much more might be said about the psychological character of symbols, but it is these two things: their double or multiple significance, and their close relation to the development of sentiments that give to them some of their most important social functions. We may, therefore, at once go on to consider these functions.

Much has been written about the transmission of culture, or of cultural features, from one social group to another, through contact. But generally the interest which has prompted this study has been ethnological rather than sociological or psychological. Thus much evidence has been accumulated with regard to the facts of contact, and many fascinating speculations have been advanced with respect to the migrations of groups. At the same time the actual mechanisms by which transmissions are effected have, strangely enough, received far less attention. Sometimes it even seems to be assumed that all we need to establish is that certain groups did actually come into contact. Their common cultural characteristics are then immediately said to have passed over from one group to the other. This, however, certainly does not follow, for not all cultural possessions can be equally easily transmitted. And when we consider the mechanisms by which social possessions are passed on from group to group, we can readily see that perhaps the most important method of all is by the establishment of symbols.

This is in fact one of the main social consequences of the dual or multiple significance of symbols. Suppose-though the facts of of any actual case are far more complex than can well be set forth- we have two groups which enter into relationship, one of which may be called the culture-bringing group, and the other the culture-receiving group. The results of their interplay are fundamentally determined by the social relationship which ensues. There are three very important cases. First the culture-bringing group may be manifestly superior to the other one, either by virtue of its material possessions or in consequence of its higher social development. Or again the culture-receiving group may, despite its acceptance of new customs and conventions, still maintain a position of considerable superiority. Or again the two groups may be wholly friendly and may give and take without superiority or inferiority. In any one of these cases certain material of the culture-bringing group is almost sure to be selected by the culture-receiving group and adopted by the latter, not simply for its own value, or because of its obvious significance, but as standing for all the desirable elements possessed by the culture-bringing group. Or it may be that the material is selected not because it vaguely indicates what is desir- [4] able in the culture-bringing group, but because, in a way which is never clearly expressed, it preserves what is desirable in the culture-receiving group. Let us consider the first case. This is generally how elements of culture pass from the higher social groups, or from the governing groups of a community, to lower, or governed groups. We ourselves can see the whole process going on continually. A group of working men strike for higher wages. They insist, often with an honesty which it is impossible to doubt, that it is not really money they want. It is that, but it is more. And yet the more that is desired never is and cannot be very clearly defined, for it is not clearly realised, not yet articulated in the mental life of those by whom it is wanted. The few who can find words for the desire say that it is for leisure, holidays, music, books, education. But they have no definite notions, no clear pictures, of what sort of leisure, holidays, music, books, and education are wanted. Money is selected as a symbol for the whole culture which is desired. It, rather than anything else, is selected to be a symbol because money has a very obvious face significance, derived from the existing customs of the culture-receiving group. And the symbol owes its force to the fact that it can carry with it a mass of ill-defined ideas, feelings and wishes related to the whole culture of the superior group, and grounded in the sentiment of social emulation.

Just in the same way we see bicycles, motor-cars, pianos, fashions in dress, accents and many other cultural possessions, both material and psychical, pass swiftly from the centre to the periphery of a country, or even of an empire, or from a "higher" to a "lower" social level. They are selected because of an obvious face value, but their power of appeal lies in the fact that they have become symbols. It is what they somewhat obscurely stand for that gives them their strength. I have heard a Weishman most violently condemn a fellow-countryman who had acquired an important public position in England, simply because he had dropped his Welsh accent.

What holds true of the movements of culture in our own complex society in this respect holds true also of the past. We may lay it down as indisputable that hardly any important transmission of culture from group to group has ever taken place, save through the development of social symbols.

The first of the functions of the social symbol, then, is to facilitate the transmission of culture from group to group.

There is a special case of transmission which has a peculiar importance since it shows clearly another of the social functions of the symbol. Not infrequently the culture-receiving group, though [5] it assimilates from without some new possession, nevertheless contrives in doing so to maintain its own 'superiority. The hidden value of the social symbol may, in fact, relate either to the half appreciated meaning which the symbol has within the culture-bringing group, or to the past history of the group which is receptive. The latter seems very often to be the case with the religious symbol. Years after the Spaniards had conquered New Granada, for instance, when the native Indians were all accounted Christian, and had taken over the religious paraphernalia of their conquerors, secret Indian shrines were sometimes found. In one of these was discovered, offered to the "overthrown" idols, the cap of a Franciscan friar, a rosary, a priest's biretta, and a Spanish book of religious precepts (3). The new material had been assimilated, but its predominant, though hidden significance preserved the past. When any well-established corporation, being subjected to outside influence, is made to revise its constitution, exactly the same thing can be noticed. The new forms are accepted. But they are constantly given some slight twist, either of actual phrasing, or of interpretation, which unobtrusively preserves their continuity with the old. Just the same use of symbolism can often be detected in the work of cartoonists who have a strong political bias. The present leader of a party is, in their drawings, given some small turn of countenance or of dress which links him up with a famous leader of the past. Or for that matter the rallying cries of a political party themselves gives us good illustrations. They are meant to meet an ever changing situation, but the bent of their phrasing and the colour of their significance come invariably from past party triumphs. All secret societies which have ever been formed for the purpose of holding tenaciously to an outworn or violently suppressed custom or culture have speedily developed a flourishing and elaborate symbolism.

This is the second great function of the social symbol: to facilitate the preservation of groups. In all social regressions symbols are apt to play a very great part.

Not only does the symbol act powerfully in preserving a group or a group's traditions when perhaps a first glance at society would suggest that they have disappeared, but it also does much at all times to preserve social harmony within an obviously living and active group. This is directly due to the pictorial origin of the symbol. An interpretation embodied in a symbol is a very much easier thing to grasp than an interpretation or a meaning which is not sustained by a symbol; just as imaging is a more primitive [6] psychological reaction than judging or conceiving. Uniforms, for example, badges of various kinds, flags and pennants keep esprit de corps and patriotism alive far more effectually than the mere concepts of loyalty and good faith to one's comrades and country can ever do, at least within any stage of social development that has as yet been attained.

We touch here upon an extraordinarily important psychological principle the operation of which may be seen in conduct of all kinds. Appropriate and significant reactions are made long before the distinctions on which they are based appear in consciousness. A young child reacts consistently to differences between colours some time before such differences are a part of what he can be said to know. The influence of the symbol in promoting public order and harmony is a striking illustration of this. The symbol in fact produces the result which reflective analysis might produce, but without any help from reflective analysis. This is a part of the reason why every new public movement-which necessarily, if it is to be maintained, demands the formation of a group-is almost sure to develop symbols of a very concrete kind. Generally some peculiarity of a leader is adopted as symbolic in the first place. Thus the early Quaker, whom Barclay's rationalistic statements would have left cold, or to whom they would have been unintelligible, was fiercely thrilled by the practice of keeping his hat on in the presence of great men. What Barclay later put into propositions and principles was after all very much the same as what his less deliberative forerunner unthinkingly responded to when he kept his hat on. So with Demosthenes' lisp and Alexander's limp; so with Gladstone's collar and Chamberlain's eye-glass: they all strongly maintain the harmony of groups because they appear to make concrete the unformulated principles which hold the group together (4).

Even when the social symbol does not replace interpretation but prompts it, the fact that the symbol appears to be the same for all blurs over differences of interpretation, and so again promotes social harmony. This is one of the reasons why the symbol is peculiarly tenacious of life in the religious group. A variety and independence of interpretation which would be socially disruptive were it not for the presence of symbols can by these be rendered comparatively harmless, the obvious unity of the group in regard to its [7] symbols being stronger than the less obvious, though not less real diversity of view of the persons by whom the group is constituted.

The third great social function of the symbol is, then, to promote the harmony of the group.

But in this respect the symbol is like a great many other conditions of human conduct: it appears to produce opposite effects upon different occasions, and very frequently leads to sharply contrasted behaviour on the part of different groups. Symbols maintain harmony within the group; it is equally true and important that they constantly promote discord between groups. For just as the symbol may blur over differences of interpretation, so a difference of symbols may obscure likenesses of ultimate meaning and aim. In each of these cases it is the symbol itself that takes the lead, and, in a manner, operates directly in determining social conduct. Consequently all the bitterest social struggles tend to centre about symbols, and the more the groups concerned are dealing with the same kind of problem the more furiously will they fight about differences of symbols. Just because the group is consolidated by the help of the symbol, so, if the symbol is attacked, does the group defend itself with great vigour. Precisely because the symbol does help powerfully to organise and harmonise a group, so is it very apt to attract the hatred and jealousy of other groups.

Examples abound in almost all of the important public controversies of all times. Thus it is impossible to open any volume of sermons delivered in England about the beginning of the seventeenth century without finding illustrations of the power of the symbol to foment and centralise social discords. And as everybody knows this effect of the symbol was shown not in words only, but in many extremely violent deeds. In 1643, for instance, "the Earl of Manchester, who was then in command of the Parliamentary party at Cambridge, commissioned one William Dowsing to carry out the ordinance of Parliament directing the abolition of altars, communion tables, rails, and the defacing of all images, crucifixions and superstitious inscriptions" (5). Dowsing kept a journal in which he recorded his doings with great precision and obvious relish. "At St. Peter's Parish, December 30, 1643," he writes, "We brake down 10 Popish Pictures, we tooke of 3 Popish Inscriptions of Prayers to be made for 3 Soules, & burnt the rayles, digged up the steps & they are to be levelled by Wednesday." And again: "At Little St. Mary's, December 29, 30, 1643. We brake down 60 superstitious Pictures, some Popes and Crucifixions, & God the Father sitting in a charger and holding a Glasse in his hand" (6). [8]

This rage against symbols on the part of the reforming party at that time was however paralleled by an equal fury of the ritualising group against the Protestant rejection of Romish symbols. Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for example, had a chapel the chancel of which stood towards the north, while the kitchen stretched eastwards. This chapel had never been consecrated, and surplices and the keeping of fast days were constantly ignored. Only seven years before Dowsing began his destructive work, a vigorous letter of protest was written to Archbishop Laud concerning Emmanuel College practices: "But in Emmanuel College they receive that Holy Sacrament sitting upon Forms about the Communion Table, and doe pull the Loafe one from the other, after the Minister hath begon. And so ye Cuppe, one drinking it as it were to another, like good Fellows, without any particular application of ye sd words, more than once for all" (7).

It is because of the power of the symbol to excite social antagonisms that popular leaders of the revolutionary kind frequently avail themselves of the traditional symbolism of the group which they aspire to lead. Many interesting illustrations of this have occurred in the course of the anti-British propaganda in India. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, well-known as a vigorous and accomplished opponent of foreign rule, found it desirable, for instance, to call to his aid the powerful influence of religious symbols. He placed his movement "under the special patronage of the most popular deity in India."

"Though Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is the god of learning whom Hindu writers delight to invoke on the title-page of their books, there is scarcely a village or a frequented roadside in India that does not show some rude presentment of his familiar features, usually smeared over with red ochre. Tilak could not have devised a more popular move then when he set himself to organise annual festivals in honour of Ganesh, known as Ganpati celebrations, and to found in all the chief centres of the Deccan Ganpati societies each with its mala or choir recruited among his youthful bands of gymnasts. These festivals gave occasion for theatrical performances and religious songs in which the legends of Hindu mythology were skillfully exploited to stir up the hatred of the foreigner..." (8)

Thus both directly --as when an alien symbol is itself furiously attacked-- and indirectly,-as when a native symbol is especially exalted-the symbol excites and centralises social discord. [9]

When we consider how the symbol both arouses devotion and excites antagonism, we can see clearly its function in keeping alive the emotional basis of social organisation. As I have said, every long-standing and powerful social symbol is grounded in sentiment. And sentiments, according to the now commonly accepted psychological usage, are born through the coming together into a single organisation of a variety of emotions.

Now nearly every writer upon social psychology has pointed out the power of the group to heighten emotions. But, save in rather exceptional circumstances, when the group tends to become a crowd, a mob or a herd, social emotions are never unchecked. All the strongest sentiments-love, hate, patriotism, loyalty and so on- and most of the greatest ideals grow up around personal relationships, and normally when social emotions are experienced these sentiments and ideals are at the same time stirred into activity. Hence socially expressed emotions, except under unusual circumstances, are apt to have their own peculiar flavour, and to be checked and regulated by the systems into which they enter. But the moment an emotion enters into an organisation with other emotions it acquires a new and characteristic emotional quality. The emotions which in organisation form a sentiment are more than merely organised emotions: they possess an affective character within the sentiment which they do not possess outside of it. This difference of affective character probably cannot adequately be expressed in language. It is something more than a diminution of violence and an increase of refinement. But it certainly does frequently involve both of these.

We very often tend to say that no emotions are so violent and so lacking in delicacy as those which characterise social behaviour. This is simply untrue. If we take the rage of the mob, the panic of the demoralised fighting group, the lust of the victors after a struggle we seem to have striking cases in point, and no doubt there are many others. But these are not situations characteristic of a highly developed society, and ought not to be taken as the types. In fact the gradual organisation of emotions into sentiments, and of emotions, sentiments and ideas into ideals tends to remove the explosiveness of the primitive affective response out of the daily run of life. The sentiment, the ideal have modes of conduct ready for any of a number of situations, whereas the emotion is far more specialised in its operation. Thus as social organisation becomes wider, and its influence permeates every side of life, the determination of human conduct becomes more and more abstract.

Such a development has its own dangers, and may leave a group helpless in the face of some sudden and special demand. But the [10] social symbol acts powerfully in preventing the tendency to be determined by abstract ideals from proceeding to dangerous lengths, and does much to preserve the capacity of a group to act swiftly, decisively and unanimously. For the symbol keeps the sentiments and ideals which are the basis of group organisation in touch with the concrete. It provides a specific picture for a general meaning. Thus it has a two-fold manner of operation. By virtue of the symbol a group can upon occasion relapse into a primitive explosive, single emotion determined type of conduct and still not cease to be a group. And by virtue of the symbol the sentiments and ideals which motivate a group's ordinary behaviour, relatively abstract though they may be, yet retain a concrete character and remain in touch with actual life.

"The Spaniards," says Miss Hope Mirrlees, "deal in a very cavalier way with symbolism: . . . they put together from the markets and streets and balconies of Andalusia a very human type of female loveliness; next they express this type with uncompromising realism in painted wooden figures which they set up in churches saying, 'This is not Pepe, or Ana, or Carmen. Oh no! It isn't a woman at all: it's a mysterious abstract doctrine of the Church called the Immaculate Conception.' Then they all proceed to fall physically in love with the abstract doctrine-serenading it with lyrics, organising pageants in its honour, running their swords through those who deny its truth, storming the Vatican for its acceptance" (9).

This is not, however, only a Spanish way of dealing with symbols. With differences for social setting and history the same kind of thing could be written of any symbol using group anywhere.

Here, then, are four important social functions which are possessed by symbols. They all spring directly from those two outstanding psychological characteristics of the symbol that were considered at the beginning of this paper: from the basis of symbolism in some concrete event or situation of which it is a picture, and from the duality or multiplicity of signification which gives to symbols their enduring influence, and renders them at once apparently definite and clear, and yet abstract to a considerable degree. For the symbol is tied on the one hand to the concrete and particular image, and on the other to the more general sentiment and ideal.

There are no doubt many other ways in which symbols influence the nature and development of social organisation and the growth of [11] culture. These four, however, all alike affect the social character of the group considered as a whole. We have seen how the symbol:

(a) acts as a medium for the transmission of culture;

(b) secures the preservation of the group;

(d) prevents those social sentiments and ideals which are at the basis of organised group life from becoming vague and lifeless abstractions.

It is no wonder that there is hardly any social structure, hardly any department of social activity which does not contain abundant traces of the symbolic element.

NOTES BY THE WAY. No. 1. Fact and Value. Although in a sense the whole world lies open both to science and to metaphysics, their functions are none the less distinct in kind, and that of metaphysics is still the more inclusive. For whereas science is restricted to the attitude of pure cognition, metaphysics must include cognition in appreciation. Existence ("thing-hood," factual nature,") is only one fundamental aspect or ultimate feature of reality. There is also value as such, equally fundamental and ultimate, and not to be expressed in terms of mere existence at all. Now it would be ludicrous to contend that science cannot take cognisance of value at all. No thing arid no fact in the world, even the inmost facts of personal experience can any longer be "contracted out" of scientific enquiries. What is true is that science cannot take cognisance of ultimate values as such. Let us take the three positive values generally claimed as ultimate or absolute, moral goodness, beauty, rationality. Science can and must treat of the origin and history of our ideas of these values; it must write histories of ethics, aesthetics, and logic. It must also point out that certain ways of regarding and handling these ideas lead to certain results, and in that case it may assign a certain Instrumental value to various doctrines in morals, art, and philosophy. But it is always dealing with the ultimate values not as such or as they are in themselves, but only so far as they are actually existing ideas in existing minds. It is of the existence of values that science treats, not of the ultimate value of existences. And goodness, beauty, and rationality as such are what determine the ultimate value of existences; they are not themselves existences, though they may be ultimate realities; nor are they merely de facto laws of existence like Dr. Alexander's universals. They are ideals, not ideas. They can only be properly known by an attitude of appreciation or valuation, which accepts the positive and rejects the negative value. Therefore science in its strict impartiality cannot deal with them. The man of science is the only Adam who can claim to remain in Eden, because for him alone the tree of the knowledge of good and evil still bears untasted fruit. - Canon 0. C. Quick, in the Hibbert Journal.

Endnotes:

(1) Cf. E. Jones: The Theory of Symbolism, Brit. Journ. of Psychol, Vol. 9, pp. 181-229.

(2) Cf. my Symbolism and Folk Love: Proceedings of the VIIth International Congress of Psychology. Cambridge, 1924. p. 284.

(3) R. B. Cunningham Grahame: The Conquest of New Granada: 1922. Footnote p.97.

(4) An excellent illustration of this occurs in E. M. Forster's recent book, A Passage to India (London, 1924) p. 24. A number of Anglo-Indians are assembled in a club when an amateur orchestra begins to play the National Anthem. "Conversation and billiards stopped, faces stiffened. It was the Anthem of the Army of Occupation. It reminded every member of the club that he or she was British and in exile. It produced a little sentiment and a useful accession of will-power. The meagre tune, the curt series of demands on Jehovah, fused into a prayer unknown in England, and though they perceived neither Royalty nor Deity they did perceive something, they were strengthened to resist another day. Then they poured out, offering one another drinks."

(5) Atkinson and Clarke: Cambridge described and illustrated, London, 1897: p. 128.

(6) Quoted by Atkinson and Clarke, l.c.

(7) Atkinson and Clarke: op. cit. p. 460.

(8) Valentine Chirol: Indian Unrest, London, 1910, p. 44. A reference to the plays performed, one of which is summarised on pp. 337-9 of Mr. Chirol's book, will show clearly the important place accorded by them 'to symbols.

(9) The Counterplot. 1924: pp. 5-6.

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