QUERIES ABOUT SOCIAL REPRESENTATION AND CONSTRUCTION

Departing from the stated intent of the social representation approach to give a social constructionist account of social processes, this pa per presents a critical analysis of language use within the realm of s ocial representations research. Three questions are posed: (a) Does a social representation represent an object? (b) Can social representati ons be true or false? and (c) Is social construction action? All three are answered negatively. It is shown that object-talk is inherent to social cognition and to the common-sensical view of social actors, but incompatible with a constructionist position; that truth-talk is part of collective discourse in the socio-genesis of representations, but senseless when talking about a representation; that a social represent ation is not a representation of an object, but ontologically identica l with it; and that social construction happens rather than being inte nded by social actors. Consequently, social representations are interp reted as the significant meaning of constructive events and neither as entities in the minds of people nor floating above a collectivity. Th eir relationship with discourse analysis is discussed.