The Social Representations of Health: A Common Symbolic Place

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.