George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) was an American social psychologist

who was also part of the philosophical current referred to as

American pragmatism around the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth centuries.3 Mead asks how we human
beings are able to use language, and not surprisingly this is a question
that Habermas (ibid., chapter 5; 1992b, chapter 7) is also interested in.
Mead believes that language is more than just gestures and instinctive
behaviour; we should look at language as meaningful action. For
language to be successful, it assumes that the sender (the speaker)
and the receiver (the hearer) understand the same from the same
significant symbol, for instance the speech act ‘I promise to . . .’. This
requires that the speaker and the hearer are able to take the perspective
of the other, that they are able to put themselves in the other’s
shoes. If we are able to take the perspective of the other, we are able
to understand what the other means with the speech act. Of course
this process of communication may break down, but then they switch
to a process of clarification.
Taking the perspective of the other also accounts for the