1. Describe and interpret the photograph on
the screen. Refer first to the image itself and then explain its
relationship with the caption and the news
article. Use the following terminology: icon, index, symbol, denotation, connotation,
sign, signifier, signified, signification. One full page. (25 points)
Extra credit: Apply the terms “anchorage” and
“myth” as used by Roland Barthes. (Three possible points)
2. Magic bullet theory/theory of limited
effects—two pages. Choose A or B.
A)How was the magic bullet theory disproven
through communications research? Discuss the validity of the theory of limited
effects. Use evidence from the following studies: The Invasion from Mars (War
of the Worlds), Experiments with Film (Why We Fight) , The People’s Choice
(Erie County), and the Personal Influence (Decatur) study.
B) Focus on one of the following studies--The
Invasion from Mars, Experiments with Film, and the Personal Influence study—and
argue how it disproves the magic bullet theory and supports the theory of
limited effects.
(25 points)
3. Define four of the following groups of terms in a paragraph of more than four sentences. Give examples
not used in class or in class notes. (7.5 points each)
I paradigm/syntagm
II synecdoche/metonymy
III
irony/trope
IV linguistic
value/onomatopoeia
V deictic/demonstrative
VI locution,
illocution, perlocution
4. What does Saussure mean by “the arbitrary
nature of the sign”? Why is this aspect of the sign so essential to semiotics?
Answer in two paragraphs. (20 points)
Extra credit: Why do Roman Jakobson and Emile
Benveniste argue that the word “I” is an indexical symbol? Why do they use the
term “shifter” to describe the pronouns “I” and “You”? Answer in two paragraphs. (3 points)
Extra extra credit: Explain Roland Barthes’s argument in “The
Photographic Message.” (3 points)
There is a
basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool
one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one
like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high
definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with
data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low
definition," simply because very little visual information is provided.
the ear is given a meager amount of information. Telephone is a cool
medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager
amount of information. And speech is a cool medium of low definition,
because so little is given and so much has to be filled in by the
listener. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled
in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in
participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by
the audience. Naturally, therefore, a hot medium like radio has very
different effects on the user from a cool medium like the telephone.
High
definition means well-defined, sharp and detailed visually, such as a
map. Low definition refers to indistinct images scanned by the eye, with
which the viewer is left to fill in the blanks, such as a sketch
Radio hot
Tv cool
Speech cool
Film hot
Print hot
Photograph cool
Cartoon cool
Telephone cool
Internet?
Hot
medium extends one sense in “high definition.” Cool is of low
definition, and requires that the user has to fill in information in
order to complete the working of the medium.
"whether the spoken
word or the manucript or TV, leaves much more for the listener or user
to do than a hot medium." Internet: A composite of several media
(photographs, print, animated images, movies, sound, telephone
conversations, posted notes...) and also in itself a new medium of over
100 million potential "publishers" and interactors, the Web itself seems
much closer to MacLuhan's "cool."
The global village. Today's
instant communications have all but erased time and space and rendered
national boundaries meaningless
The notion of a global
village, while appealing to Web surfers and CNN junkies, is a dangerous
illusion--witness the ongoing debacle in Iraq, which has come to pass in
part because U.S. leaders kidded themselves into believing that Iraqis
were just like us and would embrace democracy as soon as Saddam Hussein
was gone. The hot/cool dichotomy has limited usefulness as an analytical
tool. Consider a kid doing his homework while simultaneously watching
TV, playing his stereo, and IMing with his friends, who pauses to rip
and burn a few tracks for later listening, E-mail a photo, and send a
text message via cell phone. Which part of this multimedia environment
is cool and which hot, which interactive and which not?
Still,
McLuhan was right about one thing: the central place media would assume
in our daily lives. Less a systematic thinker than a provocateur, he was
among the first to raise the public's consciousness--another
McLuhan-era term--about communications. No one doubts now that we live
in a postindustrial age or that we traffic not so much in material goods
as in information. It's a stretch to say that McLuhan predicted the
contours of the modern world, but the extent to which it has evolved in
directions he anticipated is remarkable. The global village, for
example, may have been oversold, but a version thereof is definitely
emerging:
In medium is the massage, the form of the book itself it
the message, as much as the content—it is graphical, pictorial, moves
from hot to cool, and relies as much on aphorism as it does on sustained
argumentation.
The formal qualities of the tv or the web is what is what we receive, it forms the message. We receive the code, no message.
Aphorism--Short pithy statement of a general truth—
Baudrillard—also
wrote Simulations one of the most cited books by graduate students in
the last 20 years—also science fiction filmmakers—
Asserting that we
are living in a mediated simulation of reality, as opposed to reality
itself. A radical assertion yet one that is reliant upon classical
distinctions between the original and the copy.
his belief that
the world revealed by our senses is not the real world but only a poor
copy of it, and that the real world can only be apprehended
intellectually; the original is a conception not a perception.
“I signifies ‘the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing I’” “It has no value except in the instance in which it is produced.” You=the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance you.”
“These
pronominal forms do not refer to ‘reality’ or ‘objective’ positions in
space of time [as he or she or cat or dog do] but to the utterance,
unique each time, that contains them, and thus they reflect their proper
use” p288
In order to solve the problem of intersubjective
communication [words traded between adressor and addressee that refer to
themselves]---“Language has solved this problem by creating an ensemble
of ‘empty’ signs that re non referential with respect to ‘reality’.”
“These signs are always available and become ‘full’ as soon as a speaker introduces them into each instance of his discourse.”
“Language
wards off this danger by instituting a unique but mobile sign, I, which
can be assumed by each speaker on the condition that he refers each
time only to to the instance of his discourse.”
Think of I and
you as words that you can never own, but you can borrow them (from the
library as it were) to enable your expression and communication and to
refer to yourself and to your addressee.
I and you mark the
“difference between language as a system of signs and language assumed
into use by the individual [the speech act, parole, as distinct from
langue].”
With the use of I: “language is turned into instance
of discourse, characterized by this system of internal references of
which I is the key, and defining the individual by the particular
linguist contstruction he makes use of when he announces himself as the
speaker.”
The speaker “appropriates” I/you, but it is not hers even though the usage actualizes I/you Bringing it into discourse. [and then return it to the library for another’s use]
The
third person he/she does not have the same elasticity and
emptiness/fullness of The I/You. They refer “not the themselves but to
an ‘objective’ situation.” (289) The assumption with pronouns:
I/You = subjective He/She = objective
He/She
serve as “abbreviated subsitutes” for the proper name of a person.
“Professor Miller no longer coughs. He is feeling better.”
JaKobson— Distinguishes
between MESSAGE [meaning of words] and CODE [mode of
transfer/utterance] — even as both are vehicles of linguistic
commnication.
I/You are indexical symbols. They indicate the
presence of a person who is speaking or is spoken to, and at the same
time they are words, and hence symbolic.
“For Jakobson, a
shifter is a term whose meaning cannot be determined without referring
to the message that is being communicated between a sender and a
receiver.” I/You/Here/There are without meaning save for how they are
being deployed, and by whom, in what context.
http://nosubject.com/Shifter
Jakobson attempts to devise a typology of verbal categories/ 1. Speech itself and its topic, the narrated event. Jim talks about walking his dog Fido. [I heard Jim talk about his dog Fido] 2. the event itself (also the event of the speech)
Jim walks his dog—the event Jim
talks – the speech event, the narrated event, also an event, but one
about an event that at least initially was not narrated.
From this there are four distinguisable items: 1. narrated event. (jim walking his dog 2. a speech event (jim talking about walking his dog) 3. a participant of the narrated event (fido, Jim) 4. a participant of the speech event whether addresser or addressee (Jim/those who hear Jim)
quantifiers (such as related to numbers) and qualifiers (such as related to gender)
deixis/demonstratives + regulative vs constitutive rules
A deictic is of or relating to a word, the determination of whose
referent (the object or person to which the word refers to) is dependent
on the context in which it is said or written. In the sentence "I want
him to come here now" the words I, here, him, and now are deictic
because the determination of their referents depends on who says that
sentence, and where, when, and of whom it is said. In the previous
sentence the word "that" is also deictic, but is also a demonstrative.
A demonstrative specifies or singles out the person or object referred to: the demonstrative pronouns these and that. "I want that car." "I don't want this one. "That" is distal (far way) and "this" is proximal.
deixis
indicate the situational ‘co‐ordinates’ of person (I/you, us/them),
place (here/there, this/that), and time (now/then, yesterday/today)
demonstratives
include this, that, these, those, yonder, and the archaic yon and are
pronominal, indicating the location (in relation to the speaker) of a
noun.
--------------------
regulative vs constitutive rules
rules
that govern how we dine (the use of specific utensils, not talking with
mouths full) etc is regulative. It doesn't define what we eat; it
regulates how we eat, eating is a pre-existing activity.
Searle
argues that games like football and chess are constitutive. the rules
are itself the game; nothing exists but adherance to the rules (and
mastery). constitutuve rules not only regulate the activity but
constitute it. Non-adherance to the rules is cheating. there is no
outside to the construction of the game.
he suggests that so it
is with illocutionary acts. they are made up or constituted by rules
(and not just regulated by then). the rules related to speech acts (that
pre-exist the speaker) constitute the speech act itself.
cf.
the Saussurean notion, emphasized by Lacan that language is a
pre-existing condition, a system that is not defined by the user, but
uses her to reassert its structures.
From Chandler: Synchronic analysis studies a phenomenon as if it were frozen at one
moment in time; diachronic analysis focuses on change over time. Insofar as
semiotics tends to focus on synchronic rather than diachronic analysis (as it
does in Saussurean semiotics), it underplays
the dynamic nature of media conventions (for instance, television conventions
change fairly rapidly compared to conventions for written English). It can also
underplay dynamic changes in the cultural myths which signification both alludes to
and helps to shape.
Purely structuralist
semiotics ignores process and historicity - unlike historical theories like
Marxism.
change in language occurs at least initially at the level of langage, or speech.
From Chandler:
What Saussure refers to
as the 'value' of a sign depends on its relations with other signs within the system - a sign
has no 'absolute' value independent of this context
(Saussure 1983, 80;
Saussure 1974, 80).
Saussure uses an analogy with the game of
chess, noting that the value of each piece depends on its position on the chessboard
(Saussure 1983, 88;
Saussure 1974, 88).
The sign is more than the sum of its parts. Whilst signification - what is
signified - clearly depends on the relationship between the two parts of the sign,
the value of a sign is determined by the relationships between the sign and other signs
within the system as a whole
(Saussure 1983, 112-113;
Saussure 1974, 114).
The notion of value... shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more
than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing
more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that
a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them
together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it
becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.
(Saussure 1983, 112;
Saussure 1974, 113)
As an example of the distinction between signification and value, Saussure notes that
'The French word mouton may have the same meaning as the English word sheep;
but it does not have the same value. There are various reasons for this, but in particular the
fact that the English word for the meat of this animal, as prepared and served for a meal, is
not sheep but mutton. The difference in value between sheep and
mouton hinges on the fact that in English there is also another word mutton for
the meat, whereas mouton in French covers both'
(Saussure 1983, 114;
Saussure 1974, 115-116).
tropes List of tropes
