Chapter Summaries, Exercises, Discussion Questions, and Web Resources Chapter One Communication Theory and Scholarship Chapter

Outline Theory provides a set of useful tools for seeing new and useful things, a systematic way of looking. The study of communication has a lengthy and respectable academic history. A. Communication has been studied since antiquity. B. Academic interest in communication became an especially popular subject following World War I. 1. Advances in technology, industrialization and literacy made communication a topic of concern. 2. The rise of communication technologies such as telephone, radio and later television and communication satellites helped spur this interest. 3. The interest was further promoted by popular twentieth century philosophies of progressivism and pragmatism. 4. Political and social events in the middle of the past century brought about a keen interest in propaganda, public opinion, media and other communication concerns. 5. The rise of social sciences such as psychology and sociology in the twentieth century has given impetus to the study of communication. 6. Researchers in most fields consider communication as a secondary process. 7. In recent years many have recognized that communication is pivotal to all human experience and have emphasized it above other issues. 8. The field of communication is characterized by its focus on communication as the central topic. 9. Presently most schools of higher education have departments of either communication, speech communication, and/or mass communication although the subject still remains eclectic and multidisciplinary. C. Contemporary European and American communication studies have been quite different. 1. With some exceptions, U.S. studies have emphasized scientific, objective studies, while European studies have been more interpretive, historical, cultural and critical shaped to a great extent by Marxism. 2. While there has been a historic tension between European and American approaches there has recently been increasing intermingling among the two branches. 19

There are also differences between Eastern and Western approaches to communication. 1. Eastern theories focus on wholeness and unity, while Western approaches tend to be analytical. 2. Western approaches have a bias toward the individual, purpose, and thought, while Eastern ones view human experience as the unplanned and natural outcomes of events and emphasize feeling and spirituality. 3. In the West, communication is a focus on verbal symbols (language and speech), while Eastern approaches tend to mistrust and downplay this feature. 4. Relationships in the West are viewed as interactions between separate individuals while relationships in the East are based more on role, social position and status. 5. Like all distinctions, the Eastern-Western division should be viewed with caution. Communication theory is any attempt to describe or explain the communication process. It is a construction of what communication involves based on systematic observation. The term communication theory can refer to a single theory or be applied to a body of theories that describe and/or explain communication. A theory is the product of human development and discussion. Different people see different things and present different ways of knowing. Therefore, theories vary in terms of how they were generated, the kind of research used, the style in which they are presented and the aspect of communication they address. A body of theory provides a glimpse of a moment in an evolving history of ideas, within a community of scholars. It identifies the primary interest of work. Provides a set of standards for how they should proceed. It changes over time. It introduces new ideas and ways of seeing. Leading communication theories constantly evolve. Leading theories have staying power and are not easily abandoned. Some become classics because they have such an important and lasting influence on scholars. They are most often produced through collaboration, extension and elaboration. At the heart of developing theories is the process of inquiry, the systematic study of experience that leads to understanding. The first stage is asking questions of definition, or fact, or value. The second stage is observation by various methods. The third stage is constructing answers, the stage usually referred to as theory.

D.

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Theory construction is a circular process where each stage affects, and is affected, by the other. Methods of inquiry can be grouped into three broad forms of scholarship. Science emphasizes objectivity, standardization and replication. Humanities emphasize subjectivity seeking creative interpretations. Social science is a curious blend of the two that focuses on human beings as the object of study. The study of communication is a social science because it blends science and humanities. Communication is a social science because it focuses on human beings as the object of study. A major philosophical issue facing social science is the degree to which scientific explanations of human behavior can be reached without consideration of the humanistic knowledge of the observed person. Some theories of communication have more of a scientific weight while others have more of humanistic emphasis. Communication is often represented in contextual levels, broad overlapping areas in which communication takes place. Five levels are often employed. Interpersonal communication refers to interaction between individuals usually in face-to-face, private settings. Group communication refers to communication in small groups, often of a decision-making nature. Public communication or rhetoric, focuses on public presentations of discourse. Organizational communication refers to communication within system networks, often in formal organizations. Mass communication refers to communication across broad publics, usually with the help of media. However, arranging communication in this manner reinforces a tendency to think of these levels as different and discrete when they are really little more than an organizing tool. Communication theories can also be divided by conceptual structure. Some theories deal with the content and form of messages. Some address communicators as individuals or as participants in social relationships. Others concentrate on levels or members of cultural communities. Some emphasize contexts and situations. Exercises 1. Choose a theory from the text. What additional questions does this theory suggest? What kinds of observations might you make to answer these questions? 2. Create a definition of communication and show how it is useful. Describe how open or restrictive the scope of your definition is. What would you count as communication and what would not?

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3. Go through the text and find two theories representing the scientific and humanistic approaches, respectively. What makes these theories different? Did you have trouble discriminating scientific from humanistic theories? Why or why not? 4. Interview three social scientists about what constitutes a social science. How are their answers similar and different? How do they resemble or differ from the characterization of social science given in the text? 5. Look at a dictionarys definitions of communication? Describe what features of communication it emphasizes and which features it ignores. Indicate the limitations of the dictionarys definition. 6. Write an argument for an instructor to use the first day of a communication theory course to persuade students that communication theory is valuable to study. Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Do you think that communication, as a field, is any more fragmented than other disciplines in the humanities or social sciences, such as history, psychology, or sociology? 2. In what ways is the study of Communication a science and in what ways is it one of the humanities. 3. Look at John Powerss intellectual structure of the communication field. In what ways does your departments curriculum cover or fail to cover this structure? 4. The definition of theory in Chapter One is very broad. How useful is this definition? Redefine theory in a narrower way appropriate to theories of communication. 5. Which traditions of communication scholarship are mostly humanistic and which are mostly scientific? Why? Are any of the traditions difficult or impossible to classify in this way? Why or why not? Suggested Web Links Professional Communication Organizations International Communication Association: (http://www.icahdq.org/) National Communication Association: (http://www.natcom.org/) American Communication Association: (http://www.americancomm.org/) Western States Communication Association: (http://www.westcomm.org/) Central States Communication Association: (http://www.csca-net.org/) Eastern Communication Association: (http://www.as.wvu.edu/~mbb/eca.htm) Southern States Communication Association: (http://ssca.net/)

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General Resources Communication Institute for Online Scholarship. A vast resource of information, journal abstracts discussion lists, etc., related to communication. Many services require a paid subscription: (http://www.cios.org/) Communication Theory, the premier refereed journal for the topic: (http://ct.oupjournals.org/current.shtml) Communication Theory from Encyclopedia Britannica. A basic description communication theory: (http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?eu=386569&query=communication&ct= ) Martin Ryders Communication Theory Links. A nice collection of links to online information about a variety of sub-genres within communication studies: (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/comm_theory.html)

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Chapter Two The Idea of Theory Chapter Outline I. Theories help us see the world in an organized and synthesized form that reveals patterns and connections among the data. A. Theories help guide us in what we observe and also in how to observe. B. They enable us to make predictions about outcomes and effects. C. They help in communicating knowledge. In its broadest sense, the term theory refers to an organized set of concepts, explanations, and principles of some aspect of human experience. A. All theories are abstractions, focusing on certain things while ignoring others. B. All theories are constructions created by people and not ordained from above. 1. It is a way of looking at, organizing and representing the facts. 2. It is a lens one uses in observation rather than a mirror of nature. C. Because they are constructions it is wiser to question a theorys usefulness than its truthfulness. There are four basic elements of theory. A. Philosophic assumptions. 1. Issues of epistemology deal with the nature of knowledge, how we know what we claim to know. a) One epistemological concern is to what extent can knowledge exist before experience. b) A second is to what extent can knowledge be certain. (1) Universalists believe they are seeking immutable and absolute knowledge. (2) Relativists contend what we can know is filtered through our own perceptions, experiences, and theories and are never static. c) A third is by what process does knowledge arise. (1) Rationalism suggests knowledge arises out of the sheer power of the human mind. (2) Empiricism states that knowledge arises in perception. (3) Constructivism holds that people create knowledge in order to function in the world. (4) Social constructionism posits that knowledge is product of group and cultural experiences. d) A fourth is whether knowledge is best conceived in parts or wholes. (1) Gestaltists take a holistic approach. (2) Analysts believe that knowledge consists of understanding how parts operate separately. e) A fifth is to what extent is knowledge explicit. 24

II.

III.

2.

3.

Some claim that knowledge is that which is explicitly stated. (2) Others hold that much of knowledge is tacit. Philosophic issues of ontology deal with the nature of being and goes hand in hand with epistemology. a) One ontological question is to what extent do humans make real choices. (1) Determinists hold that behavior is caused by a multitude of prior conditions and that humans are basically reactive and passive. (2) Pragmatists claim that people plan their behavior to meet future goals. b) A second issue is whether human behavior is best understood in terms of states or traits? (1) Traits are fairly stable dimensions. (2) States are more temporary conditions that affect people. c) A third issue is whether human experience is primarily individual or social. (1) Individual focuses on behavior as being an individualistic experience. (2) Others believe that humans cannot be understood apart from their social relationships. d) A fourth ontological issue is to what extent is communication contextual. (1) Some hold that human life is best understood by looking at universal factors. (2) Others contend that behavior is richly contextual and cannot be generalized. Philosophic issues of axiology deal with values. a) One axiological issue is whether theory can be value free. b) A related value issue is to what extent does the practice of inquiry influence that which is studied? c) Another axiological issue concerns the aim of scholarship. (1) Should it be designed to achieve change? (2) Or should it be designed to reveal knowledge without intervention? d) Another issue addressed by axiology deals with the extent scholarship should be directed toward achieving social change. e) Two general positions polarize these issues. (1) Value-conscious scholarship is based on the assumption that theories cannot be value-free. (2) Value-free scholarship is based on the assumption that theories can be objective and void of the scholars personal views.

(1)

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B.

IV.

Concepts are the building blocks of theories. 1. Concepts are the terms and definitions we use in theories. 2. They tell us what the theorist is looking at and what is considered important. 3. Theories that stop at the conceptual level and provide just a list of categories without explaining how they relate are called taxonomies. C. The best theories go beyond taxonomies and include explanations. 1. Explanations describe patterns and regularities and provide accounts for why certain things occur. 2. There are many types of explanations but two of the most common are causal and practical. a) In causal, events are connected where one variable is an outcome or result of the other. b) In practical, actions are considered to be goal directed designed to achieve a future state. D. Principles are guidelines included in only a selected class of theories that enables one to interpret an event, make judgments about what is happening and decide how to act. 1. A principle identifies a situation or event. 2. A principle includes a set of norms or values. 3. A principle asserts a connection between a range of actions and possible consequences. Nomothetic theory and practical theory are two theoretical ideals each with their own research modes, assumptions and different approaches to concepts, explanations and principles. A. Nomothetic theory, the dominant approach in the experimental natural sciences that has made inroads in the social sciences as well, seeks universal or general laws. 1. Traditional science, known as the hypothetico-deductive method forms the variable-analytic tradition and is based on four processes. a) Developing questions. b) Forming hypotheses that are falsifable, framed in such a way that potential rejection is possible c) Testing the hypotheses. d) Formulating theory. e) Control and manipulation are operations designed to eliminate extraneous influences and to include necessary ones in testing. 2. Epistemologically, nomothetic theory tends to espouse empiricist and rationalist ideas treating reality as distinct from the human investigator, privileging objectivity and proffering precise operational definitions. 3. Axiologically, nomothetic theories take a value-free stance.

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4.

B.

Onotologically, scientific theories tend to assume that behavior is basically determined by and responsive to biology and the environment. 5. Operationism means that the concepts in traditional science are precisely defined and stated in ways that explain how to observe them. 6. Measurement, the quantifiable detection of differences, for a nomothetic theory is evaluated in terms of two criteria. a) Validity, the degree to which an observation measures what it is supposed to measure. b) Reliability, the degree to which the construct is measured accurately and consistently. 7. Explanations are almost exclusively causal in nomothetic theories. a) Causal explanations posit a linear relationship between cause and effect. b) They are expressed in terms of covering laws that enable researchers to make predictions, statements of expected outcomes about future events. 8. In practice, realizing that absolutely universal statements are unrealistic, few social scientists seek covering laws but instead pursue statistical relationships among variables and laws based on probabilistic principles. Practical theory represents the opposite ideal from nomothetic theory. It, is designed to capture and understand the rich differences among situations and alternative courses of goal-oriented actions. 1. Practical theory is premised on five tenets. a) Action is voluntary. Humans are in large part selfmotivating and therefore their future behavior is hard to predict based on outside variables. b) Knowledge is socially created. Communication theories are created by communication the very process they are designed to explain. c) Theories are historical reflecting the settings and times in which they are created. As times changes, so will theories. d) Theories affect the reality they are covering for theorists are part of the world they create. e) Theories are value laden and never neutral. 2. Epistemologically, practical theory assumes people take an active role in creating knowledge. a) Knowledge does not arise out of discovery but from the interaction between knower and known. b) These theories tend to be humanistic and subjective and therefore eschew universal or covering laws. 3. Ontologically, practical theory assume that individuals create meanings, have intentions, make choices and act in situations in deliberate ways.

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V.

Axiologically most practical theories tend to be value-conscious. Acknowledging that important concepts cannot be measured operationally, concepts in most practical theories are used as a kind of organizing framework to classify the dynamic interpretations and actions of people in real situations. 6. Explanations tend to be premised on practical necessity, rules and actions that are goal-oriented and pragmatic. 7. Principles in practical theories differ from nomothetic ones in featuring a fourth dimension, a guideline for reflection and action. In fact, when a theory includes principles, we can say that it is a practical theory. Several criteria can be used to evaluate communication theories. A. Theoretical scope is the generality or breadth of a theory. 1. A theory can have generality by covering a broad domain. 2. It can also have generality by covering a large number of instances of a narrower domain. B. A theory's appropriateness may also be evaluated by how consistent its assumptions are with its methods and questions. C. The heuristic value of a theory is how useful it has been in generating research and ideas. D. Validity is the truth of a theory, but there are a number of types of validity. 1. One is the pragmatic value of the theory. 2. Another is correspondence or fit between the theory and reality. 3. The third is generalizability or application to a range of events. E. Parsimony is the logical simplicity of a theory. F. Openness is the degree to which a theory is tentative and open to dialogue with other approaches.

4. 5.

Exercises 1. Consider the following abstract concepts: anger, beauty, propriety, attentiveness, maturity, growth, and integrity. Figure out a way to operationalize each of these. Describe and defend your operationalizations. 2. Choose a question about communication and have half the class create a theory that is designed to answer it using nomothetic precepts and the other half on employing practical precepts. 3. Evaluate a theory of your choice on the basis of the criteria of evaluation outlined in Chapter Two. 4. Have a debate or series of debates in your class over one or more of the following propositions: a. Resolved: All theory is value-laden. b. Resolved: Human behavior is mostly determined. c. Resolved: Knowledge is produced by discovering truth.

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5. Have various members of your class each produce an object. Sort these objects. What concepts did you use to classify them? Have someone else sort the objects again. Repeat the exercise eight or ten times. Note the ways in which each person employs a system of concepts to sort the objects. What does this exercise suggest about communication theory? 6. Identify a theory in which you are interested and discuss the epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumptions of the theory? Are these assumptions explicitly or implicitly articulated in the theory? 7. Think of a recent event in your life that created a problem for you. Create an explanation for this event. What form of explanation did you use? 8. With permission, tape-record a conversation between two friends. Listen carefully to the recording and make what you consider to be a valid observation about it. Now discuss your observation in terms of the three types of validity discussed in Chapter Two. Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Can you t think of other criteria that might be used to evaluate a theory other than those specifically mentioned in the text? 2. Discuss the possibility communication processes will eventually be understood in terms of a set of covering laws much like what is found in the study of physics? 3. Do you agree with the premise that The Truth is Out There, and if it is, how will we figure out what it is? 4. To what extent and in what ways do the criteria of evaluation outlined in this chapter embody one or more philosophical positions. Do you think the criteria for evaluating theories more closely reflect nomothetic theories or practical theories? 5. Write a paper either defending or criticizing the applicability of the hypotheticodeductive method to resolve questions about human communication. Suggested Web Links The English Server. A large and diverse set of resources for those interested in humanistic scholarship, including substantial reference to interpretive, critical, and postmodern works available online: (http://eserver.org/) Philosophy since the Enlightenment. A good starting point for descriptions of major philosophical schools of thought, including issues associated with the philosophy of scientific inquiry: (http://www.philosopher.org.uk/) Philosophy of Science: Introduction. Resource for those specifically interested in exploring philosophy of science issues: (http://dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Science/)

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An introduction to the work of one of the most preeminent philosophers of science. : (http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm ) Characterization of Quack Theories. A classic Usenet posting on how to spot weaknesses in supposedly scientific claims from nonscientific sources: (http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/BillInfo/Quack.html) Examine epistemology: (http://dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Epistemology/) To explore communication as a social science: (http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Communication/)

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Chapter Three Traditions of Communication Theory Chapter Outline I. II. Multiple theories and perspectives will always characterize the field of communication studies. Lacking a unifying theory, the field can be divided into seven traditions A. The Semiotic Tradition focuses on signs and symbols. Communication is the application of signs to bridge the worlds of individuals 1. The basic concept unifying this tradition is the sign, sometimes referred to as symbol, defined as a stimulus for designating something other than itself. 2. Semiotics, exploring the importance of signs and symbols as they are used, is the focus of many communication theories. 3. Most semiotic thinking employs an idea that originated with the first modern semiotic theorist Charles Peirce, the triad of meaning or semiosis, the relationship among the object or referent, the person or interpreter, and the sign. 4. Semiotics is often divided into three areas. a) Semantics addresses what a sign stands for. Dictionaries are semantic reference books; they tell us what a sign means. b) Syntactics is the relationships among signs. (1) Signs rarely stand alone. They are almost always part of a larger sign system referred to as codes. (2) Codes are organized rules that designate what different signs stand for. c) Pragmatics studies the practical use and effects of signs. B. The Phenomenological Tradition is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come to understand the world. 1. Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in ones perception. 2. Makes actual lived experience the basic data of reality. 3. Stanley Deetz summarizes three basic principles. a) Knowledge is conscious. b) How one relates to a thing determines its meaning for that person. c) Language is the vehicle for meaning. 4. The process of interpretation is central to most phenomenological thought. a) Unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality, in the phenomenological tradition interpretation forms what is real for the person.

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C.

D.

Interpretation emerges from a hermeneutic circle in which interpreters constantly go back and forth between experience and assigning meaning. 5. Three general schools of thought make up the tradition. a) Classical phenomenology, associated with Edward Husserl the founder of modern phenomenology, is highly objective and claims the world can be experienced, through bracketing, the putting aside of bias without the knower bringing his or her own categories to bear. b) Most contemporary phenomenology rejects the objectivist view and subscribes to the teachings of Maurice MerleauPonty. The phenomenology of perception posits that we can only know things through our personal, subjective relationship to these things. c) Hermeneutic phenomenology, the interpretation of being (also known as the hermeneutic of Dasein), extends the subjective tradition even further by incorporating communication: Communication is the vehicle by which you assign meaning to your experience. The Cybernetic Tradition deals with the complex systems in which a wide variety of physical, social, behavioral and biological processes work. 1. Systems are sets of interacting components that together form something more than the sum of the parts. a) All systems are unique wholes and interdependent. b) A system takes input from the environment and creates output back into the environment. c) Systems are characterized by self-regulation and control. They monitor, regulate, and control their outputs in order to remain stable and achieve goals. d) Systems are embedded within one another. e) In complex systems a series of feedback loops called networks exist within and among subsystems. 2. There are four variations of systems theory. a) Basic system theory, the most elementary form, consists of component parts as described in number 1, above. b) Cybernetics, besides a tradition, is a specific field of study, the branch of systems theory that focuses on the circular, the feedback loops and control processes. c) General System Theory (GST) recognizes the universal nature of systems of all types and points to commonalties in all of them. d) Second-order cybernetics, also called the cybernetics of knowing, holds that observers are always engaged cybernetically within the system being observed. The Sociopsychological Tradition is a very common approach in the study of communication, the behavioral sciences, and all social sciences at

b)

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E.

large. It focuses on the individual in social interaction with others as the definition of the communicator. 1. This tradition emphasizes psychological variables, individual effects, personalities, perception, and cognition. 2. Most of the current work in this tradition, dominated by persuasion and attitude change in communication, accentuating message processing, strategies, reception and effects. 3. Most theories in this tradition are cognitive in orientation, providing insights into the way human beings process information. 4. The sociopsychological tradition can be divided into three large branches. a) Behavioral, associated with a stimulus-response approach, concentrates on how people actually behave in communication situations. b) Cognitive, the mental operations used in managing information that leads to behavioral outputs, is much more in vogue today because many see the behavioral as too simplistic. c) Communibiology is the study of communication from a biological perspective. The Sociocultural Tradition addresses the ways our understandings, meanings, norms, roles, and rules are worked interactively in communication. 1. This tradition holds that reality is not an objective set of arrangements outside us but is constructed through a process of communicating in groups, society, and cultures. 2. Sociocultural focuses on patterns of interactions rather than individual characteristics or mental modes. 3. Knowledge is highly interpretive and constructed. 4. There are a number of contributing lines of work within this tradition. a) Symbolic interactionism from the work of George Mead, emphasizes the idea that social structures and meaning is created and maintained within social interactions. b) Social constructionism, or the social construction of reality investigates how human knowledge is constructed through social interaction and argues that the nature of the world is less important than the language used to name and discuss it. c) Sociolinguistics is the study of language and culture. d) Closely related to sociolinguistics is the work of Luddwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of language which suggests the meaning of language depends on its actual use. e) Language as used in ordinary life is a language game because people follow rules to do things with language.

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John Austin refers to the practical use of language as speech acts, the idea that when we speak we are actually performing an act. g) Ethnography, the observation of how actual social groups come to build meaning through their linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors, is another perspective within the sociocultural tradition. h) Ethnomethodology is the careful observation of microbehaviors in real situations. F. The Critical Tradition examines how power, privilege and oppression are the products of certain forms of communication. 1. While there are several varieties of critical social science, they are all normative and share three essential features. 2. They seek to understand the taken-for-granted systems, power structures and beliefs- or ideologies that dominate society. 3. They are interested in uncovering oppressive social conditions and power arrangements in order to promote emancipation. 4. They attempt to fuse theory and action. 5. While Marxism is clearly the originating branch of critical theories, there are numerous variations. 6. The classical Marxist theory, premised on the idea that the means of production in society determines the nature of society, is termed the critique of political economy. 7. In contrast to this simple materialist model, most contemporary models of Marxism, termed neomarxist, view the social process as overdetermined or caused by multiple sources. 8. The Frankfurt School became intensely interested in mass communication and the media as structures of oppression in capitalist societies in the 1930s and is still often synonymous with the label critical theory. While critical theory falls within the modernist paradigm, there are three additional branches that break with modernity in various ways. Postmodernism came about as the information age emerged from the industrial society, as the production of commodities gave way to the manipulation of knowledge. Today this line of work is most associated with cultural studies. Cultural studies theorists share an interest in the ideologies that dominate a culture and focus on social change and how it is inhibited by group and class relations. Cultural studies places great value on the marginalized and the ordinary which distinguishes it from the elitist intellectual bias of the Frankfurt School, and makes it decidedly populist in orientation. Poststructuralism, another postmodernist impulse, is centered on the study of signs and symbols. Unlike structuralism, poststructuralism seeks to deconstruct the study of signs rather than generate a unified theory.

f)

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It favors a plurality of methodologies and focuses on the instability of meaning in texts. Postcolonial theory refers to the study of all cultures affected by the imperial process. Feminist studies is another influential area within the critical tradition. It examines, critiques, and challenges the assumptions about and experiences of gender that pervade all aspects of life. G. The Rhetorical Tradition is concerned with all the ways humans use symbols to affect those around them and construct the worlds in which they live. 1. There are five canons central to the rhetorical tradition. a) Invention refers to conceptualization, the process through which we assign meaning to data through interpretation. b) Arrangement is the process of organizing symbols. c) Style concerns all of the considerations involved in the presentation of symbols. d) Delivery is the embodiment of symbols in some physical form, ranging from nonverbal to written and spoken language. e) Memory is concerned with the larger reservoirs of cultural memory that affect how we retain and process information.

Exercises 1. Write a paper defending the premise that meanings are in people or meanings are in words. Defend your position using the theories presented in this chapter. 2. Evaluate basic system theory, cybernetics and second-order cybernetics using the criteria for evaluating theories discussed in Chapter Two. 3. Compare and contrast the idea of reality being social constructed versus linguistically constructed. Are these basically the same idea or are there fundamental differences between the two? Be sure and articulate which approach seems more compelling to you, and defend your decision. 4. Check the Internet and report on what is currently happening with the Frankfurt School and cultural studies. 5. Take a position on the social construction of reality and defend it.

Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. How does semiotics and phenomenology differ on the subject of interpretation? 2. Describe and explain language using system theories. 3. Discuss how scholars from a sociopsychological, semiotic and critical tradition would explore and explain the violence on American television.

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4. How is speech-act theory different from linguistics? What are its chief advantages and disadvantages in comparison to linguistics? 5. Critical theory is more popular in Europe and Latin America than in the United States. Do you think more U.S. scholars should adopt a critical perspective? Why or why not? 6. To what extent and in what ways are system theory and symbolic interactionism compatible? Suggested Web Links Phenomenology, introduction and overview: (http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/phenom.htm) Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology A good resource for those interested in exploring phenomenology and its major contributors: (http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/) A resource devoted to the Merleau-Ponty Circle: ( http://m-pc.binghamton.edu/ ) Cybernetics, introduction and overview: (http://www.cyber.rdg.ac.uk/cybernetics/index.htm) Semiotics, introduction and overview: (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.htm) Sociopsychological, introduction and overview: (http://www.socialpsychology.org/) Sociocultural, introduction and overview: (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/soc_cult.html) Critical, introduction and overview: (http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/) Classical rhetoric. Sample of rhetoric scholarship from classical era & Renaissance: (http://eserver.org/rhetoric/#class)

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Chapter Four The Communicator Chapter Outline I. The Sociopsychological Tradition looks at communicators as individuals and covers two main types of theories: traits theory and cognitive theory. A. Theories in this tradition are influenced by the methods of social psychology, seeks to make predictions, and focuses on the individual B. Trait theories look at the distinguishing qualities or characteristics of individuals. Traits predict behavior in certain situations. 1. Three common traits are studied in communication theory. a) Identified by Anita Vangelisti, Mark Knapp and John Daly conversational narcissism is defined by self-love. (1) Conversational narcissists tend to be self-absorbed in conversation, inflate their self importance, need to control the conversation, use nonverbal exhibitionist behaviors and be nonresponsive to others. (2) This is a variable trait ranging from high to low. b) Argumentativeness, identified by Dominic Infante, is defined as a tendency to engage in conversations about controversial issues. (1) To support your own view, and to refute opposing views. (2) Argumentative individuals are assertive and can be identified in two clusters of variables. (a) Argumentativeness which is positive (b) Verbal aggression and hostility which is negative. c) Social and communication anxiety, identified by James McCroskey, is defined by communication apprehension (CA). (1) CA is an enduring tendency to be apprehensive about communication. (2) It is part of a larger concept called social and communicative anxiety. (3) It is characterized by physiological, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions. 2. Most psychological researchers today hold that behavior is determined by a combination of trait and situational factors. C Traits-factor models, sometimes called super traits, is based on J. Digmans five factor model. 1. Neurotism, a tendency to feel negative emotions. 2. Extraversion, a tendency to be assertive and think optimistically. 3. Openness, a tendency to be reflective.

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D.

E.

4. Agreeableness, tendency to like, and sympathetic, toward others. 5. Conscientiousness, the tendency to be self-disciplined. Traits temperament and biology, identified by James McCroskey and Michael Beatty, says traits are predispositions of temperament rooted in genetically determined neurobiological structures. 1. The impact of the environment or learning is not very large. 2. Individual differences in how people communicate can be explained biologically 3. Three factors are involved in this theory: a) Extraversion or outward focus. b) Neuroticism or anxiety. c) Psychotocism or lack of self control. Cognitive and information processing theories go behind the scenes to explain how we communicate. 1. Attribution theory, founded by Fritz Heider, deals with the way people infer the causes of behavior, or perceptual styles. a) Cites nine causal attributes. (1) Situational causes, being affected by the environment. (2) Personal causes, influencing things personally. (3) Ability, being able to do something. (4) Effort, trying to do something. (5) Desire, wanting to do it. (6) Sentiment, feeling like it. (7) Belonging, going along with something. (8) Obligation, feeling you ought to. (9) Permission, being permitted to. b) A persevering assumption in attribution theory is that people are logical and systematic though several researchers have contested this assumption. c) Fundamental attribution error, one of the most persistent findings is a tendency to attribute the cause of events to personal qualities. (1) People generally feel insensitive to circumstantial factors that cause events when considering others behavior. (2) People generally are sensitive to circumstances when considering their own behavior. 2. Social judgment theory is based on the work of Muzater Sherif and focuses on how we make judgments about statements we hear. a) It looks at how we judge messages and how the judgment will affect your own belief system. b) Our social perceptions are in our heads based on our experiences and act as our reference points. c) We sort our levels of acceptance into three latitudes.

38

3.

Latitude of acceptance is the range of statements on an a issue one finds acceptable. (2) Latitude of rejection is the range of statements on an issue one finds unacceptable. (3) Latitude of noncommitment is the range of statements on which is not committed. d) Ego involvement is your sense of the personal relevance of the issue. e) The contrast effect occurs when individuals judge a message to be farther from their own view than it actually is. f) The assimilation effect occurs when people judge the message to be closer to their own point of view than it actually is. Elaboration likelihood theory (ELT), developed by Richard Petty and John Carioppa, looks at how we make decisions on conscious and unconscious levels regarding persuasive messages. a) People evaluate persuasive messages with varying degrees of elaboration. (1) ELT predicts when we will or will not be persuaded by a message. (2) ELT is the probability that you will evaluate information critically. b) Elaborative or critical thinking occurs in the central route. (1) Here the arguments of the message are carefully evaluated. (2) Change is less likely to occur in the central route, but if it does, it is more likely to be enduring. c) Lack of critical thinking occurs in the peripheral route. (1) Here arguments are not carefully evaluated. ` (2) One tends to be influenced more by peripheral matters such as speaker credibility. (3) Change is more likely to occur in peripheral processing, but it is less likely to be enduring. d) High motivation and ability leads to more central processing, and low motivation and ability leads to more peripheral processing. (1) Motivation is affected by three things. (a) Involvement, the personal relevance of the message, increases the motivation to evaluate arguments. (b) Diversity of argument, the number of arguments and sources, leads to a higher motivation to evaluate the message.

(1)

39

II.

The need for cognition, the general enjoyment of thinking present in some people, increases motivation. (2) The amount of critical thinking that you apply to an argument depends on your motivation and ability. The Cybernetic Tradition, like the sociopsychological, focuses on the individual and uses similar methodology. However they are distinguished by their emphasis on the cognitive system and its relationship to information integration and consistency. A. Information-integration theory centers on how we accumulate and organize information about persons, objects, situations, and ideas to form and change attitudes. 1. An attitude is a predisposition to act toward something in a positive or negative way. 2. Attitudes can be affected by information learned through communication. a) The valence of information, whether it is positive or negative in regard to the target attitude, can change an attitude. b) The weight, or credibility, of information can determine how much it affects an attitude. B. Expectancy-value, an information-integration approach, was developed by Martin Fishbein and looks at two kinds of beliefs. 1. We have beliefs in things and beliefs about those things. 2. The belief is about your sense of probability that a particular relationship will exist between two things. a) Attitudes differ from beliefs because they are evaluative. b) Attitudes are correlated with beliefs and lead you to behave a certain way toward the attitude object. C. The theory of reasoned action argues that behavior results in part from intentions, a complex outcome of attitudes. 1. Attitudes directly affect one's intention to act in certain ways. 2. Actions themselves, however, are also affected by other people's opinions. 3. Actions are also affected by the situation. D. Consistency theories starts with the premise that people are more comfortable with consistency, in cybernetic terms homeostasis, than they are with inconsistency. 1. The theory of cognitive dissonance, developed by Leon Festinger, is one of the most important theories in social psychology. a) Two elements in the cognitive system may be irrelevant to one another, they may be consistent with one another, or they may be dissonant. (1) Dissonance produces a tension for change. (2) People attempt to reduce dissonance, and they tend to avoid situations that cause dissonance.

(c)

40

2.

The more dissonance, the greater the pressure to change. b) Dissonance may be reduced in a number of ways. (1) One or more of the dissonant elements can change. (2) New elements may be added to the cognitive system in order to add more weight to one side or the other. (3) The dissonant elements may be defined as unimportant. (4) Consonant information may be sought. (5) Information may be distorted. c) One of the most important areas of research on dissonance has been on decision making. (1) Postdecisional dissonance or buyers remorse, can occur after an important decision is made. (2) The more important the decision, the more dissonance is expected to result. (3) The attractiveness of the chosen and unchosen alternatives affects dissonance: the lower the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and the greater the attractiveness of the unchosen one, the greater the dissonance. d) There are several other predictors of dissonance. (1) The less the pressure to conform in a forced compliance situation, the greater the dissonance. (2) The more difficult an initiation is, the greater the person's commitment to the group. (3) The more social support one receives for a decision, the greater the commitment to that decision. (4) The greater the amount of effort put into a task, the more one will rationalize the value of the task. Comprehensive theory of change, developed by Milton Rokeach, believes each person has a highly organized system of beliefs, attitudes and values, the elements of which vary in terms of centrality and peripherality. a) Beliefs are the numerous inferences one makes about the world. (1) Central beliefs are harder to change than peripheral ones. (2) The change of a central belief has more impact on the overall system than does the change of a peripheral one. b) Attitudes are clusters of beliefs about an object. (1) The system consists of attitudes-toward-object and attitudes-toward-situation.

(3)

41

III.

II.

III.

One may not behave in accordance with his or her attitudes toward the object if the attitudes toward the situation do not permit it. c) Values are particular types of beliefs that guide one's life. (1) Instrumental values are guidelines for living. (2) Terminal values are the goals of life. d) The most important beliefs are beliefs about the self which form the self-concept. (1) The most powerful inconsistencies leading to change are those involving the self- concept. (2) Such contradictions increase self-dissatisfaction. E. Problematic integration theory (PI) rests on three propositions. 1. People have a natural tendency to align their expectations (what you think will happen) with their evaluations (what you want to happen.) 2. Integrating expectations and evaluation is not always easy. 3. PI stems from communication and is managed through communication. Four conditions define the theory. a). Divergence between expectation and evaluation. b) Ambiguity, lack of clarity about what to expect. c) Ambivalence or contradictory evaluations. d) Impossibility, when the chance of something happening is impossible. The Sociocultural Tradition assumes that social relationships prefigure individual differences and communicators understand themselves as unified beings with individual differences. A. George Meads symbolic interactionism (SI) teaches that as people interact with one another over time, they come to share meanings to certain terms and actions. B. The concept of the self is especially relevant to SI thinking. 1. Ones sense of self lies at the heart of communication. 2. An object can be any aspect of the persons reality. 3. A person must name something, represent it symbolically, for it to be an object. 4 An object is more than objective things, they are social conceptions or social objects. 5 Naming things is the way of conveying its meaning. We work out the meaning of social objects through the interaction with others, particularly with what Manford Kuhn, a symbolic interactionist from a n objectivee, socialpsychological perspective (called the Iowa School), terms the orientational others, those to whomwe are emotionally and psychologically committed. Kuhn developed the Twenty Statements Test (TST) to empirically measure various aspects of the self. C. The social construction of the self recognizes human beings are both individual and social.

(2)

42

1. 2. 3

D.

E.

The self is your private notion of your own unity as a person. Personhood is public. Personal being is two sided and consists of a social being (person) and a personal being (self). 4. Your self-theory is culturally governed and therefore highly variable, and is learned through a history of interaction with other people in three ways. a) Display is whether an aspect of self is displayed publicly or remains private. b) Realization or source is the degree to which some feature of the self is believed to come from the individual or a group. c) Agency is the degree of active power attributed to the self. 5. Self theories have three things in common a) Self consciousness, thinking of yourself as an object. b) Agency or how people see themselves as capable of having intentions and actions. c) Autobiography or sense of having a future. The social construction of emotions, based on the work of James Averill, suggests emotions are determined by local language and moral codes. 1. Emotions are belief systems that guide ones definition of the situation. 2. Emotions are called syndromes, defined as clusters or sets of responses that go together. 3. Emotional syndromes are socially constructed because people learn through interaction what particular clusters of behaviors should be taken to mean and how to perform a particular emotion. 4. Four rules govern emotions. a) Rules of appraisal tell you what an emotion is . b) Rules of behavior tells you how to respond. c) Rules of prognosis define the progression and course of the emotion. d) Rules of attribution dictate how an emotion should be explained or justified. Developed by Erving Goffman, the presentational self looks at the theatrical metaphor and begins with the assumption that the person must make sense of everyday events. 1. The interpretation of a situation is the definition of the situation. 2. The definition of a situation can be divided into strips and frames. a) Strip is a sequence of activities. b) Frame is an organizational pattern used to define the strip. 3. Frame analysis consists of determining how people organize or understand their behaviors. 4. Frameworks are models we use to understand our experience or seeing how things fit together.

43

IV.

A face engagement or encounter occurs when people interact with one another in a focused way. The Critical Tradition focuses on the politics of self, or the ways in which we position ourselves socially as empowered or disempowered. A. Theories in this tradition share three assumptions. 1. Members of an identity group share a similar analysis of their shared impression. 2. The shared oppression supersedes all other identity categories. 3. Identity group members are all allied. B. Standpoint theory, the work of Sandra Harding and Patricia Hill Collins, focuses on how gender and power circumstances of life affect how people understand and construct a social world . 1. The way we understand experience is not through the social conditions, role expectations of gendered definitions, but the distinctive ways individuals construct those conditions. 2. Emphasizes the importance of individual agency in interpretation. 3. Layered understandings means we have multiple, overlapping identities that produce our unique standpoint. C. Identity as constructed and performed focuses on how we gain our identities are from the constructions offered about that identity gained through various social group memberships. D. Queer theory takes up the challenge of gendered identification by arguing that gender and sex are social constructions that can and should be challenged. It looks at three particular aspects. 1. All the ways and combinations of possibilities by which we display gender. 2. Sees strong social implications for adopting the queer model as framework to study gender, sexuality and identity politics. 3. The theory has strong political agendas for social change.

5.

Exercises 1. Write a paper articulating a trait and a state explanation for a particular communicative phenomenon. Describe how you would design an experiment to test which explanation works best. 2. Designate several topics with which you are highly ego involved. What are some of your opinions about these topics? For each opinion, delineate your latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment. To what extent do you believe you are susceptible to the assimilation and contrast effects predicted by social judgment theory? 3. Think of a subject about which you care and on which you have strong beliefs. What are your most important beliefs? How do these seem to cluster into attitudes? What interactions and events have been most influential in shaping

44

your attitudes on this subject and why? Using information integration theory, show how information over the years has influenced your attitudes. 4. Cognitive dissonance theory has been vilified by a number of social scientists because is effectively unfalisifable; it is impossible to test. Explore why this is so. 5. On what topics are you most likely to process messages centrally, and on what topics are you most likely to process messages peripherally? Think about how you process information in theses two routes. Based on your experience do you agree with Petty and Cacioppo's theory? 6. Compare and contrast how social judgment theory, and elaboration likelihood theory might inform the strategies of a political candidate running for office. Does one seem to be more helpful than the other? How would campaign advice differ from theorists in each tradition? Examine the ways in which standpoint theory can be understood in social constructionist terms. 7. Interview a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, a twelve-year-old, a seventeen yearold, and a twenty-five-year-old about how they would persuade another person to give them something they wanted. Ask permission to tape-record their answers. Be specific with the respondent about the items sought and make these appropriate to the age level. Analyze the responses in terms of the apparent cognitive complexity with which the persuasion strategies are devised. To what extent does age seem to be related to the degree to which respondents take the perspective of the other in their attempts to persuade? 8. Listen carefully to the recorded interviews gathered for question 7 and explain the answers in terms of action-assembly theory. 9. Pick an attitude about a toward an object and an attitude toward a situation, and illustrate them in as displayed in Figure 4.1 Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Which of the theories of cognition presented in this chapter is most useful to the study of communication and why? 2. Combine expectancy-value theory and elaboration likelihood theory into a single theory that combines the best features of both. 3. After saving, searching and planning for some time, you buy an expensive car, you see an ad for another car that you like even better. What does cognitive dissonance theory will happen next? How will you justify this purchase? 4. Explore the commonalties among standpoint theory and queer theory.

45

5. Provide a concrete example where you may have experienced fundamental attribution error. Explain it in terms of some of the causal attributes Heider proposes. 6. Critically examine an emotion you recently experienced and evaluate it in terms of the four rules that Averill suggests govern emotions. 7. Which of the communication traits discussed in this chapter is most important for us to understand, which is least important, and why? 8. How would you go about persuading an audience that was highly ego involved on the topic of discussion? And how would your arguments on the same subject be different if the audience was largely noncommitted about the topic? 9. Take the Twenty-statements Test. What does this tell you about yourself?

10. Compare and contrast how Kuhn, Goffman and Harr conceptualize the self. On what points do they essentially agree and where do they diverge? Think about how Goffmans frame analysis could help paint a more unified conception of self.

Suggested Web Links Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism, a professional organization composed of scholars interested in the study of S.I.: (http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~sssi/) Preeminent site for Queer Theory, Queer and Gender Studies: (http://www.queertheory.com/) Examine Standpoint Theory in general: (http://bama.ua.edu/~droskos/Chapter%2033/) A bibliography of feminist Standpoint Theory: (http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~brindell/socnepistemology/Bibliographies/Feminist_Soc_Epis/standpoint.htm) Elaborating on Fishbeins work on attitude and information-integration: ( http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spch100/6-7-fishbein.htm) Exploring the social construction of identity: (http://www.hud.ac.uk/hip/soccon/soccon.html) The application of Social Constructionism and Queer Theory: (http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/extracts.htm) More in-depth exploration of Social Judgment Theory: 46

(http://www.as.wvu.edu/~sbb/comm221/chapters/judge.htm) Current research on the Social Judgment Theory: (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~kk413797/SJ.htm) A student paper on conversational narcissism in the classroom: (http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/529.php) Rate your level of argumentativeness on this scale: (http://www.hksrch.com.hk/quiz/argue.htm)

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Chapter Five The Message Chapter Outline I. The Semiotic Tradition encompasses communication theories that look at how messages are organized structurally and how this affects meaning. A. Symbol Theory developed by Susanne Langer defines communication by symbolism. 1. A sign is a stimulus that signals the presence of something else. 2. Signification is the simple relationship between the sign and the thing. 3. Symbols are instruments of thought and allow the individual to think about the thing apart from its presence. a) Meaning is the complex relationship between the symbol, the object and the person. (1) The logical relationship between the symbol and the referent is the denotation. (2) The psychological meaning is the connotation. 4. The significance of the language is in the discourse, in which words are tied together into sentences and paragraphs. a) Discourse expresses propositions which are complex symbols that present a picture of something. b) Any symbol or set of symbols communicates a concept common to all communicators. (1) The conception is the personal meaning or image by each communicator. (2) Abstraction is the process that builds a general idea from a variety of concrete experiences. B. Classical foundations of language looks at communication structure of the message and how that influences messages, is taught through the work of Ferdinand de Saussure 1. Saussure looks at how different languages use different words for the same thing. 2. For Saussure, there is no physical connection between a word and its referent. 3. The elements and relationships embedded in language are distinguished by their differences. 4. Saussure believes that all a person knows of the world is determined by language. 5. Saussure distinguishes between formal language, which he calls langue, and the actual use of language in communication, which he refers to as parole. 6. We cannot have speech without language.

48

C.

D.

A branch of linguistics which is more akin to the sociopsychological tradition, is Noam Chomskys generative grammar which posits that language rules are generally innate and not learned. Nonverbal Signs are an important element within the semiotic tradition. 1. Nonverbal Codes are clusters of behavior that are used to convey meaning. a) Nonverbal codes tend to be analogic (continuous) rather than digital (discrete). b) Nonverbal codes have the feature iconicity or resemblance. c) Nonverbal codes elicit universal meaning. d) Nonverbal codes enable the simultaneous transmission of several messages. e) Nonverbal codes often elicit an automatic response without thinking. f) Nonverbal signals are often emitted spontaneously. g) Nonverbal codes have three dimensions. (1) Semantics refers to the meaning of a sign. (2) Syntactics refers to the ways signs are organized into systems with other signs. (3) Pragmatics refers to the effects or behaviors elicited by a sign or group of signs. 2. Nonverbal code systems are classified according to the type of activity used. a) Kinesics is body language b) Vocalics or paralanguage is the use of the voice. c) Physical appearance and haptics refers to touch. d) Proxemics is nonverbal communication referring to the use of space in communication. (1) Fixed-feature space consists of unmovable things. (2) Semi-fixed-feature space includes movable objects. (3) Informal space is personal territory. (4) Intimate space is 0-18 inches. (5) Personal space is 1 to 4 feet. (6) Social space is 4 to 12 feet. (7) Public space is over 12 feet. e) Chronemics is time. f) Artifacts refers to objects as nonverbal. 3. Nonverbal activity can be analyzed in three ways. a) Origin is the source of an act. b) Coding is the relationship of the act to its meaning. c) Usage is the degree to which a nonverbal behavior is intended to convey information. 4. Nonverbal behavior can be classified into five types based on the origin, coding and usage. a) Emblems emerge out of cultures and may be arbitrary.

49

II.

b) Illustrators are used to depict what is being said verbally. c) Adaptors facilitate the release of bodily tensions. d) Regulators are used to control or coordinate interaction. The Sociocultural Tradition moves communicators from individual differences and cognitive processing to social linkages, groups, and meanings that are worked out through interaction. A. Speech act theory centers on knowing what you intend to accomplish by using the words is vital and looks at four areas. 1. The utterance act is the simple pronunciation of the words. 2. The propositional act asserts something you are asserting about the world. 3. The meaning of the speech act is its illocutionary force. 4. The perlocutionary act is designed to have an actual effect on the other persons behavior. B. Kenneth Burkes theory of Identification is the most comprehensive of the symbol theories and focuses on symbols, language and communication. 1. Actions consist of purposeful, voluntary behaviors while motions are non-purposeful, non-meaningful ones. 2. People filter reality through a symbolic screen. 3. Language is emotionally loaded. 4. Language is selective and abstract. 5. Identification occurs when people have a common understanding. 6. Language can also create division or separation. 7. Sharing language in an easy manner is consubstantiality. 8. Identification is created between two people in three instances. a) Material identification results from goods, possessions and things. b) Idealistic identification results from shared ideas, attitudes and values. c) Formal identification results from the arrangement, form or organization of an event. d) Identification is a matter of degree. e) Identification can be seen in a hierarchy. f) Guilt explains some identification. (1) Guilt is any feeling of tension within a person. (2) The second reason for guilt is the principle of perfection. (3) The third reason for guilt is the principle of hierarchy. C. Language and Gender relates to the sociocultural tradition. 1. Cheris Kramarae says words and syntax within messages structure peoples thinking and interaction and impact how we experience the world and messages treat men and women differently. a) Kramarae believes English is a man-made language. b) It embodies the perspectives to the masculine more than

50

III.

the feminine. c) Men are the standard. (1) In many occupational categories such as waiter versus waitress, poet versus poetess. (2) Mr. does not contain information about marital status while Mrs. or Miss does. 2. The theory of feminine style by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and elaborated by Bonnie Dow and Mari Boor says a feminine style is linked to "craft learning." 3. Jane Blankenship and Deborah Robson examined womens public policy discourse and characterized five overlapping properties. a) Concrete experience as a basis for political judgments. b) Inclusivity and connection. c) Public office as a place to get things done and empower others. d) A holistic approach to policy formation. e) Bringing womens legislation to the forefront. The Sociopsychological Tradition turns its focus on the individual and contains theories that offer a cognitive explanation for how people integrate information and plan messages. A. John Greenes action assembly theory examines the ways we cognitively organize knowledge and use it to form messages. 1. This is a microcognitive theory because it deals with very specific cognitive operations. 2. We form messages by content knowledge, information about things, and procedural knowledge, information on how to do things. 3. Utilized assemblies are commonly performed or programmed actions. 4. Output representation is the plan your mind holds about what you will do within the situation you face. 5. The action-assembly process requires not only knowledge and motivation but also the ability to retrieve and organize the necessary actions swiftly and efficiently. a) It takes time to think and thinking is work. b) The more complex the assembly task, the more time and effort it takes. B. Strategy choice models are theories that involve trying to get people to do what you want them to do or to stop doing something you dont like and focuses on compliance gaining messages. 1. Compliance gaining, one of the most common communication goals, is studied from a person-centered perspective. 2. Compliance is an exchange for something else supplied by the compliance seeker and includes 16 strategies. a) Promising something for compliance. b) Threatening something for noncompliance.

51

C.

Showing expertise about positive outcomes, how good things will be with compliance. d) Showing expertise about negative outcomes, how bad things will be with noncompliance. e) Liking, being friendly. f) Pregiving a reward before asking for compliance. g) Applying aversive stimulation, punishing until compliance. h) Calling in a debt, payment for past favors. i) Making moral appeals, complying is the right thing to do. j) Attributing positive feelings, telling the other person how good they will feel by complying. k) Attributing negative feelings, telling the other person how how bad they will feel by noncomplying l) Positive altercasting, associating compliance with good qualities. m) Negative altercasting, associating noncompliance with noncompliance. n) Seeking altruistic compliance, compliance as a favor. o) Showing positive esteem, how much liked the person will be by complying. p) Showing negative esteem, much disliked the person will be by noncompliance. 3. Lawrence Wheeless, Robert Barraclough and Robert Stewart believe compliance theory can best be categorized by power. a) The first is perceived ability to manipulate the consequences. b) The second is the perceived ability to determine ones relational position with the other person c) The third type of power is the perceived ability to define values, obligations or both. Jesse Delias constructivism is a theory of the process by which people understand their experience and respond accordingly in communication. 1. Individuals understand the world in terms of personal constructs. a) Constructs are sets of opposites into which objects are classified. b) The constructs in a person's cognitive system are organized into interpretive schemes. c) Constructs are learned socially. d) Construct systems vary in terms of complexity. 2. The simplicity or complexity of an individual's cognitive system is called cognitive complexity. a) Cognitive complexity is marked by differentiation, which consists of the number of categories used to make sense of events.

c)

52

E.

F. G.

Cognitively complex individuals are able to make more distinctions than individuals with low complexity. c) Complexity controls the number of goals one can achieve in a social situation. d) Messages vary in terms of their complexity or the number of goals they are designed to achieve simultaneously. 3. Cognitive complexity also governs how well one can understand other people. a) Cognitively complex individuals make more distinction among people. b) Cognitively complex individuals are more able to take the perspective of others and adapt messages to the perspective of other people in person-centered communication. 4. Personal-centered persuasive communication is more effective than non-person-centered communication. Developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, politeness strategies states that in everyday life we design messages that protect face. 1. A nearly universal concern in exchanging information and making disclosures is politeness. 2. All people have the need to be appreciated and protected, which researchers call face needs. a) Positive face is the desire to be appreciated and approved, to be liked and honored. b) Negative face is the desire to be free from imposition or intrusion. 3. People can deliver potential face threatening acts (FTA) in a number of ways. a) FTAs can be delivered baldly, without polite action. b) FTAs can be delivered along with some form of positive politeness. c) FTAs can be delivered along with some form of negative politeness. d) FTAs can be delivered indirectly, off the record. e) One can choose not to deliver an FTA at all. 4. The amount of facework (politeness) employed in delivering an FTA depends upon social distance, power, and risk. Message design models imagine that communicators select strategies for accomplishing their communicative goals. Charles Bergers planning theory shows how people plan their communication behavior. 1. Planning theory explains how communication goals are developed. a) Meta-goals guide our goal-setting behavior. b) Plans are hierarchical representations of goal-directed action sequences.

b)

53

IV.

When canned plans are insufficient, new plans must be developed. Plans are created with specific domain knowledge and general domain knowledge. 4 People have various strategies when plans are thwarted. a) Low-level plan hierarchy alteration involves specific behavior changes. b) High-level alteration involves strategic changes. 5. Action fluidity is the ease with which a plan is achieved. H. Barbara OKeefes message design logic expands the theoretical orientation to incorporate a message-design model and looks at how people reason about communication (logics) and how these logics inform how they use communication to reach goals. 1. The expressive logic sees communication primarily as a means of self expression. 2. The conventional logic sees communication as a game played by rules. 3. The rhetorical logic sees communication as a way to change the rules through negotiation. I. Interpretation, or assigning meaning, is an important dimension of cognition in the reception of messages and is addressed in Charles Osgoods classic semantic meaning theory. 1. This is basically a learning theory of meaning, in which meanings consist of encoding, association, and decoding. 2. Osgoods theory is formulated on a stimulus-response relationship. 3. Your response to an external stimulus is mediated by the internal representations this stimulus evokes in your mind (the meaning), and your response is ultimately to this evocation and not the external stimulus. This is a four-part process. a) A physical stimulus. b) An internal response. c) An internal stimulus. d) An outward response. 4. Because meaning is internal and unique in this model it is said to be connotative. 5. One of Osgoods major contribution to many sociopsychological disciplines is his semantic differential technique which assumes ones meanings can be expressed and measured by the use of adjectives. Hermeneutics, the careful and deliberate interpretation of a text, is the basis of the Phenomenological Tradition. A. Two general groups of hermeneutic scholars. 1. Textual hermeneutics examines texts, a) A text is any recorded artifact that can be examined, is. b) Cultural or social hermeneutics interpret human personal and social.

2. 3.

54

B. C.

D.

E.

Scholars from this tradition use the hermeneutic circle, alternating from the general to the specific and back to the general. Paul Ricoeur recognizes the importance of actual speech. 1. Speech is ephemeral while a text which lives on. 2. The separation of the text from situation is distanciation. 3. Explanation is empirical and analytical. 4. Understanding is synthetic. 5. Being open to the meaning of the text is appropriation. Stanley Fish denies any meaning can be found in text. Meaning lies in the reader and thus his work is called reader-response theory. 1. Readers are part of interpretive communities or groups that interact with one another, construct common realities and meanings, and employ these in their readings. 2. Fish, following a social constructionist approach, claims a text means nothing. What is important is what does a text do. Hans-Georg Gadamer teaches that individuals do not stand apart from things in order to analyze and interpret them. Instead we interpret naturally as part of our everyday experience. 1. Gadamer believes that one can only understand a text from within a tradition or perspective. (a) Traditions give us presuppositions or ways of understanding experience. (b) We are always part of a past as well as a present, and we interpret with an eye to the future. (c) Still, change does occur because people are distanced from the past and learn from new experience. (2) Interpretation is a process of dialogue with a text. (a) The text has meaning which interacts with the meanings of our culture. (b) We assign meaning to a text, but the text asks questions of us and may change us. (3) Experience is inherently linguistic, and we cannot separate interpretation from language. (a) Language and meaning are presented to us in the language we inherit. (b) Language prefigures all experience.

Exercises 1. Experiment with proxemic behavior in a public place. Here are some of the things you can do: (a) Stand unusually close to a stranger at a bulletin board and see what happens. (b) When engaged in a conversation with another person, slowly move in on that person and watch what happens. (c) As you talk to another person in a standing position, continually turn to face that person directly, and see if the other person turns to create a less direct body axis. (d) Sit at a four- or sixplace table by yourself in the library and place a personal object at the opposite 55

corner. See how long it takes for someone else to sit down at the same table. Does anyone ever take the seat with the object in front of it? Repeat this experiment at different times when the library is more crowded and less crowded. 2. With permission, videotape a brief conversation. Include both individuals in the frame and position the camera so that you get a good shot of face and body. Carefully view the recording several times, making use of the frame-by-frame or slow feature of the VCR. Try to make note of as many of the factors identified in this chapter that demonstrate how people engaged in conversation use space. 3. Using the same tape, review the recording and identify emblems, illustrators, adapters, regulators, and affect displays. 4. Using the same conversation as above, identify and explain any statements that are reflective of speech act theory. Explore the meaning of the act. Evaluate the act in terms of its felicity. 5. Assume you wish to borrow your roommates cell phone for the weekend Construct a script of dialogue that you could use applying all of Marwell and Schmitts sixteen compliance-gaining strategies. 6. Have the class complete a Role Category Questionnaire, the tool used to measure ones cognitive complexity. 7. Compile a small sample from selections of documents but do not identify the source which may contaminate the results. (As an example, you may choose selections from the Declaration of Independence, Communist Manifesto, and Magna Carta.) Examine the samples from the perspectives or Ricoeur, Fish and Gadamer and explore how each theorist uses and make sense of the text. 8. Can you think of other design logics that might underlie some peoples communicative activities? Do the three described by OKeefe make intuitive sense to you? Which one do you think characterizes your own way of communicating? Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Devise a list of terms for experiences that are unique to women. Do the same thing for experiences unique to men. Then compile a list of words or terms that normalize the male experience and place women in the aberrant category 2. Write a paper defending the premise that "meanings are in people" or "meanings are in words." Defend your position using the theories presented in this chapter. 3. Critique action-assembly theory and planning theory in terms of the criteria for theory evaluation described in chapter two. 4. Compare and contrast how Ricouer, Fish, and Gadamer treat an author of a text, a reader of the text and the text itself. 5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the language analogy in nonverbal communication?

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6. Furnish some nonverbal expectations that you had learned before college. What new ones have you learned since you have come to college? Discuss what similarities and what differences exist. 7. Explore what Saussure means that difference is the key to understanding the structure of language and that signs do not designate objects, they constitute them. 8. Discuss the five rules that constitute a sufficient set of conditions for a speech act to have its illocutionary force. What does the illocutionary force mean,? Provide an example of each of the five types of illuctionary acts. 9. What is meant by cognitive complexity? How does one become cognitively complex and what is its relationship to being "person-centered?" Suggested Web Links Semiotics for Beginners. An online semiotics textbook: (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html) Center for Nonverbal Studies. A great set of links to many resources on nonverbal behavior: (http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/) Nonverbal Behavior/Nonverbal Communication Links. Another general resource to many other sites: (http://www3.usal.es/~nonverbal/introduction.htm) Virtual Library: Linguistics, a good collection of online resources on a vast array of linguistics topics: (http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LLWorkingDirs/home-final.cfm) Speech Acts. An article on speech acts with a helpful bibliography: (http://online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spchacts.htm)l Influence at Work, a very good site by Dr. Rober Caildini featuring overviews of may compliance gaining tactics: (http://www.influenceatwork.com/) Primer of Practical Persuasion and Influence. Online textbook covering a wide variety of theories related to message production in the context of social influence: (http://www.as.wvu.edu/~sbb/comm221/primer.htm) The Kenneth Burke Society. You guessed it. A site devoted to fans of the writings of Kenneth Burke: (http://www.home.duq.edu/~thames/kennethburke/Default.htm) The Hans-Georg Gadamer Homepage, a site devoted to the study of Gadamer. (http://www.svcc.cc.il.us/academics/classes/gadamer/gadamer.htm) Open Director Project: Hermeneutic: (http://dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Continental_Philosophy/Hermeneutics/)

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Chapter Six The Conversation Chapter Outline I. II. A conversation is a sequence of rule-governed, coherent interactions with a defined beginning and end, turn taking, and goals. The Sociopsychological Tradition focuses on theories that concentrate on variables that affect behavior and interaction. Here individual behavior is taken as data. A. Charles Bergers Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) addresses the basic process of how we gain knowledge about other people. 1. When we encounter a stranger we may have a strong desire to reduce uncertainty about this person. 2. People are motivated to predict behave. 3. Our communication is planned to accomplish goals. 4. At highly uncertain moments we become more conscious of the planning we are doing. 5. Attraction of affiliation with another seems to positively correlate with uncertainty reduction. 6. Higher levels of uncertainty seem to create distance. 7. Berger suggests a variety of ways to go about getting information from others. a) Passive strategies are observational. (1) In reactivity searching the individual is observed actually doing something. (2) In disinhibition searching people are observed in informal, more natural situations. b) Active strategies require the observer to do something to get information. c) Interactive strategies rely directly on communication with the other person. (1). A significant interactive strategy is self-disclosure is disclosing something about yourself, which in turn may lead the other person to disclose in return. B. William Gudykunsts Anxiety-Uncertainty Management extends URT by exploring intercultural situations. 1. All cultures seek to reduce uncertainty but do so in different ways. a) High-context cultures rely heavily on the overall situation to interpret events. b) Low context cultures rely more on the explicit verbal content of messages. 2. Uncertainty and anxiety in intercultural situations seem to be the underlying cause for ineffectiveness and lack of adaptation.

58

C.

D.

E.

Howard Giles Accommodation Theory explains the ways in which people adjust their speech to one another. 1. Accommodation is usually a subconscious process. 2. Convergence occurs when two or more speakers speak more and more alike while divergence is when the speak more differently. 3. Accommodation can occur on a wide variety of behaviors. 4. Accommodation can be mutual or non mutual, partial or complete. 5. Accommodation is usually out of awareness. 6. Accommodation can have positive or negative effects. a) Positive effects occur when accommodation leads to identification and bonding. b) Negative effects occur when accommodation is based on false perceptions. 7. Accommodation can be viewed as positive or negative. a) Accommodation that is viewed as appropriate is valued. b) Accommodation that viewed as inappropriate or extreme is not liked. c) Accommodation that is perceived to be ill motivated is also not liked. Interaction adaptation theory addresses the larger process of adaptation with interactions. 1. Communicators have an interactional synchrony, a coordinated back and-forth patter. 2. Sometime our behaviors are reciprocal ,at other times, compensatory. 3. Our initial idea about what will happen in a conversation is called our interaction position. 4. During interaction we have RED: requirements for what will happen; expectations for what will happen; and desires for what we want to happen. 5. We will converge or diverge with the behaviors of others based on the extent to which we are meeting our interactional goals. Judee Burgoons Expectancy violation theory addresses the evaluation of behavior. 1. We develop expectations about how another person should act based on social norms and our experience with the other person. 2. Unlike common assumptions, violations are not automatically judged unfavorably; they can be evaluated as positive or negative. a) Violations cause arousal in the observer accompanied by greater attentiveness. b) Where the other person is liked and/or the interaction is rewarding, the violation will probably be seen as positive. David Buller and Judee Burgoons. Interpersonal deception theory addresses deception and its detection. 1. Communicators look for behavioral signs of apprehension on the part of deceivers and suspicion on the part of receivers.

59

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Such signs are more detectable in non-strategic behavior than strategic behavior, a phenomenon called leakage. 3. Suspicion is heightened when expectations are violated. 4. Other factors affect deception detection. a) Interactivity, or the degree of availability, between communicators, can reduce suspicion and increase immediacy, the degree of psychological closeness between communicators. b) Conversational demand, or complexity of action, can reduce suspicion. c) Familiarity can make detection easier. d) Deceiving for personal gain makes detection easier. The Sociocultural Tradition of theories of conversation encounters how meaning is made in conversations and how symbols come to be defined through interaction. Here the discourse is what gets examined. A. Classic symbolic interactionism has six premises. 1. People make decisions and act in accordance with their subjective understandings of the situation which they are in. 2. Social life consists of interactive processes rather immutable structures. 3. People understand their experiences through the meanings found in symbols, or language, used in their primary group. 4. The world is made up of social objects that have socially determined meanings. 5. Peoples actions are based on their interpretations of what is going on. 6. Ones self is defined through social interaction with others. 7. The basic idea of symbolic interactionism were worked out, primarily by George Herbert Mead.with his work at the Chicago School and developed by Herbert Blumer. 8. Mead's theory is organized around the central concept of the social act, a basic unit of conduct involving the three-part relationship between gesture, response, and result. 9. Societal action is just an extension of the social act in what Blumer calls joint action of people who have an interlinkage among them. 10. The social act consists of three interrelated parts. a) Society is group life, or a cluster of cooperative behaviors in a group. (1) Cooperation involves acting with intent using symbols. (2) Persons must assign meaning to the symbols used by others in order for cooperation to occur. (3) Responses to the actions of others depend upon the meanings assigned to the symbols involved in the action.

2.

60

B.

Meaning arises in the give-and-take of interaction in social groups. (a) Society is made possible significant symbols, those symbols with shared meaning within a group. (b) Because they have common meaning, significant symbols allow us to imagine accurately how others will respond. b) The second part of the social act is the self. (1) The self is treated as an object in the sense that one can act toward the self as an object. (2) The self has meaning, worked out interactionally with the significant others, the most important and influential other people in one's life,. (3) Through role taking, one comes to see the self as others see it. (4) The generalized other is a kind of composite perspective of how you perceive others view you. (5) The self has two parts. (a) The "me' is the generalized other, the socially acceptable and adaptive behavior, the common way in which others see the self. (b) The "I" is the impulsive, creative, and unpredictable aspect of the self. c) The third element is mind, which is thinking about things in the abstract with the use of symbols. (1) The mind is not a thing but a process, a process by which objects are considered in terms of their meanings. (2) Mind is essentially an internal conversation. (3) Minding involves hesitating as you interpret the situation. 11. People use symbols to name objects, and the way you define something influences the way you act toward it. 12. Blumer identifies three types of objects: physical, social, or abstract. Ernest Bormann, John Cragan, and Donald Shields symbolic convergence theory, often known as fantasy-theme analysis, deals with the way stories created in small group symbolic interaction are chained out. 1. Fantasy themes, consisting of characters, plot lines, scenes and sanctioning agents are part of larger, more complicated dramas called rhetorical vision, a view of how thing have been or will be a) Characters can be heroes, villains or other players. b) Plot lines is the development of the story.

(4)

61

C.

D.

c) Scenes are the settings. d) Sanctioning agents provides the source of legitimization. 2. Rhetorical visions are never told in their entirety but are built up piecemeal by sharing associated fantasy themes. 3. You can recognize a fantasy theme because it is repeated, sometimes so often that can be abbreviated and trigged by a simple symbolic cue and becomes a fantasy type. 4. Rhetorical visions pulls people together and gives them a shared sense of identification, a shared consciousness. 5. Fantasy themes are an important ingredient in persuasion but are also useful in serving as an agent of social bonding. Ethnomethodology, the detailed study of how people organize their everyday lives, is important in conversational analysis. 1. Conversational analysis (CA) sees conversation as a social achievement, the way things get done cooperatively through talk. 2. Conversational analysis focuses on interaction in discourse. 3. The primary concern of conversation analysis is the sequential organization of talk. 4. Conversation analysis assumes that talk, like all social activity, is patterned. 5. Conversation analysis looks at details of conversations to discover the ways in which organization is achieved. The most important topic of conversation analysis has been coherence, or the connectedness and meaningfulness of conversations. 1. Coherence is achieved by the following conversational maxims, based on the cooperative principle. a) The quantity maxim is that one's contribution should be an appropriate amount, not too much or too little. b) The quality maxim is that one's contribution should be truthful. c) The relevance maxim is that one's contribution should fit into the topic of conversation. d) The manner maxim is that one's contribution should be clear. 2. Coherence can be achieved directly by following the maxims or indirectly by implying cooperative intent through conversational implicature. 3. A variety of theoretical principles have been employed to explain how people achieve coherence. a) In local rules the turns are organized and sequential , adjacent statements in a conversation. b) Global rules explains coherence in terms of the meaning of the whole conversation. 4. The turn-taking theory of Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson illustrates a sequencing approach, a local rules

62

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view that sees conversation consisting of a series of rule-governed speech acts. a) This theory relies on analysis of the adjacency-pair, or two sequential turns at talk. b) Because of the preference for agreement, adjacency pairs must match such that the second-pair part is an appropriate follow-up to the first-pair part. c) Sometimes the meaning of an adjacency pair depends on other turns around the pairs in question. (1) A presequence is an adjacency pair whose meaning depends on another set of turns yet to be uttered. (2) An insertion is a pair inserted between the parts of another pair. (3) Expansions occur when one intention is embedded within a set of acts designed to accomplish another intention. 5. Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs employ a rational, global rules approach to conversational coherence. a) In this approach the coherence of a conversation is judged not by the consistency of individual adjacency pairs, but by the overall rationality of the discourse. b) Here communicators look for a rational link between their statements and goals. c) Like a game, conversations are played rationally according to rules. d) In order for a series of play to be judged rational, the felicity conditions of the acts must be met. (1) This requires the use of validity rules, which warrant the sincerity of the move. (2) Reason rules are followed to adjust one's statements to the perspectives of the other communicator. 6. The above approach is consistent with Donald Elliss coherentist theory of meaning. a) Intelligibility is made possible by evidence of the meaning. b) Organization is possible because of connections among different levels of discourse. c) Verification is made possible by interaction between communicators. 7. Global principles does not negate the value of local principles. A Rational-pragmatic model can be used to explain theory is used to explain conversational argument, a theory of how people manage disagreement. 1. Managing disagreements follows rule and is a cooperative achievement.

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Conversational arguments involve argument, which is "having" an argument, and in the process people undertake argument which is "making" an argument. 3. Arguers follow rules in managing their disagreements. a) They begin by forwarding a standpoint they believe the other party will disagree with. b) In idealized form, an argument consists of several aspects: introduction, confrontation, argumentation, and closing. c) When all of the parts are present, the parties are said to be engaged in a critical discussion. F. Stella Ting-Toomeys face-negotiation theory addresses how people will accomplish facework in different cultures. 1. Face refers to ones self-image in the presence of others. 2. Facework is the communication behaviors people use to manage their own and others faces. 3. The locus of facework is whether ones behavior is directed at maintaining the face of self or other. 4. Face valence is whether particular behaviors support or attack someones face. 5. Facework also has a temporal component in that it can be directed repairing, current, or future face loss. 6. We can also engage in preventative facework against future loss of face, or restorative facework against past loss of face. 7 Two cultural variables seem to affect facework. a) Individualism-collectivism refers to how much an individual honors the community over the individual. b) Power distance relates to the sense of differences of status within a particular culture. 8 Aside from culture, other individual differences also affect facework. One example is self-construal. Self-construal refers to how interdependent or independent one is on others. The Cybernetic Tradition looks at the systematic connections among meaning, behavior and action. A. W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronens rule-based coordinated management of meaning (CMM) is the most comprehensive theory of social interaction that addresses the ways in which peoples varying meanings are coordinated in conversation. 1. CMM is premised on the belief that within any social situation people first want to understand what is going on and apply rules to figure things out. a) Constitutive rules, or rules of meaning, are used to interpret or understand an event. b) Regulative rules, or rules of action, are used to act or respond to an event. 2. Rules are always chosen and events understood within a context, or frame of reference.

2.

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Contexts are related to one another in a hierarchy. (1) The relationship context includes mutual expectations among members of a group. (2) The episode context is an event. (3) The self-concept context is one's sense of personal identity. (4) The archetype context is an image of general truth. b) The order of contexts in the hierarchy is often shifted. c) Humans have an ability to create a number of contexts for interpretation and action. d) A text is an event to be interpreted or understood within a context. (1) The text and context form a loop, such that each can be interpreted in terms of the other. (2) Self-confirmatory loops are charmed. (3) Self-contradictory loops are strange. 3. The logical force of a rule is its definition of what interpretations and actions are logical or appropriate in a given situation. a) Prefigurative, or causal, force is an antecedent-to-act linkage. b) Practical force is an act-to-consequent linkage. c) Contextual force is a linkage from context to act. d) Implicative force is a linkage from act to context. 4. The primary task in all communication is coordination. a) Each communicator interprets the acts of the other person with meaning rules, and each responds to the other with action rules. b) Coordination requires that each communicator must feel that the actions make sense or are logical and appropriate. c) Coordination can occur without shared rules and without shared understanding. The Critical Tradition looks at how the use of language in conversation creates division and holds out the possibility for empowerment. A. Fern Johnsons cultural linguistics posits six axioms of a languagecentered perspective. 1. All communication occurs with cultural frameworks. 2. All individuals possess tacit cultural knowledge through which they communicate. 3. In multicultural societies there is a dominant linguistic ideology. In the U.S. it is English. 4. Members of marginalized cultural groups possess dual cultural knowledge; their own and the dominant culture. 5. Cultural knowledge is both preserved and is constantly changing. 6. When cultures coexist, each influences and affects the other.

a)

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Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffins invitational rhetoric uses the idea of invitation both literally and metaphorically. 1. When you issue an invitation you invite others to see the world seriously from your perspective. 2. Invitational rhetoric provides an alternative view of communication that embodies feminist values. 3. It shifts the definition of rhetoric from persuasion to invitation. 4 To persuade is to imply that one is superior to another and that one has the right to pressure others. 5 Invitational rhetoric underscores a different set of values. a) Equality places different perspectives on an equal plane. b) Immanent value places worth and dignity on all life. c) Self-determination affords every one the right to decide for themselves. 6. Sonja Foss and Karen Foss refined and elaborated on this notion by contrasting different modes of rhetoric in our culture. a) Conquest rhetoric is an interaction in which winning is the goal. b) Conversation rhetoric is designed to bring about change in anothers perspective or behavior. c) Benevolent rhetoric is designed to help others improve their lives. d) Advisory rhetoric is providing requested information. e) Four factors are conducive for creating an environment amenable to invitational rhetoric. (1) Freedom, the power to choose or decide. (2) Safety, a feeling of security. (3) Value on all contributions. (4) Openness, a willingness to consider other perspectives.

Exercises 1. Think about a social group of which you are a member. What are some of the important significant symbols and social objects in this group? Show how the meanings for these symbols have evolved, been maintained, or changed by interaction in the group. 2. Study the conversation of a group for several hours. You may wish to tape-record the conversation on several occasions or take careful notes from your firsthand observations. What fantasy themes are apparent in the conversation? What do you think are some of the rhetorical visions of this group? 3. Examine and compare the concept of the orientational other from chapter four and the significant other from this chapter. Assess whether these are essentially the same idea, or are there inconsistencies among the two.

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4. Reflect back on your initial encounters with someone new, perhaps a friend, roommate, spouse, professor, co-worker. What strategies did you use to reduce uncertainty? Which did you find most effective? Are some strategies more appropriate for certain kind of new encounters? 5. Discuss how you have adjusted your communication behavior since you have arrived on campus. Identify the behaviors that were most notably adjusted. Relate when there have been instances of divergence. 6. Explore the assumptions, theoretical conjectures, and explanations that Coordinated Management of Meaning and Uncertainty Reduction theory share. 7. Examine and evaluate whether symbolic interactionism is better understood as a scientific, objective theoretical approach, or as social constructionist, subjective one. 8. What evidence can you offer that face maintenance is a critical part of American society? Can you provide examples of some sub-cultures in the United States where this may be more or less important? If you have traveled to other countries what communication differences in terms of face negotiation did you notice?

9. Do you agree with the emphasis Mead places on language as a shared symbolic system? 10. With permission, tape-record a conversation. Extract a brief segment from the conversation that you find interesting and transcribe it. Carefully examine the transcript and answer the following questions: (a) how well do the speakers meet the cooperation principle? What forms of conversational implicature, if any, do they use to accomplish this? (b) Divide the excerpt into adjacency pairs. How coherent are second-pair parts with first-pair parts. When coherence is not apparent on the surface, examine the whole conversation to see if you can tell how the speakers are accomplishing coherence. Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. How does argument require cooperation? 2. How is it possible to interact with people who use a completely different language if, as Mead argues, language is a shared symbolic system? 3. In what ways do we construct meaning through discourse? Is this the same as saying communicators decide what things mean when they have a conversation with others? 4. Try to hold a conversation with a classmate without violating any of Grices conversational maxims. Is it possible? 5. What is the difference between coordination as described by CMM and cooperation as discussed by Grice? 6. Discuss the difference between I and me.

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7. Compare and contrast how Blumer from the Chicago School (in this chapter), and Kuhn (from chapter four) treat the conception of the self. 8. Discuss the similarity or differences between how theorists from a sociopsychological tradition and sociocultural tradition treat the concept of the mind. 9. Explore the common suppositions among the rule-based theories in this chapter. 10. How would you explain the reasoning behind the concept of hierarchical concepts in CCM? Suggested Web Links Ethno/CA News (http://www.pscw.uva.nl/emca/): A clearinghouse of links to a variety of websites devoted to ethnomethodology and conversation analysis An introduction into the basics of ethnomethodology: (http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/ethno/intro.htm) Introduction to Symbolic Interactionism: (http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Symbolic.html) Two sites that explore Herbert Blumer & Symbolic interactionism (http://www.colorado.edu/communication/metadiscourses/Papers/App_Papers/Nelson.htm) (http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/f100.htm) An overview of Bergers Uncertainty Reduction: (http://www.uttyler.edu/meidenmuller/commtheory/ppt/uncertaintyreduction/) Critically examining Accommodation Theory: (http://www.tefl.net/articles/accommodation.htm) Application of Accommodation Theory in an inter-cultural context: (http://host.uniroma3.it/docenti/boylan/text/boylan25.htm) The library of Interpersonal deception: (http://www.lieseeker.com/other.htm) Links to papers on the Coordinated Management of Meaning: (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bg362397/cmm.htm) Comprehensive examination of Coordinated Management of Meaning: (http://www.colorado.edu/communication/meta-discourses/Theory/cmm/) Face Negotiation theory in a cross-cultural context: (http://www.cic.sfu.ca/forum/ting-too.html)

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Chapter Seven The Relationship Chapter Outline I. II. The basic unit of relationship is not the person nor two individuals but interaction, behaviors responding to other behaviors. The Cybernetic Tradition of relationships study show us that relationships are not static but rather consist of cybernetic patterns of interaction in which individuals words and actions affect how others respond. A. Relational patterns of interaction is a set of theories founded by a group of researchers known as the Palo Alto Group that focuses on the premise that when two people communicate they are defining their relationship. 1. In the presence of other people you are always expressing something about your relationship with the other person, whether conscious or not. 2. Patterns are established because any behavior is potentially communicative. a) One pattern that emerges is the symmetrical relationship where communications respond in the same way and sometimes lead to power struggles. b) Another pattern is the complementary relationship where communications respond in opposing ways and has the potential for dominant-submissive relationships. B. Investigators L.Edna Rogers and Frank Millar demonstrate how control in a relationship is a cybernetic process and looks at four ways a person may respond to an assertion by another. 1. A one-down means the person accepts the assertion. 2. A one-up response is when the person rejects the assertion and makes another. 3. A one-across move means the person neither accepts or rejects the assertion. 4. A complementary exchange occurs when one person asserts a one-up and the other responds with a one-down. The Sociopsychological Tradition employs variable analysis and relies on typing and characterizing individuals and relationships A. Relational schemas in the family describes different family types and explains the differences among them. 1. Schemas, or more specifically relational schemas, are the ways in which family members think about families. It addresses three areas of content knowledge. a) What you know about relationships in general. b) What you know about family relationships as a type. c) What you know about your relationship with other family members of your own family. 69

II.

III.

In addition to content knowledge, a familys schema includes a certain type of orientation to communication, either conversation orientation or conformity orientation. 3. These various schemas create four family types. a) Consensual families are high in conversation and conformity (1) The parents make decisions. (2) They tend to be traditional in marriage orientation, and have little conflict. b) Pluralistic families are high in conversation and low in conformity. (1) They tend to have parents who do not control. (2) They are independent and unconventional in their views about marriage, and have many conflicts. c) Protective families are low in conversation and high in conformity. (1) They tend to have parents who are ambivalent about their relationship and are typed as separates. (2) They may have conventional views of marriage views but as emotionally divorced they do not share much and are quick to retreat from conflicts. d) Laissez-faire families are low in conversation and low in conformity (1) They tend to not care what other family members do. (2) They are mixed in terms of marriage views , a combination of separate and independent. B. Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylors social penetration theory identifies the process of increasing disclosure and intimacy within a relationship. 1. It was premised on the economic proposition that human beings make decisions based on costs and rewards, or social exchange. 2. Social exchange theory says you seek to maximize rewards and minimize costs. 3. You reveal information about yourself when the cost-rewards ratio is acceptable to you. 4. There are four stages of relational development. a) Orientation is when only very public information is exchanged. b) Exploratory affective exchange is when deeper disclosure takes place. c) Affective exchange is when critical and evaluative feedback takes place. d) Stable exchange is highly imitative and allows partners to predict each others actions. The Sociocultural Tradition theory of relationships shifts to an emphasis on interaction, and a focus on typology to process explanations. 2.

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B.

C.

Mickhail Bakhtins theory of dialogics is a cross-over theory with contributions from both sociocultural and critical traditions. 1. Prosaic refers to the ordinary, familiar world- eating, sleeping, walking, talking.Two forces impact these prosaics. a) Centripetal, or order imposing forces. b) Centrifugal, or order disrupting forces. 2. The second aspect of the theory is unfinalizability which claims the world is not yet decided and in the process of interacting, we influence the future. a) Heteroglossia means many voices and helps us understand why identity is constantly evolving. b) Dialogue is how we interact in specific interactions. c) Utterance is a unit of exchange between two people and is taken in context. d) Monologue, or finalization, occurs when an interaction becomes static, closed, dead. A dialectical theory of relationships emerged from the work of Leslie Baxter and explores ways in which persons in relationship use communication to manage the naturally opposing forces that impinge on their relationship. 1. A dialectic is a tension between opposing forces. 2. A dialogue is a coming together of diverse voices in a conversation. a) Relationships are made in dialogue. b) At the same time you also identify differences between yourself and the other person which enables you to develop as a person, or self-becoming. c) Dialogue affords an opportunity to achieve a unity within the diversity. d) Through dialogue we manage contradictions, or dialectics. 3. Relationships are dynamic. Five qualities change as relationships develop. a) Amplitude or strength of feelings, behaviors or both. b) Salience or focus on past, present, and future. c) Scale or how long patterns last. d) Sequence or order of events in the relationship. e) Pace or rhythm is the rapidity of events in the relationship. 4. Dialogue is aesthetic and involves a sense of coherence, or form or wholeness. 5. Dialogue is discourse and is the idea that the practical and aesthetic outcomes are not things in themselves but are made, or created in dialogue. Sandra Petronios communication privacy management (CPM) is a theory about tension between openness and privacy where individuals in relationships are managing boundaries between the public and the private.

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Disclosure is a relational contract that includes consensus on shared costs and rewards. 2. Boundary management is a rule-based process involving risk assessment, cultural expectation, gender differences, personal motivations and situational demands. 3. Boundaries are negotiated and include rules. a) Boundary permeability, or how open or closed the boundary is supposed to be. b) Boundary linkage, an agreement of who is in and who is out. c) Boundary ownership, the rights and responsibilities of the co-owners. d) Boundary turbulence, the fuzzy, unshared or violated boundary rules. The Phenomenological Tradition focuses on the internal, conscious experience of the person. A. Carl Rogers self-theory says the self cannot be separated from the relationship and thus leads to empathy. 1. Your overall experience as a person constitutes your phenomenal field. 2. The self is an organized set of perceptions about who you are and what distinguishes you from others. 3. As the self grows, you want autonomy and growth. a) Congruence, or consistency, means you feel clear about who you are and where you fit in the world. b) Incongruence refers to feeling confused and yourself and where you fit in the world. 4. Relationships characterized by negative criticism breed incongruence while supportive relationships produce congruency. 5. The study of these helping, healthy relationships led Rogers to develop client-centered therapy, person-centered communication. B. Martin Bubers studies of religion provided a coherent view of what it means to be a human being in modern times and defines God as a special type of relationship referred to as a dialogue. 1. In an I-Thou relationship, you see yourself and others as whole persons who cannot be reduced to characterizations. 2. In I-It relationships, you think of the other person as an object to be labeled, manipulated, changed, and maneuvered to your own belief. 3. There are three types of interaction within an I-It frame. a) In monologues you privilege your ideas and interests over those of others. b) Technical dialogue is exchange about information rather than participants experience. c) Disguised monologue is where participants talk around issues without honestly engaging the self and other.

1.

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Exercises 1. Get permission to tape-record a conversation between two people in a relationship. Do an interaction analysis of the conversation using the categories in Table 7.1. What can you tell about the relationship from this analysis? 2. Interview five friends about problems they are having with another person. Have each friend describe and explain one problem in as much detail as possible. In particular, have the respondent describe the sequence of events exactly. 3. Interview ten dyads about one of their relationships. Find out about the qualities Werner and Baxter describe that mark relational change. Have them plot where they believe their relationship is at this point, and then ask the same of their partner or friend. Is there much agreement? What does it mean for the relationship if the partners in the relationship dont have similar understandings of where they stand? 4. Translate the findings from the above into Koerner and Fitzpatricks relational schemas. Can you discover a pattern of dialectics that make logical sense in terms of the ways of thinking about relationships? 5. Look at a recent conflict youve had with a friend or romantic partner. From a dialectical perspective, what tensions seemed to underlie the problem. If the problem was resolved, through what mechanisms did the dialectical tensions get managed? 6. Choose a current relationship you have and conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Judge whether the relationship is cost efficient: Are the rewards inherent in the relationship worth what it costs you? 7. Compare and contrast how uncertainty reduction theory (from chapter six) and social penetration, from this chapter, treat the concept of self-disclosure. 8. Prepare a biographical analysis of a family that you are intimately familiar with (possibly your own, or a relatives, or a friends) and locate them in Fitzpatricks four-part typology of consensual, pluralistic, protective and laissez-faire. Provide examples of the communication patterns and relational orientation to support your analysis. Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Can two contradictory things be true? Provide some examples. 2. Social penetration theory defines interpersonal communication not as a type or context but as a certain quality of communication. Which definition do you prefer and why? 3. Do you believe that their aspects of relational dialectics that are culturally specific? Or those that perhaps may be gender specific? Explain and justify your position. 4. Describe and explain the terms centripetal force, centrifugal force and unfinalizability. How do these concepts help us make sense of relationships? 73

5. What are the ontological and epistemological assumptions of Carl Rogers and Martin Buber? 6. Explore and assess how Baxter incorporates Bakhtins teachings in her dialectical theory? 7. Compare and contrast how cost-rewards conjectures permeate relational dialectics, communication privacy management, social penetration and social exchange theories . 8. Describe a relationship you have or had in terms of the four stages of relational development. If it is an ongoing relation, where is it now? Make a prediction of its future course. If it is a former relation, at what stage did the relationship dissolve and why? Suggested Web Links International Network on Personal Relationships. An academic organization devoted to the study of interpersonal relationships: (http://www.inpr.org/) Interpersonal Communication Articles. A collection of articles related to solving interpersonal communication problems: (http://www.pertinent.com/pertinfo/business/communication/) Models and theories of relational development: (http://novaonline.nv.cc.va.us/eli/spd110td/interper/stages/stages.html) Papers and research on Social Penetration theory: (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~aa410897/SP.htm) Critique and assumptions of Social Penetration theory: (http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/socpen.html) Discussion of Bakhtins Theory of Dialogics: (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/bakhtin/chap5.html) Mary Anne Fitzpatrick explores why she studies family and marital communication: (http://www.ls.wisc.edu/maf/Pub.htm) Home page of Association for Humanistic Psychology that follows the teachings of Carl Rogers and his therapeutic approach to human relationships: (http://ahpweb.org/) Excerpts from Martin Bubers dialogue on the "I-Thou" relationship: (http://www.buber.de/en/)

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Exploration of relationship dialectics: (http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spch100/10-10-baxter.htm) Petronio explains her theory, Communication Privacy Management: (http://www.russcomm.ru/eng/rca_biblio/p/petronio_eng.shtml)

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Chapter Eight The Group Chapter Outline I. Groups are formed through communication. Besides the task challenge, interactional patterns within groups deal with conflict, power configurations, and relationships as well as creating structures, roles and norm. The Sociopsychological Tradition looks at the kinds of message people express in groups and how these affect group roles and personalities. A. Robert Bales interaction process analysis is a classic in the field. It looks at the types of messages people exchange in groups, the ways in which these shape the roles and personalities of the group, and the ways they affect the overall character of the group. 1. Although called interaction process it has little to with interaction or process but instead is focused on the behavior of individual members of a group. 2. Communicators in groups produce twelve types of messages grouped into four sets. a) Gives information or asks for information. b) Asks for opinions or gives opinions. c) Gives suggestions or asks for suggestions. d) Do not share information leading to problems of communication , problems of evaluation, problems of decision, and problems of tension leading to problems of reintegration. 2. Dramatizing in Bales theory means relieving tensions by telling stories and sharing experiences that may not directly relate to the group task. 3. Bales theory includes two categories of communication behavior. a) Socioemotional behaviors include seeming friendly, showing frustration, and dramatizing. b) Task behaviors include suggestions, opinions, and information sharing behaviors leading to task completion. c) Task leaders facilitate getting the job done while socioemotional leaders work for improved relations in the group. d) Usually the task and socioemotional leaders are different people. 4. Bales has shown how the perception of an individuals position in group is a function of three dimensions. a) Dominant vs. submissive. b) Friendly vs. unfriendly. c) Instrumental vs. emotional.

II.

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The Cybernetic Tradition looks at the systematic nature of groups as part of larger systems of interacting forces. They tend to be descriptive in approach and incorporate elements of sociocultural thinking. A. Bona fide group theory, founded by Linda Putnam and Cynthia Stohl, looks at naturally occurring groups and suggests that all groups are part of a larger system. 1. Bona fide groups have permeable boundaries, that flow in and out as all members of a group are also members of other groups. 2. Bona fide groups are interdependent with the environment meaning the group is always influenced by the environment, and the group, in turn, affects the relevant contexts in which it works. B. Input-process-output model looks at which information and influence come into the group (input) , the groups approach to the information (process), and the results that circulate back to affect others (output). 1. Task groups have two types of problems. a) Task obstacles are difficulties encountered by the group with its assignment. b) Interpersonal obstacles arise whenever two or more people come together to handle a problem. 2. When task and interpersonal work is integrated effectively, an assembly effect , in which the group solution is superior to the individual work of its members, occurs. 3. Synergy in the group is the energy that goes into solving task objectives (effective synergy) and interpersonal objectives (intrinsic synergy). 4. Conflicts take away from task completion; the less conflict, the more cohesive the group. C. Aubery Fishers interaction analysis focuses on interacts, the act of one person followed by the act of another. 1. The interact unit of analysis is not the individual message but a contiguous pair of acts. 2. Interacts can be classified along a content, which is Fishers focus, or relationship dimension. 3. The content dimension theory of decision emergence goes through four stages. a) Orientation phase involves people looking for direction and understanding of the problem at hand. b) In the conflict phase dissent and polarization emerges coalitions may form, and attempts at persuasion arise. c) In the emergence phase coalitions tend to disappear and cooperation begins to emerge. d) In the reinforcement phase the group decision solidifies. 4. Related to this is decision modification which looks at the cyclical changes in group interaction.

77

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IV.

John Oetzel employs the input-process-output model in his effective intercultural work group theory which is interested in diversity as well as group effectiveness . 1. Cultural differences are clustered in three ways. a) Individualism-collectivism. Members of individualistic cultures tend to put priority of their own goals over group goals while members of collectivism cultures tend to put group goals first. b) Self-construal. How members think of themselves is either independent, or separate from others, or interdependent, connected to others. c) Face concerns are how members manage personal image. (1) Self-face is ones own image. (2) Other-face, the image of other people (3) Mutual-face, concerns about the relationship between self and others. 2. These kinds of cultural differences require effective communication. But this is difficult because these differences are hallmarks of a heterogeneous group which inherently makes communication challenging. 3. The degree to which groups can handle intercultural diversity is determined by four factors. a) A history of unresolved conflicts among the cultural groups in society at large. b) The in-group-out-group balance determined by the number of group members representing the different cultures. c) The extent to which the groups task is cooperative or competitive. d) Status differences. 4. The blend of cultures within a diverse group will affect its communication process in several ways a) If a group is individualistic, it will use dominating conflict strategies. b) If a group is collectivist, it will use collaborating strategies. c) Group members who are more culturally individualistic will speak more frequently. d) Collectivist groups will tend to use collaborating conflict strategies. e) When group members are more concerned with other-face and mutual-face, they tend to use collaborative communication and are more satisfied. The Sociocultural Tradition looks at theories that emphasize the social construction of groups, what they do and how this action results in something larger and enduring.

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The structurational perspective of Anthony Giddens is a general theory of social action that states that human action is a process of producing and reproducing various social systems. 1. As communicators act strategically according to rules to achieve their goals, they do not realize that they are simultaneously creating forces that return to affect future actions. 2. Donald Ellis refers to interactions and structure as braided entities. At the same time we act deliberately to accomplish our intentions our actions have unintended consequences of establishing structures that affect our future actions. 3. Group decision making is a process in which group members achieve convergence, or agreement on a final decision, and in doing so, structure their social system. 4. Structuration involves three major dimensions. a) An interpretation or understanding or how something gets done. b) A sense of morality or proper conduct or what should be done. c) A sense of power in action or how to get things accomplished. 5. Structures, which emerge unplanned and unintended, relate to each other in two ways. a) One structure can mediate another. b) Structures can contradict one another. 6. Outside factors influence a groups actions especially as it relates to task type. 7. How a group operates depends on three sets of variables. a) Objective task characteristics include standard attributes of the task including preestablished solutions, clarity, expertise, impact of problem, and broader implications of the solution. b) Group task characteristics include the groups previous experience with the problem, the requirements of the solution and the urgency of the solution. c) Group structural characteristics include cohesiveness, power distribution, conflict, and size. 8. Groups can follow different paths of development depending on the contingencies with which they are faced. Groups can take three general types of paths. a) Standard utility sequence is like a regular agenda. b) Complex cyclic sequence is a cycling between problem and solution. c) Solution-orientation where almost no problem analysis occurred. 9. The decision paths consist of three activity tracks.

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C.

D.

The task process track consists of activities that deal directly with the problem. b) The relational track involves activities that affect interpersonal relationships. c) The topic-focus track is a series of issues and concerns of the group over time. 10. Breakpoints in the tracks occur in three ways. a) Normal breakpoints are the natural breaks of transition or determination. b) Delays are unexpected problems that cause a pause in normal group functioning. c) Disruptions are major disagreements and group failures. Functional theories of group process have been influenced by John Dewey. It views the process as an instrument by which groups make decisions and communication does a number of things (functions) to determine group outcome. Deweys problem solving method is mirrored in the work of Randy Hirokawa and his colleagues that leads to identifying the kind of things groups need to take into consideration to become more effective. 1. They must identify and assess the problem to be solved. 2. They must gather information and evaluate it. 3. They must propose alternative solutions to the problem. 4. They must reach consensus after evaluating the alternate solutions. 5. Faulty decisions can be attributed to the following factors. a) Improper assessment of the problem. b) Inappropriate goals and objectives. c) Improper assessment of alternatives in terms of positive and negative qualities achieved through each alternative. d) The group may develop an inadequate information base. e) The group may use faulty reasoning from the information base. Irving Janis groupthink theory examines the group decision as it relates to critical thinking. 1. Groupthink is a direct result of cohesiveness or the degree of mutual interest among group members. 2. Cohesiveness is good when it brings members together and enhances interpersonal relationships in the group. 3. Highly cohesive groups may invest too much energy in maintaining good will to the determinant of decision making. 4. This can lead to the negative consequences of groupthink. a) A limiting of discussion. b) Not examining critical ramifications of the solution. c) Minority opinions are quickly dismissed. d) Expert opinions are not sought.

a)

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e) Concentrating only on information that supports the plan. f) Not considering a contingency plan. Groupthink can be identified by a number of symptoms. a) Illusion of invulnerability, an undue air of optimism. b) Collective efforts of the group to rationalize the action chosen. c) The groups belief in its inherent morality, seeing itself as well motivated and working for the best outcome. d) Out-group leaders are stereotyped as evil, weak or stupid. e) Direct pressure is exerted on members not to express counter opinions. f) Self-censorship as individual members become reluctant to express their reservations. g) A shared illusion of unanimity. h) Self-appointed mindguards emerge to protect the group and its leaders from adverse opinions and unwanted information.

Exercises 1. Do an analysis of a workgroup you belong to from the standpoint of a functional theorist. Do the same thing from the standpoint of a interactional theorist. Which of these theories provides the richest description of your group. 2. Figure 8.2 includes a number of basic elements of group problem-solving in the boxes. Make an outline in which each of these components constitutes a main head. After each, list specific items that relate to that component, using this chapter as a guide. For example, after Obstacles in the Task Environment, you would list a number of specific task obstacles. After Behaviors Related to the Task-Environment System, you would list specific behaviors that address the task obstacles. 3. Divide the class into groups no larger than six members each, and distribute arts and crafts material. Devote two entire class sessions to allow the groups to build any kind of structure they wish with the available materials. At the conclusion have the groups present their venture to their classmates and discuss, in both written and oral forms, an analysis of their groups development, behaviors, problem solving, interactions in terms of the theories covered in this chapter. 4. Hold a class discussion on whether they feel that groupthink is a real problem and if so, how widespread is it? Even if they did not know the terminology beforehand, were you aware of the symptoms of grouthink? Do you believe that the American public is mindful of this phenomenon? 5. Visit a committee meeting on your campus. Observe the meeting unobtrusively and do an interaction analysis using the categories in Figure 8.1 by tallying the number of comments in each category. What can you say about this group based on your analysis? 81

6. With a group of classmates, write and produce a one-act play in which you act out an episode of groupthink. 7. Survey the theories in this chapter and make a list of principles of good group communication implied by these theories. At what points would the theories disagree about whether a practice was good or bad? Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Take a position and defend the proposition that functional theories are more compatible with the sociopsychological than the sociocultural tradition. 2. Bales has incorporated Bormans symbolic convergence theory from chapter six in his interaction process. What contributions do you see this theory making to Bales work? 3. Can you think of other communication contexts where structuration may apply besides in groups and organizations? Defend your position. 4. In what ways could various theories of group communication be enhanced or improved by applying some of the theories of interpersonal communication to groups? 5. Discuss the ways in which interaction analysis and the input-process-output model converge and diverge. 6. Compare and contrast Bales task and socioemotional behaviors with Collins and Guetzkows task and interpersonal obstacles. 7. Task maintenance is a tenacious concept in small group theory. How do you account for this?

Suggested Web Links Groupthink: Theoretical Framework. A graphical representation of Janis model of groupthink: (http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/FIS/Courses/LIS2149/Groupthink.html) Society for Judgment and Decision Making, a professional organization devoted to the interdisciplinary study of decision making: (http://www.sjdm.org/)

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Society for Judgment and Decision Making, a professional organization devoted to the interdisciplinary study of decision making: (http://www.sjdm.org/) Excellent portal for examining all aspects of small groups: (http://www.abacon.com/commstudies/groups/group.html) A site devoted to SYMLOG, the method developed by Bales for measuring and examining interactions: (http://www.symlog.com/internet/what_is_symlog/what_is_symlog-01c.htm) Exemplars of, and links to, groupthink: (http://www.css.edu/users/dswenson/web/TWAssoc/groupthink.html) Web site examining to the symptoms of groupthink: (http://www.leadingtoday.org/Onmag/august01/groupthink82001.html) Center for the Study of Work Teams, a general resource for locating information related to group processes in business environments: (http://www.workteams.unt.edu/) Two links examining Anthony Giddens theory of structuration: (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/rel/mod-gidcns.htm) (http://www.cs.auc.dk/~jeremy/pdf%20files/ECIS1998.pdf)

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Chapter Nine The Organization Chapter Outline I. II. Organizations are networks, or social structures created by communication among individuals and groups. Three general dimensions can conceptualize organizations. A. The first dimension is organizational form, structure and function that can be captured through several metaphors. 1. Organizations are machines because they have parts that function together. 2. They are organisms because they are born, grow, function, adapt to changes, and die. 3. They embody a sense of flux and transformation because they adjust, change, and grow on as they obtain feedback and assimilate information. B. The second dimension is management, control, and power, which can also be examined by the application of metaphors. 1. They are brains because they process information. 2. They are political systems because they make use of power. 3. They are psychic prisons because they shape and limit the lives of their members. 4. They are instruments of domination because they possess interests that compete against one another. C. The third dimension is organizational culture. 1 They are cultures because they create meaning. 2. A culture has shared identities, norms, beliefs, and practices. The Sociopsychological Tradition theories of organizations tend to be highly formal and linear, and focus on individual and group attributes, or characteristics. A. Max Webers theory of bureaucracy is considered a classical organizational theory looking at a bureaucracy as hierarchical and layered. 1. Organizations are rule driven entities that are insensitive to individual differences and needs. 2. They are systems of purposeful, interpersonal activity designed to coordinate individual tasks which can not be accomplished without authority, specialization, and regulation. 3. Authority must be legitimate or authorized by the organization. a) Authority is legitimated by a system of force and rule making it a kind of rational-legal authority. b) Rational-legal authority is established through hierarchy. c) Employees of the organization do not share in the ownership. 2. Specialization divides people in the organization according to division of labor and each person knows his or her job.

III.

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In organizations/ bureaucracies there is a necessity for rules and regulations. B. Rensis Likerts four systems theory looks at human relations as a management tool and suggests if you nurture employees, they in turn will be more motivated and productive. 1. Likert treats communication as an intervening variable that function along a continuum of four organizational systems. a) The exploitive-authoritative system operates where the boss makes all decisions with no feedback from employees. b) The benevolent-authoritative leadership system has managers who are sensitive to the needs of the workers. c) The consultative system operates whereby the manager maintains control but seeks consultation from below. d) The participative management system allows workers to participate fully in decision making. 2. Likerts research shows the participatory system is the model for best results. The Cybernetic Tradition theories of organizations see structure as emerging from patterns of interaction from within the organization. A. The process of organizing theory of Karl Weick uses communication as a basis for human organizing and provides a rationale for understanding how people organize through their daily interactions. 1. When people go through their daily interactions, their activities create organization. a) The interaction that forms an organization consists of an act or statement of behavior of an individual. b) An interact involves an act followed by a response. c) A double interact consists of an act followed by a response and then an adjustment or follow-up by the originator. 2. Organizing activities reduce equivocation, which is uncertainty, including uncertainty in the environment. 3. Organizing consists of four elements. a) Enactment is the definition of the situation in terms of its uncertainty. b) Selection is when members of the organization accept some information as relevant and reject other information. c) Retention further reduces equivocality by deciding what aspects of the initial information will be saved for future use. d) The choice point consists of where people must decide whether to reenact the environment in a certain way. 4. As people communicate to reduce uncertainty they go through a series of behavior cycles, routines used to clarify things.

3.

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Within a behavior cycle, members actions are governed by assembly rules that guide the choice of routines used to accomplish what needs to be done. Network theory looks at patterns of communication and who communicates with whom. 1. Networks are social structures created by communication among individuals and groups thus creating links. a) Formal networks are prescribed by organizational rules and structure. b) Emergent networks are informal channels that are built by daily contact among the individuals. 2. The basic structural idea of network theory is connectedness- the idea that there are stable pathways of communication among individuals. a) Personal networks are the connections you have with many others with whom you communicate in the organization. b) Group networks are clusters of individuals who tend to communicate more frequently. c) Organizational networks consist of the group networks in the organization communicating with each other. 3. Networks can be analyzed in a number of ways. a) In dyads, or two people who are linked. b) In triads or three linked individuals c) Groups and subgroups. d) Global networks, the linking of groups. e) Multiplexity looks beyond the identifying of the parts and actually describing the multiple functions that links serve. 4. The basic unit of the organization is a link and those links define networks in the organization. a) Network role connects groups in particular ways. b) A bridge is a member of a group who is also a member of another group. c) A liaison connects two groups. d) An isolate is an individual who is not linked to anyone else. e) In-degree reflects the number of contacts other people make with you. f) Out-degree involves the number of links you initiate with others. g) Centrality is the extent to which you are connected to everyone else. h) Links can be direct, involving a straight link to another person, or indirect in which two people linked by a third. 5.

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The number of links between you and another person are degrees of separation. 5. Organizations are shaped by numerous overlapping networks. a) Networks are multifunctional and multiplex. b) Networks are characterized by size and connectedness. c) Networks are characterized by their centrality. d) Networks function in organizations in five ways. (1) They can control information. (2) They can bring people together. (3) They build common interpretations. (4) They enhance social influence. (5) They allow for an exchange of resources. Theories in the Sociocultural Tradition are influenced by hermeneutics and phenomenology. They are concerned with the shared meanings and interpretations that are constructed within networks, and the implications of these constructions on organizational life. A. Conversations and text in the process of organizing is a wide ranging theory based on the work of James Taylor. It creates a picture of how organizations are constructed in conversations. 1. Conversation is the interaction, what words people use, their demeanor, gestures and behaviors toward one another.. 2. Text is the content or what is said. 3. Conversation and text are two processes that cannot be separated, a double translation. a) The conversation is understood in the context of the text and the text is understood in the context of the conversation. b) These two translations happen simultaneously. 4. The ultimate meaning of the interaction is determined not only by the act initiated but also by the response to that act, a process called co-orientation. 5. The idea of an organization is built through a series of connected tiles or a flatland view. 6. The macro (large view of the organization) and the micro ( minute daily interactions) each affect one another. 7. Interpretations of conversations give form and life to the organization. 8. Certain individuals act as agents and codify information. 9. There is a recursive relationship between the deep structure and the actual conversations of an organization. B. The concept of structuration, attributable to Anthony Giddens, when applied to organizations deals with the ways in which our actions create unintended consequences that affect future actions. 1. Organizations are structures created in this way. 2. Structure is seen as the defining characteristic of an organization. 3. In addition to organizational structure, the climate also emerges

i)

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from structuration. a) Climate is the general collective description of an organization or part of the organization that shapes members' expectations and feelings. b) Climates consist of three elements. (1) The concept pool is a set of basic terms that members use to define and describe the organization. (2) The kernel climate is a shared conception of the atmosphere of the organization. (3) The particular climate consists of people's translations of the kernel climate into more concrete terms. c) Three factors enter into the development of a climate. (1) The structure of the organization limits the kinds of interactions and practices that can be engaged in and therefore affects the climate. (2) The climate-producing apparatuses are mechanisms designed to affect employee perceptions and performance. (3) Member characteristics include individuals' skills and knowledge. Organizational control theory developed by Phillip Tompkins, George Cheney and their colleagues looks at the ways ordinary communication establishes a certain control over employees. 1. Control is exerted in a variety of ways. a) Simple control is open, direct power. b) Technical control is the use of machinery which may limit the work. c) Bureaucratic control uses institutional procedures and formal rules. d) Concertive control, the central concept of this theory, is the use of interpersonal relationships and teamwork. (1) This control is subtle and unobtrusive. (2) Discipline is collaboratively produced. (3) Discipline is part of social relations. (4) The most effective means are based on the values that motivate organizational members. (5) There is a trend in organizations toward concertive control and away from the other three. e) Because employees do not automatically accept organizational premises, they must be induced to do so. (1) This is accomplished by organizational identification, or getting the participants to feel some common ground with the organization.

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Identification occurs when individuals become aware of their common ground. (3) Our identities determine, to a degree, the identifications we forge, a two-way street referred to as the identity-identification duality. (4) When employees identify with the organization, they tend to accept the premises of the organization, and by the use of enthymeme, reason the way that management wants them to. Organizational culture looks at the way people construct an organizational reality and examines the way individuals use stories, rituals, symbols, and other types of activity to produce and reproduce a set of understandings. 1. Organizational culture has four domains. a) The ecological context is the physical world in which the organization operates. b) The differential interaction consists of networks. c) The collective understanding consists of common ways of interpreting events. d) The individual domain are the practices or actions of individuals. 2. Organizational culture is something that is made through everyday interaction within the organization- not just task but all forms of communication. a) Communication performances are interactional. b) Performances are contextual. c) Performances are episodal. d) Performances are improvised. 3. There are a number of organizational communication performances. a) Ritual is something regularly repeated. (1) Personal rituals relate to individualistic practices. (2) Task rituals helps members do their job. (3) Social rituals are what take place in organizations that are not task related. (4) Organizational rituals are those the entire work group regularly participates in. b) Passion is a way to make dull and routine duties interesting. (1) Storytelling is the most common passion. (2) Passionate repartee consists of dramatic interactions and the use of lively language. c) Sociality reinforces a common sense of propriety and social rules within an organization. d) Organizational politics are performances that reinforce

(2)

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notions of power and influence. e) Enculturation is the process of teaching the organizational culture. The Critical Tradition looks at power relations and structures in organizations that arise through organizational interaction. A. Hermeneutic of suspicion, the work of Dennis Mumby, looks at patterns of domination. He calls for an attitude of suspicion, or questioning, the deep structure of ideology, power, and control within an organization. 1. Hegemony in organizational communication involves relations of domination in which subordinated groups actively consent to and support belief systems, and structures of power relations that do not necessarily serve those interests. a) Hegemony is rarely a brute force power move but is instead a worked out set of arrangements. b) Hegemony is normally considered negative although it does have a component of resistance and transformation. c) Hegemony is pragmatic, a reality of the power arrangements that emerge in any multi group and social construction 2. Hegemony is a process of struggle rather than a state of domination. B Managerial and organizational democracy is Stanley Deetzs take on contemporary organizations that privilege managerial interests over the interests of identity, community, or democracy. 1. In contrast to democratic values, the normal discourse of organizations tend to be one of domination. a) Naturalization is the assumption of truth on the part of power stakeholders. b) Neutralization is the idea that information is neutral or value free. c) Legitimation is the attempt of the organization to privilege one form of discourse as the voice of authority within the organization. d) Socialization is the ongoing process of training employees. 2. The above four processes constitute a systematically distorted communication that serves the interests of managerial capitalism. a) Managerial capitalism aims to reproduce the organization for the ultimate survival of management itself. b) The effect of managerialism is to inhibit emancipatory democracy. c) Real democracy is manifested in the ideal speech situation a concept derived from Jurgen Habermas (Chapter 11). (1) A balanced responsiveness that fosters an attitude of constantly critiquing the structures of power. (2) Here all discourses are legitimate and open.

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Gender and race in organizational communication theory looks at organizations as gendered sites dominated by hegemonic masculinity. 1. There are shared themes as to what it is for a professional woman to project an image of success, verbally and nonverbally. 2. Organizations are fundamentally gendered and raced. a) Race is a singular concept and often segregated in textbooks. b) Race is relevant when it serves the interest of the organization. c) Cultural and racial differences are seen as synonymous with international differences. d) Racial discrimination stems from personal bias. e) White workplaces and workers are the norm.

Exercises 1. Interview three organizational executives. Explain Likert's four systems and show the executives Figure 9.2. Get their opinion of the validity of this theory. How do they feel about participative management? To what extent and in what ways do they differ in their opinions of human relations? 2. Think of an organization with which you are familiar. If you were appointed communications coordinator for this organization, what programs, publications, and practices would you implement on the basis of the theory of organizational control? 3. Write an analysis of the climate of your communication theory class based on Poole and McPhee's theory of climate. 4. Weick sees organizing as a three-part, evolutionary process that deals with communication inputs. From your experiences either at this school, or from work, what strategies were employed to make sense of this information? 5. Examine a copy of the manual of policies regarding staff and faculty at your school or department of study and analyze it in terms of organizational forms, structures, management, control, and culture. Identify the various functions, systems for feedback, power arrangements and shared meanings that this document discloses. 6. Discuss the proposition that our society is an organizational society. Construct a comprehensive blueprint of all the facets of your experience that are (or were) part of an organization. Address the shared values, norms, beliefs, and practices of each of these structures. 7. Resolved: Organizations are inherently undemocratic. Any form of managerial control naturally inhibits emancipatory democracy. Take a stance and debate this contention incorporating the teachings of Deetz and Habermas.

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8. Create a workshop for business executives to help them recognize and benefit for understanding their organization from a flatland view rather than a top-down perspective. Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. How much do we learn about other contexts by studying organizational communication? For instance, how are families like organizations? What about friendship networks? Churches? 2. Review structuration theory in this chapter and the previous one. What common premises support these theories? To what extent could they be combined into a single chapter? Outline such a chapter. 3. How can you combine Webers classic organizational model with Tompkins and Cheneys organizational control theory and Deetzs managerialism theory? 4. Using Figure 9.1 name each link in terms of its particular network role. 5. Some would say that most of the theories in this chapter are applied. Which theory do you believe is most basic in the sense of contributing to our understanding of communication in general? What do we learn from this theory about the process of communication? 6. Weick's theory of organizational enactment is consistent with several other theories discussed elsewhere in the book. Discuss the philosophical and theoretical background of this theory in terms of these other works. Hint: Think of interactions. 7. Compare and contrast Tompkins and Cheneys four kinds of organizational control. 8. Weick suggests that organizations are best thought of as what we do, not places we work. How is this idea similar to Giddens structuration theory? Suggested Web Links Historical Background of Organizational Behavior. An article examining historical trends in organizational theory: (http://www.cba.neu.edu/~ewertheim/introd/history.htm) Management Theory Resources. A great set of resources related to all aspects of management theory, organizational behavior and organizational communication: (http://www.business.com/directory/management/management_theory/index.asp) A link to the copious body of work produced by the prolific Max Weber: (http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm) Student papers on various organizational theories: (http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spch100/orgcomm.htm) 92

Two sites to navigate and explore the tenets of organizational theories: (http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/orgtheory.htm) (http://www.cps.usfca.edu/ob/resources/theory.htm) Gateway for information and links to themes discussing organizational culture: (http://www.mapnp.org/library/org_thry/culture/culture.htm) An overview of the hermeneutic of suspicion: (http://capo.org/premise/95/sep/p950812.html) The International Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Change takes a critical look at organizations: (http://www.management.unimelb.edu.au/icrod/icrod.html)

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Chapter Ten The Media Chapter Outline I. Mass communication is the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics, and the manner in which those messages are sought, used, understood, and affect audiences. A. Media implies mediation and are central to the study of mass communication. B. While there is no single, simple definition of media it can be illustrated by a variety of metaphors. 1. Media are windows that enable us to see beyond our immediate surroundings. 2. They are interpreters that help us make sense of experience. 3. They are platforms or carriers that convey information. 4. Media are interactive communication that includes audience feedback. 5. Media are signposts that provide us with instructions and directions. 6. They are filters that screen out parts of experience and focus on others. 7. They are mirrors that reflect ourselves back to us. 8. Media are barriers that block the truth. 9. Media are conduits. 10. Media are languages. 11. Media are environments. C. Media theories can be divided into two general topics. 1. Macro theory looks at the relationship between media and broader societal institutions. 2. Micro theory looks at the relationship between media and audiences The Semiotic Tradition is a powerful tool for examining the impact of mass media focusing on the sequentially and chronologically organized symbols that create an impression, transmit an idea, or elicit a meaning. A. Jean Baudrillard has argued that signs have become increasingly separated from the objects they represent. B. While part of the semiotic tradition, Baudrillards work has a critical edge, envisioning a malleable mass in which society-wide relations have come depersonalized. 1. At first, a sign simply represented an object or condition. This was a stage of symbolic order. 2. In the counterfeits stage, signs began to produce new meanings not necessarily a natural part of the experience they represented. 3. The production stage signaled an era in which objects became independent of signs.

II.

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Today, we are in an era of simulation, in which signs no longer represent, but create reality. a) Because of the process of simulation we make fewer and and fewer distinctions. b) Meanings collapse into a huge mass. c) We thrive on hype. The Sociocultural Tradition sees media as powerful societal force fulfilling a variety of important functions of affecting different audiences in different ways. A. Marshall McLuhans medium theory, based on the work of his mentor Harold Innis, focuses on the importance of media over content which led to his famous aphorism, the medium is the message. 1. McLuhans thesis is that people adapt to their environment through how they sense and perceive it. Every medium is an extension of some human facility. 2. The primary interest of any historical period is a bias growing out of the predominant media of the time. a) Time-binding media, which last over generations. provide a bias toward tradition. b) Space-binding media, which are easily transported over space, provide a bias toward empire building. c) Speech, because it is produced one sound at a time, encouraged people to organize their experience chronologically. (1) Oral messages are immediate and ephemeral. (2) It requires information to be kept in the mind. d) Writing, and especially the advent of printing, led to profound changes. (1) Writing can be separated from the moment. (2). It can be manipulated, changed and recast. (3). It lead to a separation of knowledge from the knower. e) Electronic media extended perception beyond any given moment and location, creating a global village. (1) Like print, it allows information to be stored. (2) It permitted information to become commodified and the need to make it appealing. 3. Most theorists today believe that content is as important as the medium. B. Harold Lasswell was one of the earliest theorists to recognize that media content can fulfill a variety of functions in society. 1. Lasswell proffered one of the most often quoted model of communication: Who, Says what, In which channel, To whom, With what effect. 2. Lasswell identified three functions of the media of communication. a) Surveillance, providing information about the environment.

4.

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b) Correlation, presenting options for solving problems. c) Transmission, for socializing and educating. Media can structure issues for the public, spelled out in Donald Shaw and Max McCombs agenda-setting theory. 1. Because the real environment is much too large and complex people create a pseudo-environment, or images of the world with which to view things. 2. The ability of the media to establish what is important is agenda setting. a) Agenda-setting occurs because the media are selective in what they report. b) Agenda-setting occurs when the media influence the public agenda, which in turn affects the policymaking agenda. (1) The media agenda consists of what is viewed as important by the media themselves. (2) The public agenda consists of what the public believes to be the important issues. (3) The policy agenda is what policy makers view as important. 3. Media can be powerful in influencing the public agenda, but it is not always so. a) The power of the media depends on its credibility on particular issues at particular times. b) The influence of the media depends also on the extent of conflicting evidence. c) It depends too on the extent of shared values between media and public. d) The influence of the media also depends on the public's need for guidance. 4. There are three kinds of agenda-setting effects. a) Representation occurs when the media reflect the public agenda. b) Persistence occurs when the public agenda remains intact with little influence by the media. c) Persuasion occurs when the media agenda influences the public agenda to change. 5. Media agendas are established by pressures from within media organizations and from outside sources. a) If both the outside source and the media have power and they agree, there will be a significant influence over the public agenda. b) If an outside source is powerful but media are not, the external source will co-opt the media to influence society at large. c) If the outside source is not powerful but the media are powerful, media organizations themselves will prevail.

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If both outside sources and media are weak, the public agenda will be determined by events themselves rather than media communication. D. Gerard Schoening and James Andersons social action media studies envisions the audience not as an amorphous mass but as numerous, highly differentiated communities each with their own values, ideas and interests. 1. It is based on six premises. a) Meaning is not in the message itself but is produced by audience interpretation. b) The meaning of media messages are produced actively by audiences. c) Meanings of media shift as audiences approach media in different ways. e) The meaning of media message is never individually established but produced communally. f) The actions that determine a groups meanings for media content are done in interaction among members of a group. g) Researchers should join the communities they study if only temporarily. 2. Consistent with social action media studies is to think of audiences as numerous interpretive communities that come into being around specific media content. 3. Thomas Lindlof outlines three dimensions of an interpretive community which he refers to as genres, or general types of media outcomes created within these communities. a) Genres of content consists of types of programs and other media consumed by the community. (1) It is not enough that the community share an interest in a specific type of medium content. (2) It must also share some common meanings for that content. b) Genres of interpretation revolve around shared meaning. c) Genres of social action are shared sets of behavior, how the content is consumed and the ways it affects the conduct of members of the community. The Sociopsychological Tradition concentrates on individual media effects. This is a massive tradition with a vast literature base that can be examined in terms of three large theoretical programs. A. The Effects Tradition. 1. Interest in effects began early in the last century with the magic bullet theory (at times known as the hypodermic-needle effect) of powerful and direct media effects. 2. During the 1950s this view was modified with the idea of a twostep flow hypothesis in which media effects were considered to be limited, minimized by intervening opinion leaders who influence others through interpersonal communication.

d)

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B.

By the 1960s came the belief that media effects were only moderate, mediated by other variables. a) Joseph Klappers reinforcement approach articulated this perspective. b) Klappers thesis was that mass communication was neither a necessary nor sufficient cause of audience effects. c) That the media are only a contributing cause led to the conjecture of an obstinate audience, affected by other than media factors alone. d) One of the most likely reasons for audience obstinance was the concept of selective exposure which predicts that in most circumstances people will select information consistent with their preexisting attitudes. 3. By the 1970s and through the 80s, researchers found evidence of problems with limited effects. a) It was too linear going directly from cause to effect. b) It failed to account for social forces. c) It was limited almost exclusively to attitude and opinion change ignoring other effects. d) It focused on the short-term ignoring what accumulates over time. e) It began to recognize the potential reach, power and ubiquity of television. 4. This renewed a revival of a powerful effects model, sparked by the writings of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. a) Noelle-Neumann found that those who proffered a limited effects view were those who held the media in a free society in high regard. b) These scholars and media professionals painted a picture of media as disseminators of information not influence. 5. Perhaps one of the most researched powerful media effects topics has been the presumed influence of violence on television. a) James Potter, a debunker of the direct effects of media violence, observed that the literature focuses on several theoretical assumptions. (1) In the short term, an increase in aggressiveness, or fear, or desensitization. (2) In the long term, an increase in fear of victimization and a greater tolerance for violence. b) Potter, however, noted that these results do not necessarily support a powerful-effects model because effects have been found to be mediated by individual, situational, institutional and message variables. Among the most popular theories of mass communication are those of uses, gratifications, and dependency.

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C.

Unlike the powerful-effects tradition, this approach imagines audience members to be discriminating media users. a) The audience is active and goal-directed. b) The audience member is largely responsible for choosing media to meet his or her own needs. c) The media compete with other sources of need gratification in society. 2. Uses and gratifications has been expanded by the application of expectancy-value theory. a) Gratifications sought, what a person wants from media, are based on beliefs about what a medium can provide and the evaluation of the medium's content. b) Positive attitudes toward a media segment will lead to use of that segment to gratify needs, while negative attitudes will result in avoidance of the medium. 3. Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleurs dependency theory takes a somewhat different approach from uses and gratifications. a) Media effects are viewed in this theory as a result of complex system interactions among elements of audience, media, and society. b) Audiences depend on media information to meet needs and attain goals. c) The degree to which a person will depend on a medium varies, and the more dependent the audience becomes on some aspect of the media, the more it will have an effect. (1) The more functions a medium meets, the greater the audience's dependency will become. (2) The greater the social stability the less people need to rely on the media. d) Individuals who grow dependent on a particular segment of the media will be affected cognitively, affectively and behaviorally by that segment. e) Ones needs are not strictly personal but may be shaped by cultural or social conditions. f) The more alternatives for gratification available, the less dependent one will become on any single medium. George Gerbners cultivation theory examines of the long-term influence of television on culture as a whole. 1. Because television is the great common experience of almost everyone, it creates the effect of providing a shared way of viewing the world. 2. The general cultural effect of television is a totality of experience communicated cumulatively over a long period of exposure. 3. Total immersion in television, not selective viewing, causes cultivation.

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The theory predicts a difference in the social reality of heavy viewers as opposed to light ones. a) Heavy viewers believe in a reality that is consistent with that shown on television. b) The mean-world syndrome is the belief that the world is dangerous, despite the fact that very few people are ever exposed to violence in their everyday lives. 5. There is a general fallout from television called mainstreaming that tends to homogenize culture. The Cybernetic Tradition looks at the complex interaction among individual statements, media depictions and public opinion, political opinions that can be expressed openly. A. Noelle-Neumanns spiral of silence demonstrates how interpersonal communication and media operate together in the development of public opinion. 1. When individuals perceive their opinion is popular, they express it, and when they think their opinion is not popular, they tend not to. 2. This process leads to certain opinions being stated more than others. 3. The media report on those opinions most often expressed, giving impetus to the spiral. 4. This theory is based on two assumptions. a) People possess a pseudoscientific or quasi-statistical sense to predict which opinions are prevalent and which are not. b) People adjust their expressions of opinion to these perceptions. 5. There is also some individual variation in the tendency to express opinion. a) Young people tend to be more expressive than the older. b) Educated individuals will speak up more than the uneducated. c) Men are generally more disclosive of their opinions than women. 6 The spiral of silence is caused by the fear of isolation. 7. Individuals often cannot tell where their opinions come from, whether what is learned comes through media or interpersonal channels. 8. There are exceptions to the spiral of silence, as innovators, change agents, and the avant-garde tend to speak out regardless of the prevailing opinion. 9. The media themselves contribute to the spiral of silence. a) It is often difficult for people to get publicity in the media for their cause or point of view. b) Individuals often feel their cause is scapegoated in the media, the pillory function of media.

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When journalists' opinions vary from those of the general public, they will publicize their own opinions as well as those expressed by citizens, leading to a dual climate of opinion. The Critical Tradition see media as more than simple disseminators of information but complex organizations that are major players in an ideological struggle. It is influenced by the cybernetic, semiotic, and sociocultural traditions. A. According to Denis McQuail there are five major branches. 1. Classical Marxism sees media as instruments of the dominant class that serves to promote capitalists interests. 2. Political-economic media theory, like Marxism, blames media ownership for societys ills. a) Media content is commodified to be sold. b) This leads to a conservative, non-risk taking operation making certain media outlets dominant and others ignored. 3. Frankfurt School sees media as a means of constructing culture, creating, manipulating and disseminating messages that benefit the dominant class. 4. Hegemonic theory is the domination of one particular ideology. a) This ideology perpetuates the interest of the dominant class. b) It becomes pervasive and is unconsciously co-opted by the subservient classes as their own. 5. Cultural studies, is a critical, sociocultural and semiotic approach. a) It is interested in the cultural meanings of media products. b) It looks at ways media content is interpreted, either in the dominant mode, negotiated or oppositional mode. c) It uses the concept of hegemony as the domination of a set of ideas over others.

10.

Exercises 1. Keep a media use log for an entire week. Record day, time, activity, medium, content, duration, surroundings and context, rational for use, affective or cognitive motivations, whether it was a planned encounter, and whether you or someone else chose the medium and content. At the end of the week, compile a report your media experiences accounting for your media use and why. 2. Have a class debate on the limited versus powerful effects issue. 3. Study several music videos. Using the semiotic theory presented in this chapter analyze the semiotic features of these videos.

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4. Examine where there are points of convergence and divergence between Baudrillards semiotics in this chapter and the linguistic approach of Saussure and Langer from chapter five. 5. Discuss the concepts of resonance, mainstreaming and meanworld syndrome. 6. Write a paper supporting or attacking the proposition that "television has done more harm than good" using the appropriate theories from this chapter. 7. Compare and contrast Marxist economic determinism with the cultural studies view of the superstructure being overdetermined. 8. Think of an opinion you hold that differs from what most of your friends believe. For one day share this opinion with as many of your friends as you can. How did you feel about this exercise? Do you think there is a spiral of silence? 9. Review a variety of videotaped television programs. Identify and discuss instances that reveal examples of capitalist hegemony in both the advertising and editorial content of these shows. 10. Conduct a token cultural indicators analysis of television content by examining a weeks worth of prime-time network content. Employing Gerbners operationalization of violence, count the number of violent acts for the week. Audit the results and using Nielsen demographic analysis of each network, evaluate why a particular network may have more instances of violent acts than others. 11. Discuss the inherent methodological problems with uses and gratifications focusing on the assumptions of accurate recall, the contamination effect of prior notification, and the ability of respondents to be able to distinguish between antecedent need and actual media content gratification.

Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. Create a theory of media that combines two or more of the main topics of this chapter (content and structure, social institutions, audience, cultural outcomes, individual outcomes). 2. Critically evaluate cultivations definition of violence and its distinction between heavy and light viewers. 3. How has the Internet changed the way we interact with other media? Does the interactive nature of the Internet force us to reevaluate our media theories, or do current theories also explain the way the Internet affects society? 4. Is McLuhan a prophet or a fool? Why?

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5. Most critical theorists believe that you cannot validly study media apart from other aspects of society. Defend or refute this thesis. 6. Examine the concept of audience activity that is at the core of the uses and gratifications approach and cultural studies. What are the similarities and what are the differences? 7. Contrast how McLuhan and Gerbner understand the role and impact of media content. 8. Create a theory of public opinion combining elements from several theories in this chapter. 9. Define and explain the concept of hegemony and its connection to the mass media. Defend whether or not you believe American media fosters a hegemonic view of how the world should operate. 10. Would theories from the critical tradition have a different accounting for media in society if the media were publicly and not privately owned? 11. Explore the idea that agenda-setting may be more effective establishing the salience of issues on which the public has no firsthand experience with. Suggested Web Links Media and Communication Studies Site, a large online resource for many aspects of media studies: (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Functions/mcs.html) Large, encyclopedic set of information related to all facets of communication and recent media research. This site can be used for most any theoretical topic in this textbook. Selected best web site for communications: (http://www.ccmsinfobase.com/) Everything you need to know about Marshall McLuhan is available at this portal: (http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/) The ongoing work of those who continue to explore McLuhans ideas can be found here: (http://www.mcluhan.ca/) From a uses and gratifications perspective, why people watch television: (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/usegrat.html) A compilation of the writings of Jean Baudrillard: (http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/baudweb.html) In a detail, Max McCombs spells out his theory of media agenda-setting and the shaping of public opinion: (http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/extra/McCombs.pdf)

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Review of the history of media effects research from both a European and American perspective: (http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:cjiwemhsptgJ:www.masscom.com.au/Downlo ads/Media_Effects_(US).pdf+%22mass%2Bmedia+effects%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8) Core assumptions and conceptual model of media dependency theory: (http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/macro/Dependency%20Theory.doc/) From the United Kingdom a resource for linking to numerous studies on media effects, especially on children, from all over the British empire.: (http://www.directory.co.uk/Media_Effect_Children.htm) Spiral of silence: assumptions, conceptual model, applications and critique: (http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory09.htm#Fear%20of%20Isolation)

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Chapter Eleven Culture and Society Chapter Outline I. II. Every act of communication is affected by and contributes to larger social forms and patterns. The Semiotic Tradition is concerned with how the culture shapes how we understand and use language. A. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, otherwise known as the theory of linguistic relativity, is based on the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. 1. It imagines direct relationship between the sign and the thought processes within a culture. 2. The hypothesis suggests that the way we see the world is shaped by the grammatical structure of language. 3. This theory differs from social constructionist theories because it holds that reality is already embedded in language and therefore comes preformed. B. Basil Bernsteins elaborated and restricted codes envisions more of a two-way influence. The social structures of the culture necessitate certain language forms and these forms support the culture. 1. The basic assumption is the relationships established in a social group affect the type of speech used by that group. 2. The structure of speech used in a group makes things relevant for that group. 3. People learn their place in the world by virtue of the language codes they employ. a) A code is the set of organizing principles behind the language employed by a group. b) Elaborated codes provide a wide range of syntactic alternatives. (1) They allow speakers to make ideas and intentions explicit. (2) They require more planning and thinking than restricted codes. (3) These codes are common in groups that do not share a common perspective. (4) These codes are necessitated by an individualistic perspective. (5) Elaborated codes constitute an open-role system. (a) An open-role system expands the number of alternatives for participants. (b) Roles are not categorical but individualized, negotiated, and fluid. c) Restricted codes have a narrower range of options.

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The language produced by restricted codes is more predictable than that produced by elaborated codes. (2) These codes do not allow expansion and elaboration of ideas. (3) These codes are common in groups that share a strong set of assumptions about people and relationships. (4) These codes are based on shared social categories. (5) Restricted codes constitute a closed-role system. (a) A closed-role system reduces the number of alternatives for participants. (b) Roles are fixed and people viewed in terms of those roles. A group's code is determined by two chief factors. a) The first is the social structure of the major socializing agencies of the group. (1) Well-defined structures of fixed roles lead to restricted codes. (2) Less defined structures of fluid roles lead to elaborated codes. b) The second factor is values. (1) When individuality is valued, elaborated codes emerge. (2) When group identity is valued, restricted codes emerge. The working class are more likely to use restricted codes, whereas the middle class may use both elaborated and restricted codes. The family is especially important in the development of elaborated or restricted codes. a) Two types of families are common. (1) Position families, that have strictly determined roles, tend to have a closed communication system and use restricted codes. (2) Person-centered families, that emphasize individuality, tend to have open communication and elaborated codes. b) Three kinds of control are common in families. (1) The imperative mode, which is delivered in a restricted code, is regulation based on command and authority. (2) Positional appeals, which can be delivered in a restricted or elaborated manner, are based on role related norms. (3) Personal appeals, which can be restricted or elaborated, are based on individualized characteristics.

(1)

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The Cybernetic Tradition understands society as a large system encompassing pathways, clusters or nodes that define social networks of communication A. Bibb Latans dynamic social impact theory shows how system principles can be applied to human communication. 1. Society, which tends to self-organize, is a giant communication system. 2. In society, people cluster together in groups based on commonalities. a). We interact more and are thereby influenced more by those with whom we share a social space. b). As people influence one another, they become more similar, and influence and similarity are affected by three factors. (1) Individuals vary in their strength of influence. (2) Influence is related to immediacy or closeness. (3) The number of people also increases influence. 3 The self-organizing tendency explains the formation of minority groups. 4. A groups behaviors are reinforced cybernetically. 5. Change in a group is not incremental, but can experience sudden shift. 6. Positive feedback loops tends to create diversity and lead to divergence while negative feedback loops tend to cancel diversity and lead to convergence. B. The importance of interpersonal networks is the pivotal concept at the core of Diffusion of Information and Influence theories. 1. Diffusion occurs when an idea spreads from a point of origin to surrounding geographical areas or from person to person within an area. 2. Diffusion of information is one of the most significant outcomes of communication. 3. While media can play an important role in diffusion, diffusion usually relies on interpersonal networks. 4. Paul Lazarsfelds voting study revealed that the effect of media was leveraged by interpersonal communication, an effect which became known as the two-step flow. a) The two-step flow hypothesis says that influence flows from the media to opinion leaders then on to other people. (1) Opinion leaders are individuals who monitor media and have interpersonal influence. (2) Monomorphism, which has become more prominent as systems become more modern, is opinion leadership on a single issue or topic, while polymorphism is opinion leadership on a variety of topics.

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The multi-step model says that influence occurs through a complex network of social relations. 5. Diffusion of innovation is the adoption of ideas, practices or objects spread by communication through a social system. a) Many years may be required for an idea to spread. b) Diffusion research is geared to discover means to shorten this lag. c) The rate of adoption is determined by a number of factors. (1) The innovations relative advantage. (2) Its compatibility with existing values. (3) The degree to which people can experiment with the innovation without making a huge commitment. d) People vary in their levels of resistance or acceptance. (1) Certain individuals will be early adopters and usually influence others. (2) Late adopters are slow to adopt. The Phenomenological Tradition relies on the personal and cultural interpretations, or hermeneutics, of participants in an experience. A Cultural interpretation, commonly referred to as ethnography, involves interpreting the actions of a group or culture. 1. It involves thick description, in which the interpreter describes events from the native's point of view, and thin description which is a description of behavioral patterns without a sense of what it means to the participants themselves. 2. The hermeneutic circle in ethnography involves a movement of the mind from experience-near concepts, which are close to the meanings of the natives in the culture, to experience-distant concepts, that are closer to the meanings of the interpreter. 3. Constant reinterpretation may be required as each subsequent understanding is found lacking. B. Ethnographic theorizing is a four-part process. 1. The first is to develop a basic orientation to the subject. 2. The second phase of ethnographic theorizing defines the classes or kinds of activity that will be observed. 3. Next, the ethnographer will theorize about the specific culture under investigation. 4. Finally, the ethnographer moves back out to look again at the general theory of culture he or she is operating with and test it with the specific case. The Sociocultural Tradition is a continuation of the phenomenological because cultural interpretation has roots in both traditions. A. An important assumption of this tradition is that society itself is a product of social interaction and assumes that social structures influences interaction. B. These theories prioritize cultural conditions and tendencies over individual ones.

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Ethnography of Communication, a research tradition originated by Dell Hymes, suggests that formal linguistics is not sufficient by itself to uncover a complete understanding of language. 1. The focus here is on communication patterns within a cultural group. 2. All forms of communication require a shared code, communicators who know and use the code, a channel, a setting, a message form, topic, and an event created by the message. 3. Hymes suggests a number of general communication categories that can be used to compare groups. a) Ways of speaking are patterns familiar to the group. b) The ideal of the fluent speaker is the group's idea of what makes an exemplary communicator. c) The speech community is the group itself and its boundaries. d) The speech situation, times when communication is considered appropriate in the community. e) The speech event is what episodes are considered to be communication. f) The speech act consists of the specific set of behaviors taken to be communication. g) The components of speech acts are what the group considers to be the elements of a communicative act. h) The rules of speaking are the guidelines or standards followed when communicating. i) The functions of speech are what communication is believed to accomplish. 4. Four assumptions of ethnography of communication. a) Participants in a local cultural community create shared meanings by using speech codes. (1) A speech code is a distinctive set of understandings within a culture about what counts as communication. (2) Speech codes create a sense of how to act with other people in a social group. (3) The code guides what communicators actually experience. (4) The speech codes are embedded in daily speech. (5) They form the basis on which culture will evaluate and conduct its communication. b) Communicators in any cultural group coordinate their actions. c) Meanings and actions differ from culture to culture. d) Each group has its own ways of understanding certain codes and actions.

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The ethnography of communication looks at three types of problems. a) The first is to discover the type of shared identity created by communication. b) The second is to uncover the shared meanings within the group. c) The third is to explore the ways in which groups handle contradictions. 6. The communication ethnographer asks three types of questions. a) Questions of norms direct attention to the standards of right and wrong. b) Questions of forms direct attention to the types of communication used. c) Questions of cultural codes draw attention to meanings and symbols. D. Performance ethnography looks at how culture is made in performance. 1. Everyday culture is like theater. 2. Public performances are social dramas. a) They are liminal, marking transitions and borders. b) They follow a pattern. (1) The breach is a violation or threat to the community. (2) The crisis involves community agitation. (3) Redressive procedures mend the breach. (4) Reintegration restores peace. c) Not all members participate as performers in social dramas, but these roles are taken by "stars." d) Performance is significant as embodied practice. The Critical Tradition though diffuse, has one common theme, the idea that social and cultural arrangements are loaded to enforce the power of certain groups and oppress others. A. Most hold that the process is overdetermined, caused by multiple sources. 1. Critical scholarship seeks to uncover oppressive forces through dialectical analysis which exposes the underlying struggle between opposing forces, and to empower the aggrieved. 2. To groups who benefit from the current arrangement, everything looks normal and natural while the marginalized see the misalignment. 3. Critical theorists holds that language of the dominant class makes it difficult for subordinate classes to understand their situation. B. Four general categories of theory, modernist, postmodern, poststructural, and postcolonialism help in sorting out this diverse tradition. C. Modernist theories, often referred to as structural, centers on ongoing oppressive social structures. 1. Marxism, based on the social theory of Karl Marx, is one of the

5.

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

b)

most important intellectual strands of the past century. a) It is based on the premise of the base-superstructure relationship, the idea that societys means of production determine the structure of that society. b) Marxist critique of political economy is the belief that economics drives politics. c) Marxism places great emphasis on the means of communication, on the discursive formations that contribute to oppression and alienation. Few critical theorists today hold to classical Marxist ideas but many are neomarxists incorporating Marxs concerns with dialectical conflict, domination and oppression. Ideology remains an important concern to most critical theories. a) Ideology is set of ideas that structure a groups reality, a system of representations that govern how people and groups view the world. b) In classical Marxism, ideology is a false consciousness, a set of false ideas that perpetuate the dominant forces. Louis Althusser sees ideology as forming an individuals subjective understanding of experiences. a) The superstructure consists of repressive state apparatuses, such as the police, military and the ideological state apparatuses such as religion, education and the media. b) The repressive mechanisms enforce an ideology when it is challenged, while the ideological reproduce it in everyday communication making it seem natural. Hegemony, the process of domination of one particular ideology, is the interest of Antonio Gramsci. a) Hegemony happens when events or texts are interpreted in a way that promotes the interests of one group over those of another. b) This can be a subtle process of co-opting the interests of the subordinate group into supporting those of the dominant group. One of the oldest and most well-known-Marxist traditions is the Frankfurt School, often eponymic with critical theory. a) This group has consisted of a diverse set of scholars most centrally concerned with the role of the mass media in capitalistic societies. The most well known contemporary spokesperson in this tradition is Jurgen Habermas whos theory of universal pragmatics posits that society must include a mix of three major interests. (1) Work, consisting of efforts to create necessary material resources promotes a technical interest.

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c)

d)

e)

Interaction, consisting of the use of language and other symbol systems for communication promotes a practical interest (3) Power can dominate, and it can free one from domination; as such, it is an emancipatory interest. Communication is essential for emancipation, but only if done competently in accord with universal pragmatics, or the universal principles of the use of language. (1) In communication three types of speech acts are used, and each is evaluated in terms of a different type of validity. (a) Constatives, assertions designed to get across a proposition as true, are judged in terms of their truth value. (b) Regulatives, intended to affect one's relationship with another person, are judged in terms of its standards of appropriateness. (c) Avowals, designed to affirm something about oneself, are evaluated in terms of sincerity. (2) When the validity of a speech act is challenged, discourse must be used to demonstrate the validity of the act. (a) Truth claims are argued with theoretic discourse. (b) Appropriateness is argued with practical discourse. (c) Sincerity is bolstered by direct action to provide one's sincerity. (3) When discourse is rejected, metatheoretical discourse, or discussion of what constitutes good evidence, is required; and when that fails, metaethical discourse, or philosophical argument, is required. Emancipatory communication requires free speech in an ideal speech situation. (1) There must be no constraints on what can be expressed. (2) All individuals must have equal access to speaking. (3) The norms and obligations of society are not onesided but distribute power equally to all strata in society. The requirements of the ideal speech situation are not currently met.

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People live in an unquestioned life-world, or ordinary existence. (2) The life world is constrained by institutional oppression, or the power of the system over individuals, which Habermas calls colonization. (3) The primary function of critical theory is to raise questions about the life-world that makes critical reflection and resolution necessary. 7. Feminist scholarship with the modernist tradition centers around two lines of inquiry a) Liberal feminism seek for women to gain equal status with men in existing power structures. b) Radical feminism demands a basic redefinition of all facets of society to make it more emancipatory for both men and women. Postmodernist theories resists the idea of a priori oppressive social structures. 1. It teaches that there is no objectively real structure or central meanings and for this reason is often considered atheoretical. 2. It holds that social realities are fluid, constantly produced, reproduced and changed through the use of language and other symbolic forms. 3. Cultural studies involves investigations of the ways culture is produced through a struggle of ideologies. a) The most notable group of cultural studies scholars are affiliated with British Cultural Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. b) This group aims to achieve change by identifying contradictions in society and providing interpretations that will help people see how they are oppressed. c) Cultural studies is dominated by the study of mass communication because media are powerful tools of the dominant ideology. d) Culture is the ideas and practices on which a group relies in its everyday life. (1) Within a culture ideas are produced by practices, and practices are shaped by ideas. (2) Dominant interests are promoted by particular cultural productions such as those disseminated by the media. (3) Realities are created and reinforced by many different sources, which is a process of articulation. e) Capitalistic societies are dominated by a particular ideology of the elite.

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Social institutions support the dominant ideology, making resistance difficult. (2) The state of affairs in society is overdetermined, or caused by multiple sources. f) Media are a particularly effective tool for dispersing perceptions and are governed by the prevailing ideology that frames opposing views from within this dominant form. g) The irony is that media present the illusion of diversity and objectivity when in fact they are clear instruments of the dominant order h) Views that challenge the prevailing structure are painted as being on the fringe. i) Media producers control content in the way they encode media messages. (1) To be intelligible events must be put in symbolic form. (2) The communicator has a choice of codes to use to put these experiences in a symbolic form. (3) Every symbol coincides with an ideology so the selection of the symbols chosen is an ideological choice. (4) The ones chosen affect the meaning for the receivers. (5) Audiences may or may not accept the meanings intended, and oppositional ideologies can and do arise. (6) Dominant ideologies are usually accepted because they are reinforced by so many sources in society. j) The interpretation of media texts is a struggle for ideological control as a number of competing interpretations struggle to be accepted. k) The chief aim of cultural studies is to expose the ways these ideological messages are perpetuated and ways they can be resisted. Feminist Cultural Studies, a particular variation of cultural studies, suggests that power relations in various types of social interaction and symbolic forms are constantly in flux. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is another example of a cultural studies although it has connection to modernist, as well as postmodern traditions. a) CRT scholars see racism as ordinary and normal, the usual way society works. b) White domination in the U.S. serves the dominant groups so there is no real interest in eliminating racism. c) Race is a social construction, products of social interactions

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that is manipulated or retired when convenient. d) Race is more than structural category but a fluid one. e) An extension of this line of thought is the study of whiteness, examining what it means to be white, how it became established legally, and how certain groups (such as the Italians and Irish) moved into whiteness. f) Six strategies are inherent in whiteness. (1) White is equated with power. (2) White is a default position. (3) White has become a scientific classification drained of its social status. (4) White is synonymous with nationality. (5) White means the refusal to label self as any radicalized category. (6) White means European ancestry. Poststructuralism, also a postmodern discourse, objects to idea that language is a fixed, natural form used by communicators. 1. The goal of poststructuralist movement is to deconstruct language in order to demonstrate how it can be understood and constructed in infinite ways. 2. Within the communication field, Michel Foucault is the most influential poststructuralist. a) Foucault shows that each era has a predominant way of seeing things, called episteme or discursive formation that is determined by the form of discourse during that period. b) The discursive formation has a profound influence on the knowledge of a particular era such that what people know cannot be separated from the discourse used to express that knowledge. c) The structure of discourse is a set of rules about what can be said or written and how it can be said or written. (1) The rules apply across a culture to a variety of types of discourse. (2) The rules determine the nature of knowledge, power, and ethics in an historical period. d) Thus people do not determine the nature of discourse, but discourse determines the nature of personhood. e) Foucaults method is archaeology (now called genealogy), designed to uncover the discursive formation of the day by careful examination of the structure of discourse. (1) He places value on comparative analysis of discourse so that similarities and differences in discursive formations can be determined. (2) He argues interpretations should be minimalized because it tends to obscure the discursive structure.

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Focaults concern is with power which he claims is a force for good and is inherent in all discursive formations. Postcolonialism is a postmodern critique of colonialism. 1. It is devoted to understanding Eurocentrism, imperialism and the process of colonization and decolonization. 2. The focus is on neocolonialism as it occurs in contemporary discourse about others. a) Neocolonialism is present in the use of terms first and third world as it relates to developing nations, the massive invasion of U.S. culture into all parts of the world, and in treatments of nonwhites as other in American media. b) It is concerned with how discourse in the Western world legitimizes certain power structures and reinforces colonizing practices. (3)

Exercises 1. Find five friends who own cell phones. Interview them about how they made the decision to purchase this innovation. To what extent and in what ways were they influenced by personal contact as opposed to media appeals? Do you think the cellular telephone is an example of the diffusion of an innovation? 2. Whorf believed that language restricted what a group could experience. Write an essay in which you describe some of the ways in which your own language restricts your experience. 3. Do a mini-ethnography of a group to which you have access. Concentrate on the forms of communication within the group. 4. Videotape all of a network's commercials for two hours one evening during prime time. To what extent and in what ways do these commercials promote the three main interests discussed by Habermas? To what extent ' are these in or out of balance? What kinds of speech acts are included in the commercials, and what levels of discourse are achieved? Does advertising approach an ideal speech situation? What does this exercise tell you about domination and emancipation in our society? 5. Using the same commercials from the previous exercise, identify ways in which gender identities are maintained or constructed? Do a feminist critique of the commercials. 6. Read a good mystery novel. Look for the ways in which the detective uses the hermeneutic circle.

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7. Look at theories from the Cybernetic Tradition in previous chapters (four, six, seven, eight, nine and ten) and compare and contrast how dynamic social impact theory fits into a system schematic. 8. Identify different stakeholders at your college (students, faculty, administration, alumni, etc.). What are the different ideological commitments of each of these groups? How do theses different ideologies get played out in public argument over the directions your college wants to move? 9. Team up with a member of the opposite sex for this exercise. Have the woman tape-record a conversation between two female students. Have the man taperecord a conversation between two male students. Carefully review the two recordings and make note of the differences between the language used by the two dyads. Listen carefully for different words and different sentence structure. To what extent and in what ways does the language of the men and women tell you about their separate social realities? 10. Investigate and discuss the differences between the American and British cultural studies. 11. Bernsteins work on elaborated and restricted codes was based primarily on his research in 12. Great Britain, which has a more historically entrenched and explicit class system. Evaluate and critique whether his theory makes much sense in a less overtly class conscious American society.

Questions for Thought and Discussion 1. What values are implicit in Bernstein's theory of elaborated and restricted codes? Are values of this sort appropriate for a theory of language? Why or why not? 2. What do the theories in the Semiotic Tradition have to do with culture? Show how these theories relate to symbol and sign theories from chapter five. 3. What aspects of classical Marxism have been adopted by cultural studies and how has cultural studies departed from classical Marxism? 4. Speculate on what queer theory (chapter four) has to offer to feminist cultural studies and critical race theory. 5. Explain what Habermas means by metatheoretical discourse. 6. Examine the common themes among modern, postmodern, and poststructuralist critical theories.

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7. Relate critical theory to structuration theory of Giddens, from chapters eight and nine. What sorts of assumptions do they share? 8. Define and explain the concept of ideology. How does Althussers treatment of the concept differ from that of Gramsci? 9. The textbooks authors acknowledge that postructuralism is also postmodernist yet they separate poststructuralist and postmodernist theories into two categories. Make a case for either incorporating poststructuralist theories under a postmodernist umbrella or keeping them as separate paradigms. 10. Discuss the role of opinion-leaders in diffusion theories. 11. Explain why Hymes argues that formal linguistics is not sufficient by itself to completely understand language.

Suggested Web Links A journey through, and applications of, Basil Bernsteins elaborated and restricted codes: (http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/language_codes.htm) Postmodern thought, a very good resource for online information about many major postmodern theorists: (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/postmodern.html) Illuminations, a resource dedicated to the study of the critical theory and the Frankfort school: (http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/) Introduction to the Frankfurt School: (http://home.cwru.edu/~ngb2/Pages/Intro.html) Three links that discuss and critique, and perhaps demystify, the delphic idiom of postmodernism: (http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html); (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html); (http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm) The home of cultural studies on the net: (http://www.culturalstudies.net/) An exploration of the theory of diffusion of innovation: (http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/98_fall/theory/hornor/paper1.html) A recent extension of diffusion of innovation thinking: (http://www.pitt.edu/~ckemerer/illusory.htm) Exploring linguistic relatively: (http://venus.va.com.au/suggestion/sapir.html) The Jrgen Habermas web resource: (http://www.msu.edu/user/robins11/habermas/main.html) 118

A interesting discussion of Michel Foucualt and other poststructuralists: (http://www.philosopher.org.uk/poststr.htm) Before one can grasp poststructuralism, one must understand structuralism. This resource should help: (http://homepage.newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/structuralism.html) A source to understand the theory and implications of postcolonialism: (http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/discourseov.html) Links to critical race theory: (http://bobcat.cc.oxy.edu/~maeda/crtlinks.html) Perspectives, reviews and readings on the phenomenon of whiteness: (http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/blwhiteprivilege.htm)

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