Lecture 4 - Communication Theory

Lasswell's Maxim - ''Who says what to whom in what channelw ith what effect''

Tradtions of Communication Theory:
-Cybernetic Theory:
Infor Source- Transmitter- Noise Source- Reciever- Destination   (Destination to Info Source)

3 leveles of potential communication problems:
-1- Technical - accuracy, systems of encoding/decoding, compatability of systems
-2- Sematic - language precision, how much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost - language used
-3- Effectiveness - does message effect behaviour the way we want it to what can be done if the required effect fails to happen

Systems Theory:
-can switch between mathematical biological, psychological
-BARB (Broadcaster's Audience research Board)
-audience categories - sub-categories/sub-demographic groups

Semiotics:
-Sematics - what does a sign stand for?
-dictionaries - semantics reference book - tell us what a sign means
-syntactics - relationships among signs
-programtics
-Semiotics and the Semiosphere -the whole semiotic space of the culture
-''Damien Hurst'' - designer
-Levi Strauss for ethnography
-Lacan for the unconcious
-Barthes
-trainer - footwear - culture, sends sign to others whilst you wear them - status
-ads use semiotics - objects create cultural value - 'buy them and you will achieve this social status'
-road signs - danger - stipulated - no language - even if it's a visual one it's self explanatory - language have to be learnt

The Phenomenological Tradition:
-is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come the understand the world.
-Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one's perception
-makes actual lived experience

The Embodied Mind:
-communication seen as an extension of the nervous sytem
-langauge is seen as part of that system existing as neuronal pathways that are linked within the brain
-the key is a psychological...

Emotions:
-what faces mean (smile means happy - frown means sad)
-interpretation - the process of interpretations is central

Rhetoric:
-Socrates
-Aristotle
-personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanze inanimate objects of ideas, such a rhetoric itself. It is a type of 'rhetoric trope' such as hyperbole - irony - personification
-hyperboel - take things to extreme - push to limit
-how you are going to achieve certain effects from the audience
-persuades us to see things differently
-pictures without context are meaningless - they need to be anchored
-The use of 'pathos' a means of persuasion in classical rhetoric that appeals to the audience's emotions

Metaphor:
-meaning transfer, is langauge that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities
-enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by creating associations, and links to something like it - memory

-Christoph Niemann

The Sociopsychological Tradition:
-the study of the individual as a social being
-expression/interaction/influence
-the act of sending a message to a reciever and assessing the feelings and thoughts to the reciever upon interpreting the message and how these will effect an understanding of the message
-useful for deep analysis of the memories of communication

Gestat Psychology:
-a type of cognitive theory
-cognitive theory
-changes in behaviour
-biological

The Sociocultural Tradition:
-in defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as father, Catholic, student,...
-identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity
-the socioculture tradition looks at how these cultural understandings, roles, and rules are worked out ineractively in communication
-context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication

Critical Communication Theory:
-synthesis of philosophy and social science
-Foucalt - how power affects how we communicate
-feminist studies - influential area within the critical tradition
-postcolonian