chapter 26

The most interesting thing I found in this reading is that consumption is now a source of pleasure. This is an interesting take that I believe to be very true.

chapter 24

It's interesting that they compare Miss America to a goddess because when I first read this, I compared her to a provocateur. It's not that the Miss America women aren't real, but it's a naturally unattainable beauty. The amount of make up they wear and dieting they do is ridiculous. Also, they say Miss America does charity work and things as her "duties" after she is chosen. However, how often do we actually see what they do post competition? It says her duty is actually to function as an "icon for the American culture." However, is this really what most American's look like? Most Americans are not tall, skinny and flawlessly beautiful. Though, the reading does say that the cause used to be that Miss America was indeed an honor to be proud of and young girls did strive to be like this role model, unlike some of society's rather different role model women of today who are not as classy.

chapter 22

We as humans use symbolic terms to understand things we couldn’t necessarily comprehend without a representation through another form. There are three types of signs we use. One is an icon which is a resemblance, another is an index which is a casual connection we may make, and the last is a symbol which is a convention. We have to give symbols meaning and teach others and our society what they mean before they will work to communicate.

Icon: we recognize this as obama-resembles him 

Index: weather icons mean types of weather to us (this may be more of an icon)

Symbol: red cross-symbolizes safety, help, first aid, etc.

chapter 21

The most interesting part of chapter 21 to me, was the quote: “seemingly common matters, as William James reminds us, have important meaning for the religious mind.” This says a lot because when it talks about how before the days where we could or at least tried to explain everything, anything we did not understand was connected to God. Religion was the explanation that didn’t need explanation. This is probably why I’m atheist, because I have something in my genes that just wants an explanation for everything, I can’t help it. It’s interesting to think about because people still use symbols to connect them to a divine being, but it says that for people like me symbols are still important. This seemed obvious to me when I read it, however, I didn’t think of them as being important because they connect to an “unconscious part of my psyche.” I actually first thought of symbols being important to me for the use of communication on a broad level including advertising and even things like facebook. The idea of there being hidden meanings common things is interesting because we previously discussed how the things may only have meaning by the meanings we assign to them or associate with them. This could cause many common things to have a very different meaning for each individual person. I believe this is true. I somewhat think that Freud and others underestimate our ability to recognize the unconscious significance of our actions. I think now, I at least often over analyze what I do and say and what others do and say and what it might mean aside from the obvious meaning. I do agree though, that everything we do and common things we see everywhere are “loaded with symbolic significance.”


when you can't decide what to do...flip a coin. not because of where it will land, but because in that brief moment when it's in the air you realize what you're really wising for.
-manifest vs. latent functions of something

chapter 14

Dating all the way back to Aristotle, writers have agreed that in narrative, sequence is of great importance. In this case a narrative responds to the question “and then what happened?” The fully formed narrative has six common elements which are:

1.      Abstract- summary of the substance

2.      Orientation- time, place, context

3.      Complicating action- the sequence of events

4.      Evaluation- meaning of the action

5.      Resolution- what happens in the end

6.      Coda- returns perspective to present

Riessman says that our conversations are narratives or stories. She states that not all conversations are stories because some may be debates or statements but in most personal type of conversation there are stories brought into play. Bakhtin said that conversation involved thinking about past, present and future dialogue and now Reissman says there are these six additional steps involved as well. This shows even more so how language is a game and there are many rules and factors and strategies connected.

In our Terry Tate commercial:

1.      Abstract- the new Reebok program at Feltcher & Sons

2.      Orientation- typical day at the office after much progress has already been made with Terry Tate being at the business

3.      Complicating action- the program was established, Terry Tate enforced rules and productivity increased at the office

4.      Evaluation- by bringing a sports/athletic attitude into the workplace people can develop skills of determination and teamwork

5.      Resolution- the boss just loves Terry Tate and highly supports Reebok’s plan

6.      Coda- Reebok supports a team-player, strong and determined attitude at all times, even at work, not just while playing a sport

chapter 13

Dialogism is, in Bakhtin’s theory, an over simplification but it’s relatively true. It infers that dialogue is communication. Dialogue is when we mean the two-way aspect of communication. When we think of a conversation between people, what was said, is said and will be said all come into play. We must take into consideration beliefs, surrounding situation and the means by which we’re having this conversation. All of these elements were discussed by other theories in previous chapters.
Bakhtin also talks about a theory called intertextuality which is the notion that almost all “text” being produced currently ties into or has a relationship with others previously created. Sometimes we’re not as aware of what previous works are influencing our current works be it in terms of style or content. However, it can also be intentional to include intertextuality.

My group’s ad (Terry Tate Office Linebacker) includes a lot of dialogue especially between Terry Tate and the employees of Feltcher & Sons. It also includes a little intertextuality with phrases such as “when it’s game time, it’s pain time” and when the boss says “outside the box thinking.”

chapter 12

The Art models in chapter 12 are a simple way of mapping out the pieces of a work of art of any sort and its influences. Going further than Abrams model, Berger’s model points out that art, the artist, the audience, America (or society) and the medium are all connected. These elements all influence one another. The medium is in the middle (probably just because it’s the only word that doesn’t start with the letter ‘A’) however even though Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” Berger disagrees. He does however say that the medium is still very important and influential. Art or communication in a sense, in Berger’s model, does not have specific effects but he’s just saying that communication does have effects and they often come from and further influence the other elements in the model.

I wonder, why did Berger use the word “America” instead of “society” when so much of today’s art of many sorts is highly influenced by other countries especially suffering ones, ones with sports teams, etc. aside from the fact that the word just starts with ‘A’. Wouldn’t he have been better off not losing the meaning and just having a word that started with another letter?

chapter 10

The communication model according to Jakobson involves six factors. The addresser is the sender of information and the addressee is the receiver of this information. The message is the information conveyed and the contact is the means by which it is conveyed. The context is similar to the relevance theory meaning that it deals with what you know and how you interpret the given information but often has to do with the situation or surroundings. The code then, is the framework of the conversation such as words, sounds and gestures and the rules that govern them. Each of these refers to a different function of language. All the pieces work together and do not function without one another. Based on this model, Scholes agrees that in any communication there is a message being conveyed by a sender to a receiver. He goes on to say that these three obvious parts of the communication model depend on those that we don’t recognize as easily. We need the contact, code and context for everything to come together as conversation. Context means we much take into consideration the surrounding situation at the given time. When reading Shakespeare, we have to keep in mind that he often repeated lines of dialogue two or three times in slightly different wording because the theaters his plays were performed in were so large. There were many people at these shows and it was often loud. So that people wouldn't miss an important line or part in the play, Shakespeare wrote lines multiple times in different wording. Now, this may seem redundant but in its intended context, it makes sense. In addition, there is what we call the emotive which is the expressive function which can involve attitude and possibly tone. So what this means is that the addresser will always send a message which is received by the addressee but the message must be interpreted and may not end up with the same meaning attached to it, the code must be the same for the message to be correctly interpreted. This is why mass media can cause problems and misinterpretations because not everyone is operating under the same code. Jakobson also talks about referential functions of language which deals with the denotation or cognitive parts of a message as opposed to the emotive or emotional attitude about what’s being conveyed.

chapter 11

The Lasswell formula is a way to describe an act of communication that involves simple questions such as “who?” and “says what?” What Laswell has is a formula which is a statement that expresses a fundamental truth or principle. Jakobson had the model of communication. A model is an abstract way of representing the processes that occur in the world. Many of Jakobson’s elements answer the questions in Laswell’s formula such as “who?” would be the addresser and “says what?” would refer to the message. However, models tend to simplify and generalize things, which is true of the Laswell formula. It assumes that the communication is always based on influencing the receiver. However, there is what’s called phatic communication which is to express emotions not communicate information. The questions is does all communication have a desired effect?

chapter 8

Anthropology is the study of culture. Culture is the beliefs, art, laws, morals, and customs of a society. Our brains do things unconsciously that we’re not aware of which is what gives us the need to study these elements. Social scientists want to understand why we develop certain habits, likes and dislikes and things like morals. We apparently assign certain forms to content, which Levi-Strauss believes are the same among all minds past, present and future. He’s saying that there are unconscious structures that we all have and if we were to discover the form of these structures we could theoretically understand why our thinking and communication develops the way it does. 

Is Levi-Strauss saying that our unconscious structures are all the same? Even if we’re cavemen they’re the same as the structures in our civilized brains?

chapter 7

Mary Douglass and Claude Levi-Strauss discuss the relationship of language’s elements and its overall structure. Structuralism studies deep structure in phenomenon like language with its basic units and the way they’re assembled. Like Freud, they say an important part is the existence of paired opposites, which are pairs of things we usually tend to put together as being relational opposites such as hot and cold or night and day. There are three types of social communication according to Douglass; kinship, economy and language. They argue that if we could compare the structures of these three forms of communication we can truly understand how we think and act as humans in a society. Structuralists say that the relationship between the elements of these are like a myth.

So if we know language is shaped by paired opposites and this form or structure with is pieces, what exactly are they trying to “uncover” or figure out?

chapter 6

Basil Bernstein argues that there are two different types of code we may speak in, Elaborated code and Restricted code. Elaborated code involves complex grammar and a wide vocabulary as well as complex sentence structure and elaboration. Conversely, restricted code uses simple grammar and sentence structure with a smaller vocabulary and context clues to convey the meaning. Elaborated code is more logical while restricted code is more emotional. Why this is important is because it is through the code we learn that we take in the world around us. Generally, the restricted code is limited and can hinder some from expanding. The “culture of poverty” refers to those who may have grown up in a restricted code setting and have a simple perspective on things. They do not broaden their minds and become locked out of long-range thoughts. This feels exactly like a “code” to people who may have been brought up in elaborated code.

In our ad, the Boss and CEO of Felcher speaks in elaborated code. It’s based on logical representations of the business environment and he uses a wide range of words that include economic terms. However, Terry Tate speaks in restricted code. He uses emotional noises such as “woo” and “ugh!” Also, he uses references such as “when it’s game time” where we have an inference of what that means based on the context of his uniform and what we know about him as being a football player. This is also an example of relevance theory. The differences shown here also mirror the hierarchy principle while showing how middle class people such as the boss would use an elaborated code while a lower class or rather less professional person may speak in a restricted code.