COM 210 Quiz 3 Notes PDF

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Quiz 3 on March 10th Covered Material: Week 7: Philipsen’s Speech Codes Theory. Tannen’s Genderelect Styles. Readings: pp. 384-395. PDF in Blackboard on Phillipsen  eick’s Week 8: Geertz & Pacanowsky’s Cultural Approach to Communication. Deetz’ Critical Theory of Communication Approach to Organizations.W  eadings: pp. 237-247, 259-272. PDF in Blackboard on Weick. Information Systems Approach to Organizations R Week 9: Burke’s Dramatism. Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm. Katz’ Uses and Gratifications. pp. 287-306, 346-355. Week 10: Marshal McLuhan’s Technological Determinism. Concluding thoughts: making sense of it all. PDF in Blackboard on McLuhan.

1) Philipsen’s Speech Codes Theory - 6 Speech Code Propositions - ethnography - rhetoric, honor, dignity, totemizing ritual, performance ethnography - speech code has psychology, sociology, and rhetoric - terms, rules, and premises of speech code - Predicting, Explaining, and Controlling the form of discourse about the Intelligibility, Prudence, and, Morality - Communication ritual - 1) Initiation 2) Acknowledgement 3) Negotiation 4) Reaffirmation

4) Deetz’ Critical Theory of Communication Approach to Organizations - Deetz views multinational corporations as the dominant force in society - more powerful than the church, state or family in their ability to influence the lives of individuals - undermine fully representative decision making and thus reduce the quality, innovation, and fairness of company policy - control; colonizes - managerialism - discursive closure - PARC model - systematically distorted communication - communicative model - corporate colonization - involvement; participation; - codetermination - stakeholder democracy

2) Tannen’s Genderelect Styles - miscommunication occurs  between men and women - Women are more likely to seek human connection and Men are concerned mainly with status - Women value rapport talk, men value report talk - cooperative overlap - tag question - speech community - aha factor

5) Weick’s Information Systems Approach to Organizations

- Equivocal information into Unequivocal information - Requisite Variety of complexity and diversity - Double Interact loops, which are comprised of 3 *Hegelian) elements: Act, Response, Adjustment - Enactment, selection, retention

3) Geertz & Pacanowsky’s Cultural Approach to Communication - Culture as a metaphor o  f organizational life - a culture is something an organization is - Culture is not  whole or undivided - thick description - Metaphors can offer the ethnographer a starting place for accessing the shared meaning of a corporate culture - Three types of narrative that dramatize organizational life = corporate stories, personal stories, collegial stories - cultural performance - ethnography

6) Burke’s Dramatism

- CONSUBSTANTIATION must first take place between the communicator and his/her audience. Consubstantiation involves both the form and the content of a message - dramatistic pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose - god term; devil term - guilt-redemption cycle - victimage or mortification

7) Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm

8) Katz’ Uses and Gratifications

9) Marshall McLuhan’s Technological Determinism

- People are essentially story telling animals - People do not make decisions based on a rational-world p  aradigm, but rather a narrative paradigm -S  tories are evaluated by all of us on the basis of whether they have NARRATIVE COHERENCE and NARRATIVE  FIDELITY -  stories shaped by history, culture, and character -P  hatic communication - Ideal audience

- The study of how media affect people must take account of the fact that people deliberately use media for particular purposes - Uses & grats  assumes that people have needs that they seek to gratify through media use -s  ame media message doesn’t necessarily affect everyone the same way. - uniform-effects model - straight line effect of media - typology - parasocial relation

- McLuhan divided all human history into four periods or epochs - a  tribal age, a literate age, a print age, and an electronic age . - Channels of communication are the p  rimary cause of cultural change -M  cLuhan regarded communication inventions as pivotal because he considered every new  form of media innovation  to be an extension of some human faculty - hot and cool media - symbolic environment, media, medium, media ecology, technology, overdeterminism, global village, digital age, faustian bargain

1) Philipsen’s Speech Codes Theory Gerry Philipsen’s 6 Speech Code Propositions - Speech code propositions 1) Wherever there is a distinctive culture, there exists a distinctive Speech Code 2) In any given speech community, multiple speech codes are deployed 3) A Speech Code involves a culturally distinctive Psychology, Sociology, and Rhetoric 4) The significance of speaking depends on the speech codes used by speakers and listeners to create and interpret their communication 5) The Terms, Rules, and Premises of a speech code are inextricably woven into speaking itself 6) The artful use of a speech code is a sufficient condition for Predicting, Explaining, and Controlling the form of discourse about the Intelligibility, Prudence, and, Morality of the communicative conduct - Speech code = “a historically enacted, socially constructed system of terms, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct.” - “Nacirema culture” - The substance of speech codes - Psychology, sociology, rhetoric - Interpretation of speech codes - Nacirema is the shorthand way of referring to close, open, supportive speech - Communication ritual - 1)  Initiation 2) Acknowledgement 3) Negotiation 4) Reaffirmation TEXTBOOK TERMS: ● Ethnography - the work of a naturalist who watches, listens, and records communicative conduct in its natural setting in order to understand a culture's complex web of meanings ● Speechcode - a historically enacted, socially constructed system of terms, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct ● Rhetoric - both the discovery of truth and a persuasive appeal ● Honor - a code that grants worth to an individual on the basis of adherence to community values ● Dignity - the worth of an individual has by virtue of being a human being ● Totemizing ritual - a careful performance of a structured sequence of actions that pays homage to a sacred object ● Performance ethnography - a research methodology committed to performance as both the subject and method of research, to researchers' work being performance, and to reports of fieldwork being actable 2) Tannen’s Genderelect Styles Tannen’s Genderelect Styles - Tannen is convinced that miscommunication occurs between men and women - Cross-cultural approach to gender differences - Women are more likely to seek human connection - Men are concerned mainly with status - Women value rapport talk, men value report talk - Rapport Talk vs. Report Talk - 1) Private Speaking vs. Public Speaking 2) Telling a story 3) Listening 4) Asking questions 5) Conflict TEXTBOOK TERMS: ● Genderlect - a term suggesting that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects ● Report talk - the typical monologic style of men, which seeks to command attention, convey information, and win arguments ● Rapport talk - the typical conversational style of women, which seeks to establish connection with others ● Cooperative overlap - a supportive interruption often meant to show agreement and solidarity with the speaker ● Tag question - a short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften the sing of potential disagreement or invite open, friendly dialogue ● Speech community - a community of people who share understandings about goals of communication, strategies for enacting those goals, and ways of interpreting communication ● Aha factor - a subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one's personal experience

3) Geertz & Pacanowsky’s Cultural Approach to Communication Geertz & Pacanowsky’s Cultural Approach to Communication  f organizational life - Culture as a metaphor o - Corporate culture has many meanings - surrounding environment that constrains a company’s freedom of action; refer to a quality or property of the organization - Organizational culture is not just another piece of the puzzle; it is the puzzle. From our point of view, culture is not something an organization has; a culture is something an organization is - What culture is; what culture is not - Culture is not whole or undivided - The corporate observer is one part scientist, one part drama critic - Thick description: what ethnographers do - Thick descriptions are powerful reconstructions, not just detailed observations. Most ethnographers realize that their task is to: - 1) Accurately describe talk and actions and the context in which they occur - 2) Capture the thoughts, emotions, and web of social interactions - 3) Assign motivation, intention, or purpose to what people say and do - 4) Artfully write this up so readers feel they’ve experienced the events - 5) Interpret what happened; explain what it means within this culture - Involve tracing and tracking; must include interpretation - Metaphors: taking language seriously - Metaphors can offer the ethnographer a starting place for accessing the shared meaning of a corporate culture - The symbolic interpretation of story - Stories that are told over and over provide a convenient window through which to view corporate webs of significance - Three types of narrative that dramatize organizational life = corporate stories, personal stories, collegial stories - Ritual: This is the way it’s always been and always will be - Some rituals are “texts” that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life TEXTBOOK TERMS: ● Culture - Webs of significance; systems of shared meaning ● Cultural performance - Actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others; an ensemble of texts. ● Ethnography- Mapping out social discourse; discovering who people within a culture think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it. ● Thick description - A record of the intertwined layers of common meaning that underlie what a particular people say and do ● Metaphor - Clarifies what is unknown or confusing by equating it with an image that’s more familiar or vivid. ● Corporate stories - Tales that carry management ideology and reinforce company policy ● Personal stories - Tales told by employees that put them in a favorable light. ● Collegial stories - Positive or negative anecdotes about others in the organization; descriptions of how things “really work.” ● Ritual - Texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life transitions.

4) Deetz’ Critical Theory of Communication Approach to Organizations Stanley Deetz’ Critical Theory of Organizations - In the corporate world, it is all about CONTROL. This extends outside of the workplace, as well. As this spreads into all ways of life it essentially COLONIZES the worker and his/her culture. - Traditionally, management seeks to control the communication, excluding the involvement of the worker, and in doing so, controls the culture. This tends to produce top-down communication. - The focus on control over all else, including profitability, is called MANAGERIALISM. - Managerialism is  the embodiment of corporate culture and is cultivated in the corporate institute by rewarding and promoting those who embrace it. - Control is accomplished through gaining worker CONSENT through systematically distorted communication, i n which the employees agree to work against their own best interests. - Control is also accomplished through a process of suppressing dissent, called DISCURSIVE CLOSURE. This is frequently manifest in the corporate environment through the establishment of rules which restrict dissent. - PARTICIPATION occurs when the employers are fully allowed to interact and express their thoughts. It is necessary to eliminate Mangerialism, and ultimately improves profitability. Textbook Notes: - Deetz views multinational corporations as the dominant force in society - more powerful than the church, state or family in their ability to influence the lives of individuals - Deetz wants to examine communication practices in organizations that undermine fully representative decision making and thus reduce the quality, innovation, and fairness of company policy - Deetz warns that as long as we accept the notion that communication is merely the transmission of information, we will continue to perpetuate corporate dominance over every aspect of our lives - Deetz contends that each line item is constitutive - created by corporate decision makers who have the power to make their decisions stick. What seems to be value-free information is really meaning in formation - In place of the information model o  f messages, Deetz presents a communication model t hat regards language as the principal medium through which social reality is created and sustained - CONSENT (managerial control) and PARTICIPATION (codeterminism) - Managerialism promotes worker consent through a process of systematically distorted communication - Deetz’ theory of communication is critical, but not just negative - While he strongly criticizes the managerial strategy of increasing control over workers, engineering their consent, and granting them free expression without giving them a voice in decisions, he also believes that joint, open decisions in the workplace are possible - One of the goals is stakeholder democracy - to reclaim the possibility of open negotiations of power - Stakeholders besides managers: investors, workers, consumers, suppliers, host communities, greater society and the world community TEXTBOOK TERMS: ● Corporate colonization - Encroachment of modern corporations into every area of life outside the workplace. ● Information model - A view that communication is merely a conduit for the transmission of information about the real world. ● Communicative model - A view that language is the principal medium through which social reality is created and sustained. ● Codetermination - Collaborative decision making; participatory democracy in the workplace. ● Managerialism - A systematic logic, set of routine practices, and ideology that values control over all other concerns. ● Consent - The process by which employees actively, though unknowingly, accomplish managerial interests in a faulty attempt to fulfill their own. ● Systematically distorted communication - Operating outside of employees’ awareness, a form of discourse that restricts what can be said or even considered ● Discursive closure - Suppression of conflict without employees realizing that they are complicit in their own censorship. ● Involvement - Stakeholders’ free expression of ideas that may, or may not, affect managerial decisions. ● Participation - Stakeholder democracy; the process by which all stakeholders in an organization negotiate power and openly reach collaborative decisions. ● PARC model - Politically attentive relational constructionism; a collaborative view of communication based in conflict.

5) Weick’s Information Systems Approach to Organizations Weik’s Information Systems Approach to Organizations - In order for organizations to be successful they need to operate in a manner which transforms Equivocal information into Unequivocal information  nough to handle the level of - For every organization, there exists a Requisite Variety of complexity and diversity: e equivocal information which it processes - Equivocacy is reduced  through a complicated array of interpersonal networks, where ultimately, all the members of an organization are linked in couplings ranging from tight to loose - The basic components of couplings are Double Interact loops, which are comprised of 3 *Hegelian) elements: Act, Response, Adjustment - For the entire organization, cultural evolution follows a similar three-stage process: Enactment followed by Selection which is then followed by Retention - “Ready. Fire. Aim.” - To alter anything, one  must first act; that action provides insights which allow for retrospective  sensemaking; the understanding gained from that sensemaking is then retained by the organization as a stabilized approach for operation - To Weick, the stasis of Retention can restrict  the organization from addressing needed change when situations change. The resulting lack of a good fit between the retained sensemaking and the new situational dynamics then required a new round of Enactment, Selection, Retention - “Embrace chaos” TEXTBOOK TERMS: ● n/a 6) Burke’s Dramatism Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism - Burke was interested in why messages are constructed the way they are and how that affects the message’s impact on its listener/reader - In order for an audience to be swayed by a message, CONSUBSTANTIATION must first take place between the communicator and his/her audience. Consubstantiation involves both the form and the c ontent of a message. - (Consubstantiation - in Catholicism the bread and wine turn into body of Christ; with other denominations, the bread and wine is symbolic; god and parishioner become one with god) - (Burke means that we are feeling like one with that person) - Life is drama, comprised of characters acting in a great play, and messages about it can be analyzed through a DRAMATISTIC PENTAD. This pentad is comprised of the ACT, SCENE, AGENT, AGENCY, and PURPOSE. - The relative emphasis with a communicator places on any of these elements shows the communciatorofirs focus his/her intended ________ - GOD TERMS and DEVIL TERMS are rhetorical word-tools used within a message to focus into what/who is good and bad . Examining these terms provides an insight into the persuasive tactics of the rhetorician. - The GUILT -REDEMPTION CYCLE is the plot of the whole play and human drama or the root of all rhetoric . We are motivated to act by others through guilt, which is created through symbolic interaction. - We can be redeemed from guilt through either VICTIMAGE or MORTIFICATION. By identifying either of these two routes, the rhetorician steers his/her audience to a chosen course of action. TEXTBOOKS TERMS: - Identification - The recognized common ground between speaker and audience, such as physical characteristics, talents, occupation, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes; consubstantiation. - Dramatistic pentad - A tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept his or her view of reality by using five key elements of the human drama—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose - God term - The word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are subservient. - Devil term - The word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as bad, wrong, or evil. - Guilt - Burke’s catchall term for tension, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, disgust, and other noxious feelings intrinsic to the human condition. - Mortification - Confession of guilt and request for forgiveness - Victimage - Scapegoating; the process of naming an external enemy as the source of all personal or public ills.

7) Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm - People are essentially story telling animals. We reconstruct the event of our lives into stories and share them with one another. All stories have a chronology with a beginning, middle, and an end. - People do not make decisions based on a rational-world p  aradigm, but rather a narrative paradigm - Stories are evaluated by all of us on the basis of whether they have NARRATIVE COHERENCE and NARRATIVE FIDELITY Textbook Notes: - Fisher doesn’t argue against any of these ideas, but he thinks that human communication reveals something more basic than rationality, curiosity, or even symbol-using capacity. He is convinced that we are narrative beings who “experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives, ...