Notes (1) - Conceptual Issues in Communication PDF

Preview

Summary

Conceptual Issues in Communication...

Description

Week 1: Introduction to Theory and to Keywords Theory - Origin= Contemplation, spectacle, mental conception - Statement that tries to explain something Fact -

Known to be true

Opinion - Beliefs based on grounds short of proof -

Theory as a way of understanding and planning Generalizing and relating a situation based off an old one to predict future outcomes

Evaluating Theories 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Scope- Depth of theory Testability- imperacle theorie, falsifiability Parsimony- simple, not unnecessarily complex Utility- usability Heurism- does it provide insights an expandability

Perspectives for Studying Theories Theories reflect points of views - But not necessarily false or wrong -Different theories may not be incompatible -Limited focus and scope

Keywords: Language

Communication Studies 1. Language = Micro Level - Messages, talk, texts 2. Media = Middle Level - Press, radio, social media 3. Culture = Meta Level - Class, regional, national

Three Theories of Language 1. Reflective: Language reflects meaning - Nomenclature 2. Intentional: What author or speaker intends 3. Constructionist: Language is social = constructs reality - Through language we give everything around us meaning Materiality of Language Spoken words are a process of human activity using only immediate, constructive, physical resources. Written words with their continuing but not necessarily direct relation to speech, are a form of material production Primary Resources of Communication ● Human Body ● Non-human objects and forces are adapted and shaped by humans for communication Historical Semantics (Raymond Williams) - 131 keywords: the record of inquiry into a vocabulary - To show language does not just simply reflect the process of society and history - Some important social and historical processes occur within language Five most important words ● ●

●

Culture, Class, Art, Industry, Democracy ‘Culture is ordinary’ - Ideal (the best that has been thought and said) - Documentary (products/programmes) - Way of life (Anthropological) Culture ‘Shared Meaning’

The term communication referred to shared information for example sending a letter, however definition has changed over time and has been put into sub categories of communication Transportation and communication virtually meant the same thing

Keywords “COMMON” Initial piece of grounds that peasants and ordinary people could live and use its resources Language = Common ● ● ●

Since language mediates concepts, reality, objects between members of a culture Therefore we must share language to represent and exchange meaning Common language allows us to correlate concepts and ideas with certain written words, spoken sounds, or visual images

Communication = essentially social affair - Lets us share rules, customs, habits (which correlates to the construction of culture and society) - Integral to all society and forms of organization Mass Communications ● Thought of ‘in too functional and too secondary a way’ ● Large crowds and audiences before ‘mass comms’ but audiences are now mostly dispersed and small ● There are no masses, only ways of seeing people as masses Week 2: January 21 Delgamuukw Decision 1997 - Narrative as a legal case of representation - Traditional oral stories as = to written/printed titles and legal treaties - Specifically to first nations land claims “Narrative: Evolution ● Narratio = The part of speech or discourse in which the facts are presented ●

●

Narrative - A narrative story, told by a narrator about [connected] events which may be factual, fictional or mythical Story - An account of imaginary events

Aristotle - Rhetorical Analysis - Used to uncover probable truth in areas where there is no certainty - A practice A theory (for critical analysis)

●

●

The 1st Communication Theory 1. The art of persuasive speaking or writing 2. Language designed to persuade or impress (often with the implication on insincerity or exaggeration) Yet, human communication relies upon an assumption of sincerity without which we could not successfully engage in the most basic communicative act

Aristotle: Three Speech Situations = Three types of speech ●

● ●

Forensic or Judicial - Past: to determine guilt or innocence Deliberative - Future: to determine the best course of action Epideictic - Present: Praise or blame, often at public events

The Five Phases of Working on a Speech (Or Writing) 1. Inventio (Invention) - Questions that “address where arguments come from or how orators “invent” arguments to particular purposes” - Gathering 2. Dispositio (Arrangement) - This rhetorical phase explores how discourse is organised - By what logic does it support its ultimate claims? - How is the organisation of the work related to the argument that it advances

- What effect might that have on audiences - Might this feature persuade us that some things are more important than others 3. Elocutio (Style) - It is more important to consider style as an important part of the relationship between form and content - ‘Discourses are frequently persuasive on the basis of their style, which..is related to context’ - Academic essay writing that eschews using the first person singular, for example, versus ‘agony aunt’ - News is highly ritualized 4. Memoria (Memory) - The access that a speaker has to the content of his or her speech - Effort were made to appear to be speaking extemporaneously (off the cuff) 5. Actio (Delivery) - The act of presenting the speech - If we examine a speaker’s ‘ethos’ to speak on a subject, it can be due to the ‘inventio’ of an argument, but also party it could be in the way the speaker delivers the talk itself Means Of Persuasion ● Ethos - Emotional appeals based upon the character of author or speaker i.e Credibility ● Pathos - Is about appealing to the powerful emotions, usually contrasted, as in fear vs love or joy vs despair ( not manipulation but persuasion) ● Logos - ‘Word, speech, reasoning’ Syllogism ● Formal structure of logical reasoning - Moves statement about all cases (Major Premise) - Via statement about all cases (Minor premise) - T statement about specific cases (Conclusion) ● Syllogisms are concluded Enthymeme- (Three tiered argument)- is an informally-stated ‘syllogism’ which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion - He omitted part must be clearly understood Metaphor ● Implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words, the words are used not in their literal sense, but in one analogous to it ● “Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player”, That struts and frets his hour upon that stage.” Shakespeare, Macbeth

Communication Context ● ●

● ● ●

Context as a rhetorical situation - Purposeful communication Exigency - Rhetoric responds to exigence.. It is crucial to identify the exigence for the rhetoric at hand Kairos: ‘timelines’ of persuasive text Phronesis: ‘Appropriateness of a particular persuasive text’ These two concepts link text, context and audience together

Audience - We see texts as ‘positioning audiences in a particular way’ - What was the assumption being made in the text? Choice of words, metaphor, etc? Constraints - Who are you addressing and how do you reach them

Context of Supertext ● Communication History - Shaped by previous communications ● Communication Genres - E.g. Us political convention speeches Context as Discursive Formation ● Epistemological context ● Systems ‘governed by the rules that determine’ - What can be discussed - Who may discuss it - How it must be discussed Week 3: January 28 Structuralism, Semiotics, and Myth Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) - Father of modern linguistics - Ancient and indo european languages - Rejects previous theories of language (e.g. reflectionist) - ‘Structural Linguistics’, ‘Structuralism’

Structuralism (Langue: The language system, Parole: The act of speaking) ● Looks for laws, structures, and conventions that govern how people communicate in society ● Langage: Universal underlying structure that enables language to operate as a linguistic communication system ● Synchronic ● Diachronic ‘Signs’ Signifier is the sound image The signified is the concept Object is the specific item ● Sign = Signifier + Signified ● Signifier = Sound-image ● Signified = Concept ●

Signifier & Signified= “Abstract mental entities”

Linguistic signs = Four characteristics 1. Arbitrary Nature of the Sign (Tree) - Based on convention - Fixed by rule 2. Linear Nature of the Signifier: Language= (One way communication ‘linear direction’) Sequentially structured via - Time (Oral/Auditory) - Or space (Writing) 3. Immutability ● Appear ‘fixed’ as if ‘chosen by language and no other’ ● “Inherent conservation of language” 4. Mutability ● Because it's arbitrary (based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.) ● Only collective (not individual) can change language, although mostly not intentional ● ‘More or less rapid change of linguistic signs’ ● ‘Principle of change is based upon the principle of continuity Heuristics ● Structuralist Anthropology Claude Levi-Strauss(1908-2009) - Society structured around ‘binary oppositions’ - (the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical

opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off_ -

Uncover meanings in any society by uncovering patterns & categories of opp’ns

-

Binary Opps: deep underlying structures spoken unconsciously by members of society E.g human/non-human Nature/culture Major influence on film studies

Semiotics - Aka ‘semiology’ - Semiology = ‘The study of signs’ (Greek) - The scientific study of communication and sign systems, the way people understand phenomena and organize them mentally, the ways in which they devise means for transmitting that understanding and for sharing it with others - Mis-communication is as important as principle communication ●

Language is a system of signs - Language = Langue = Parole ● Language is form not ‘substance’ ● Langue = rules & conventions - Necessary to study the system of rules and constraints Fjngjngf

Signs ● Icon: Signifies through Likeness (1.) Iconic = resembles what it represents(Cat) ● Index: Signifies through physical connection (2.) Indexical = direct link ●

Symbol

Linguistic sign is arbitrary - Things mean what they are because it's not something else (A cat is not a map) - dIfferent in distinction to other signs

A Sign = Signifier = (Verbal/Visual vehicle) (e.g. ‘cat’) Signified = (Mental Concept) (e.g. of ‘cat’, ‘catness’

Codes ● Meaning of signs are understood in relation to each other ● Codes organize the particular meanings of signs in a particular arrangement for ‘context’ E.g. colours - Traffic lights - Weddings - Funerals

Paradigm/Syntagm ● Paradigm = Choice/Selection (Vertical axis) (Choices within the syntagm) (Visual meaning) ● Syntagm = Sequence/Combination (Horizontal axis) (Sentences) (conceptual meaning) ●

Meaning = ‘always the result of the interplay of relationships of selection and combination made possible by the underlying structure’

Mythology ● Roland Barthes (1915-1980) ● Classical letters, philology, grammar, lexicology, sociology ● Wrote for papers/magazines ● Structuralism and semiotics to post-structuralism Semiology + Ideology ●

Semiology - ‘Science of forms’ ● Ideology - ‘Historical science’ ● Barthes ‘myths’ - Not the same as ancient Dsfjfnrjfre ● ● ● ●

Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message Myth = ‘a type of speech’ - ‘Chosen by history; it cannot possibly evolve from the nature of beings’ Form not content ---> a mode of signification - (The process of meaning paking) Myth arises out of the 2nd or 3rd order of signification

-

Literal meaning ‘Use of language to mean what it says’ ‘Obvious meaning of the sign’ E.g. a cat = a cat E.g. a rose = a red flower with thorns

● ● ●

Connotation (noun): (9verb = connotes or connotates) Associations produced b the first or denotative order of signification’ Produces associative, expressive or evaluative meanings’

1st Order = Denotation 2nd Order = Connotation 2nd (or 3rd) Order = Myth

Week 4: January 4 - Ideology Ideological Analysis Why? ● ● ●

Do the media promote a ‘dominant ideology’ or an ‘oppositional ideology’? Do they provide a ‘worldview ideology or ‘contradictory messages’? Media = sites of (dispute over) representations - Not single text, but across media - Scholars media representations with ‘real world’ - Movement challenges media or representation

● ●

Not just media How is ideology communicated and represented and communicated via language and discourse Communicative practices? Through everyday rituals?

● ●

‘Ideology’ (1796) ● Absolute monarchy ● Age of Enlightenment ● The French revolution (1789-1799) - Political Spectrum: left to right ● Nation-State Antoine Destutt de Tracy 1754-1836 ● ● ● ● ●

Philosopher Ideology = Science of ideas - Like any other science Enlightenment thinking - Replace religion Education system Organization of intellectuals working for the state

Karl Marx: ‘Idealism’ vs ‘Materialism’ ●

● ●

Negative 1. Connected to idealism (Standing Hegel on his head) 2. Connected to ‘uneven distribution of resources & power in society’ “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” “If an ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical

●

“It is no the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

The Communist Manifesto ● ● ● ● ●

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Commissioned Written before 1848 revolutions Only the bible rivals circulation Interest increases greatly everytime industrial, social & political unrest grows

●

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and vulnerable prejudices and opinions

1. Forces of production 2. Social relations ● History - Ancient Societies based on slavery: (Masters and slaves) - Feudal societies based on land: (Lords and Subjects) - Capitalist Societies based upon capital: (Bourgeoisie [Capitalists] & Proletarians [Workers]) ● Ideologies based w/in social classes - Asense of coherence & community - To promote objective, material interests 1. Bourgeois = Capitalist - Dominant ideology bec economic power 2. Proletariat = Socialist

● ● ● ● ●

‘Vulgar’ Marxism Base (economy) determines Superstructure (laws, politics, culture) Mechanistic Deterministic

● ● ● ●

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) Ideology = ‘False consciousness’ But → no poss. Of alt. Or opp’nal forms to challenge dominant ideology Williams (1973) critical but sees it as a dynamic mediating process

Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) ● Louis Althusser (1918-1990) ● ‘Structuralist Marxist Philosopher Rejects - Base/superstructure formulation - ‘Econominism or ‘vulgar marxism’ ● ‘Relative autonomy’ of superstructure from the base ● ‘Ideological practices’ are relatively autonomous

Emo Cogito Sum= I think therefore I am “Ideology has very little to do with ‘consciousness’ -- it is profoundly unconscious

Week 5: February 11 “The Frankfurt School” Critical Theory

Raymond Williams Keywords: Culture 1945: Art, Class, Culture, Democracy, Industry 1. Ind & abstract noun: gen. Process of intell. Spiritual & aesthetic dev’ment 2. Ind. noun: ‘a way of life’ 3. Ind. & abstract noun: ‘works & practices of intell. & esp. Artistic activity -

Conceptual use indiff. Disciplines = material vs symbolic production

Culture vs Anarchy ● ● ● ●

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) Poet & cultural critic Art= Great art, literature, music, sculpture, painting, theatre, etc Culture - Repository of human values - Bes that has been thought and said

Culture vs Civilisation & Democracy ● ●

Civilisation= a threat Massive growth in population, urbanisation, industrialisation

●

Democracy - Strongly unfavourable term, until the 19th early 20th c ● Two basic def’ns of democracy - Proletarian/socialist -A former popular class rule - Bourgeois/capitalist Freud (1856-1939) ● Rational, modern society un ● Most people do not want freedom because freedom comes with responsibility and most people are frightened by it The Frankfurt School ● Western Marxism: 1920s - Frankfurt plus Gramsci, Althrusser, Brecht, Lukacs ● Why did working class not rise up ● ‘Culture’ not part of superstructure (i.e. Marx) - Relative Autonomy ● ‘Culture” = site of struggle ●

‘Institute for social research’ In Frankfurt (1923) - NY after hitler came to power 1933 - Columbia University - Practical & theoretical work

Immanent Critique: ● Measures society against its own ideals & aspirations ●

Immanent - Cultural practices & beliefs that typify exp. & attitudes of avg. individual within a given society (eg 18 = vote, 19 = drinking) 1. Describes what ‘social structure’ claims to be 2. Then “proceeds by unveiling the true machinations of the system, revealing conspicuously hidden contradictions therein” Theodor Wisengrund Adorno (1903-1969) ● Scholar & trained as composer ● Standardization, Repetition, Pseudo-individualization - Consumption is passive obedient & easily manipulated

High Culture vs Popular culture High art = autonomous art = ‘functionless” means it cant be harnessed to ● ●

Conservatives/Elites see “Pop culture” as threat to authority Versus Frankfurt School see it as a means for doomination, social control & even ‘false consciousness’

Five Key Themes 1. Individuality - Culture Industry reproduces society - An individual has to be produced by the society in which it lives (economic and social apparatus) - Individuals are made to think they are an individual ● Pseudo-Individuality - The capitalist mode of production needs the ‘individual’ -> ‘produced’ via the ideology of “individualism” 2. Relation of Leisure & work time - ‘Strain & boredom’ at work -> ‘avoidance of effort’ in leisure time - ‘Leisure time’ organized the same way as industrialized organized ‘work time’ - “Makes unbearable conditions bearable 3. Culture as commodity - Culture in its commodification process changes the culture elements into a uniform system - Radio, music, film, magazines, newspapers, theatres 4. Homogeneity - A quality or state of all being the same - Why is homogeneity desirable, why stand out - ‘Any trace of spontaneity..is controlled and absorbed’ 5. Culture as ideology - “Something is provided by all, so that none may escape” - Everyone receives something from the culture industry that makes people believe they are individual - “The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry” - Does not stimulate consciousness but contributes further to alienation A Few Criticisms •(1) Exp. of fascism& post-WWIshapesview of comm’n & culture •(2) ignore diff. in musical types & styles •(3) ignore diff. contexts for consumption •(4) ‘too totalising’

●

High or “authentic” culture = - “Utopian function of religion: to keep alive the human desire for a better world beyond the confines of the present”...