The discursive characteristics of a prosocial self-help: re-visioning the potential of self-help for empowerment
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[1] University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Texas at San Antonio
Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 74, nº 2, 2009, págs. 191-208
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Self-help activities tend to be conceptualized as a singular communicative mode, but one that is either empowering or oppressive. One alternative to rejecting self-help entirely is to redirect theorizing to identify, to articulate, and even to promote the ways self-help can manifest as a means of claiming and embodying agency within a society. I argue that self-help is provisionally a means of empowerment contingent on the discursive characteristics of the activities referenced. Empowerment appears to be cultivated in self-help activities when the communicative interaction is (a) embodied by self-help interactants who are part of a collective and who, as members of that collective, attempt to achieve social parity and (b) when the goal is to share knowledge gained from personal experience.
