Chapter 30

This chapter revolves around Marshall McLuhan's ideas of Hot and Cool Media. He breaks up media into two groups that define what it is and how it function. Hot media often has high definition and is filled with data. It extends a single sense with examples of a photograph or the radio. Hot media does not require interaction because all of the information is given to you. This is often used in first world countries and films. Other examples are the "city slicker" and any type of media past mechanical age. Another example of hot media is a lecture.

Cool media is different than hot media, because cool media requires interaction. It is often is low definition and has little data provided. With this form of media, no sense is dominant and it can be viewed as a cartoon. Cool media is communicated with a telephone. It is used in third world countries where it can be seen on television. It is rustic and is prevalent in the present TV age. Another example of cool media is a seminar.

This is an example of cold media, because you must interact with it.

This is an example of hot media, because everything you need to know is given to you. There is no interaction.

Chapter 50

In this chapter, Stuart Hall discusses representation and difference. There are four theoretical accounts concerning this difference. The first is linguistics which has the approach "associated with Saussure and the use of language as a model of how culture works". The main argument here is that "difference matters because it is essential to meaning: without it nothing could not exist". The second account comes from theories of language. This argument is that "we need difference because we can only construct meaning through a dialogue with the other". The third explanation is an anthropological argument backed by the ideas of Mary Douglas. This argument states that "culture depends on giving things meaning by assigning them to different positions within a classificatory system". The fourth and final explanation is psychoanalytic and relates to the role of "difference" in our psychic life. The argument for this explanation is that the "other is fundamental to the constitution of the self, to us as subjects and to sexual identity." Another theory of difference is from the Russian linguist, Mikhail Bakhtin. He suggested that "meaning stems from dialogism". In this theory, meaning comes from the "give and take between different speakers." Difference can be included in many other theories and will be seen very often in our society.

Chapter 49

Debord states that our current society "prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, and the appearance to the essence". He is basically saying that our society wants whatever is fashionable or acceptable at the current time period. I agree with this statement because I think Debord is very true. For example, how many times have musicians or artists used a piece of art or song and changed it around to what is popular in society. There have been many renditions to songs where the original melody or the refrain has been taken from an older song and has been altered to the music we like today. Also, the architecture of different buildings have been changed to different styles that are culturally acceptable. McDonalds is one example of this. In the south, McDonalds has flat screen televisions and comfy lounge chairs and it is almost an elegant restaurant. In small towns, McDonalds can be portrayed as a dump or trashy place to eat. The McDonalds in Chicago has two stories and an escalator. There are McDonalds buildings that differ from the traditional building. This chapter focuses on the society of spectacle. A spectacle is an "immense accumulation" or representation of everything that moved away. It is a "social relation among people mediated by images". A spectacle is the "present model of socially dominant live". It follows the decisions and actions already made. Debord is a Marxist theorist and is from a society where spectacles are dominant. He said the base or mode of production shapes is the superstructure, which refers to the institutions in a society that shape the consciousness of its members. His ideas were very prevalent for his time and many postmodernist theorists related their ideas to his.

Chapter 48

This chapter mainly focuses on the different interpretations of art. Susan Sontag raises some creative points.
If we have to look at something and think about what it means, or interpret it, then there really is such thing as the content of a work of art. In this chapter, Nietzsche states that "There are no facts, only interpretations." Sontag also brings in the theories of Freud. "Observable phenomena" are considered manifest content and and the true meaning behind the manifest content is the latent content. Almost every event in history is given meaning with interpretation. Wars, dedications, ceremonies, etc. all have a significant meaning behind them and a reason why they happened. It is up to all the creative, brilliant thinkers in the world to interpret and decipher these meanings.

Chapter 47

 People often argue whether an object is considered art or not. It is hard to tell what is actually art. There really is no true answer. Who gets to decide whether artwork is art or not? It is impossible to put a definition and standard to what art can be, especially when disagreeing with someone's creative ideas. Alan Gowens states that rather than asking "What is art?", we need to ask, "What kinds of things have been done by that activity traditionally called Art?". Art performs four functions which include substitute imagery, illustration, conviction and persuasion, and beautification. Substitute imagery are works such as photographs, paintings, and any "art piece" that captures reality. Illustrations are works that tell stories or help tell stories. Conviction and persuasion are works that show beliefs and sell products. Beautification are works that please the eye or gratify the mind. These four functions of art are very important and can be compared to different theories of art. For example, substitute imagery is comparable to a mimetic theory, illustration is related to an objective theory of art, persuasion is considered pragmatic, and beautification is emotive. By focusing on what art does, we are able to examine so many more possiblilities and creative ideas than if we were to think about what art is. Not very many people consider themselves as artists, but in reality, every single person can be an artist. Art has no boundaries, limits, or rules. Just put your mind to it, and you will be able to be your own artist!

Chapter 44

Psychoanalysis "has investigated the very aspects of man's nature with which the greatest writers of fiction have been preoccupied: the emotional unconscious or only partly comprehended bases of our behavior". Simon O. Lesser explains that the use of psychoanalysis is very important when examining fiction. He believed that psychology could reach the deepest level of meaning in the greatest fiction. He knows that the human race gets pleasure from understanding, especially when trying to reach great insights while reading fiction

Chapter 28

This chapter was a little confusing because I really did not know what Robinson Crusoe was. The chapter says that we don't think of Robinson Crusoe as a novel, but rather a myth, along with Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote. All of these myths are very similar. They have basic plots and enduring images, and they "all exhibit a single-minded pursuit by the protagonist of one of the characteristic aspirations of Western man". Robinson Crusoe is related to three different themes: "Back to Nature", "The Dignity of Labor", and Economic Man". Because he represents all three of these ideas, Robinson Crusoe has become one of our cultural heros. This great myth is based on the single-minded pursuit of achievement and enterprise (business success).

Chapter 31

Chapter thirty-one emphasizes the difference between cultural aspects such art, ideology, and social class today versus what it used to be. This is the idea of postmodernism. These ideas from Fredric Jameson state that all of the exquisite works of art from one hundred years ago are becoming replaced with a new, modern idea of art. Jameson calls this era "empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous". Modern art has been replaced with postmodern art such as Andy Warhol, new expressionism, and punk and new wave rock (such as the Beatles). Jameson believes that the fundamental feature of all the postmodernisms is the "effacement in them of the older (high-modernist) frontier between high culture and mass or commercial culture". This means that all of the postmodernisms, or postmodernist music or art, are based off of different things in our culture that are "degrading" and pointless to our education and appreciation of artwork. Some of these things include reality t.v., magazines, comedy shows, non-educational movies, etc. This is true because many things are influenced by our postmodern culture. For example, the book Twilight was filmed as a movie, and now there are several television shows and other movies that are all about vampires (such as Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Vampires Suck, etc.) There are also commercials that use vampires to advertise their products (such as Bing). Nowadays, whenever popular movies come out, there are clothing lines with the characters from the movie, as well as lunch boxes, pencils, blankets, lamps, and really any other object you could think of.

Postmodernism started to replace "an aesthetic style and approach to culture and life" known as modernism around 1960. Postmodernism is different than modernism because it includes local narratives, fragmented style, it is eclectic and anarchical, it merges high culture and pop culture, and includes pop art, photorealism, punk, and schlock art. Modernism has master (meta) narratives and a unified style, it is harmonious, hierarchical, it separates high culture over pop culture, and it includes abstract expressionism, classical music styles, and "serious" art. 

Chapter 46

In chapter forty-six, Aristotle states that "epic poetry and tragedy, comedy also and Dithryambic poetry and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of the forms are all in their general conception modes of imitation". He then reveals the difference of these different forms of comedy: the distinction of the medium, the objects, and the manner or mode of imitation. People often subconsciously imitate objects in their surroundings. This is produced by rhythm, language, or harmony. This is true because when you are around a friend for a long time or you start placing yourself in a similar environment everyday, you are going to start adapting to your friend's habits and way of speech. Aristotle states that comedy is "an imitation of characters of a lower type". Tragedy is "an imitation of an action that is serious".

Tragedies and comedies are different in many ways. In tragedies, men are often higher than ordinary and they have a high status, determinism, high seriousness, pessimism, and pain. Comedies involve me lower than ordinary with a low status, freedom, not serious at all, optimism and pleasure. At the end of a comedy, you will most likely find yourself in a jolly mood, whereas after a tragedy, you will leave with a big sense of emotion. In tragedies, the audience will most likely wish the ending or the plot was different.

Chapter 45

In this chapter, William F. Fry describes humor as play: "an interpersonal process or communication which either starts out contained in a play frame or which is suddenly caught into such a frame from behind when the episode is at the point of termination". The play frame means that the process is unreal and the meaning is different compared to the abstract laughter that follows it. A punch line may be expressed by any way that a human can communicate. A punch line is very important for any play. A joke is considered a play with a climax. The punch line is what combines communication and metacommunication. Metacommunication is communication about communication. When the punch line is delivered, the audience is able to differentiate the humor from play, dreams, etc. 

William Fry is a Stanford psychiatrist who has studied many different effects of humor. He informs people that no matter how crude a joke may be, there is always intended humor behind it. This is where the punch line comes in. The punch line is a big suprise in the joke and is what helps the audience interpret the humor. For example, the African American or blonde jokes people tell can be taken offensively and are quite crude and stereotypical, but there is always humor behind them which can be taken the wrong way. The punch line is supposed to help portray the humor. Freud argues that humor involves "masked or hidden agression". Sometimes this can be true, but with all the silliness and fun spirited people we have in our world, I don't think we all have anger issues. Other theorist, such as Aristotle and Hobbes, "argue that humor is based on a sense of superiority, and we laugh at people who have been made (or who make themselves) ridiculous. This can also be true at times, but there are very many people who are just genuinely funny and entertaining. 

On page 128, Berger includes a list of techniques of humor in alphabetical order. These forty-five techniques are what he thinks are the building blocks of humor. He believes that these techniques can be used to find out what mechanisms are at play in jokes and other forms of humor. Humor is used in our everyday lives and it is a very important aspect of communication when used in an appropriate circumstance. 

Chapter 37

In this chapter, Gustave Le Bon describes why the imagination of crowds is so powerful and active. Figurative events that happen in people's minds are "evoked by personage, an event, or an accident" and are almost as lifelike as reality. Crowds always refer to images that they are capable of thinking of, rather than reality. Images are what give crowds "motives of action". This is why theatrical representations have such a huge influence on crowds. When a crowd is subjected to an influential speaker, the whole crowd lives in the moment and shares the same dream by feeling the same emotions. This is why people laugh at the same time (because they are imagining the same actions) or why they get riled up at the same time.

Le Bon's book The Crowd is considered "one of the classics of sociological theory". Le Bon was very interested in images and theatrical representations. These representations are mass-mediated culture, which can be compared to film, video, television, audiences, public opinion, etc. By these theatrical representations, Le Bon is saying that people get the same reactions when they listen to a song or hear a speech. They understand the underlying message by picturing images. This theory is called "reader-response" or "reception" theory. Theatrical representations have the power to shape a crowd or society's views on certain issues in life.

Chapter 35

Bob Stein is a man who uses a moral point of view to examine television and digital media. His two main questions are, "What are we going to use these technologies for?" and "What kind of society do we want to live in?". He is trying to look at the use of television realistically. He knows how often people spend time watching shows on the t.v. and how it is portraying noneducational plots. Stein also analyzes video games and knows how negatively they affect our society. People lose their jobs and families due to obsession and addiction of video games. Like I stated in the last chapter, people are always trying to reach that next level or obtain a new goal. If only they could use this mindset for their lives, then we would have a successful society. If technology and digital media keeps advancing, people may lose their minds. Machines will take over our lives and we may not have any free will left. Instead of using all of the brilliant minds in this world for advancements in our personal interests such as telephones, televisions, computers, and digital media, why don't we use them to solve the cure for cancer and AIDS. Let's try to save lives, not waste them.

Chapter 34

Do people play video games or do video games play people? This statement could be true either way you look at it. People are the ones holding the controllers and going through the motions. However, does that mean they are the ones playing? In this chapter, Espen J. Aarseth stated, "just as the game becomes a text for the user at the time of playing, it can be argued that the user becomes a text for the game." This is because they both "exchange and react to each other's messages according to a set of codes" which means "there is no message apart from the play". Players are the main characters in the video games which makes playing them so addicting. Also, the player gets satisfaction if he or she can keep reaching the next level. In this circumstance, it is the video game that is controlling the player. The video game keeps making the player continue. How many times does someone play a video game or computer game for a long time and then continues to say "Okay two more minutes..." and then four minutes later, "Okay one more minute." In this case, video games can be compared to technology.  Humans will never be satisfied with their inventions. Companies will always strive to keep trying to further technology and its intricacy.

Introductory Paragraph for Creative Brief

Consumers often have trouble debating between various healthy foods and beverages. There are so many beverages that are advertised as the "healthiest" drink that someone should consume. However, not all of these drinks are as nutritious as they say they are. FUZE is the only drink that is really beneficial towards a person's health. FUZE is a line of all-natural heath drinks that are nutritious and tasty. The goal for this creative brief is to trigger the minds of consumers using different advertising techniques and commercials to get them to realize that FUZE is the only correct solution for their dietary needs.

Chapter 41

Television is a very dramatic medium because it uses traditional drama represented by characters, gestures, dialogue, etc. Dramatic medium means that it is full of expression. Television is the source of media that is most used today. A study showed that American men watch dramatic shows on the t.v. over twelve hours per week and American women watch them for over sixteen hours per week. Obviously, this is the most popular source of media. One reason this is true, is because it has the most dramatic material on it.

Chapter 40

Michel de Certeau stated that narratives, "cover the event" and make our legends out of it. De Certeau is referring to the media. In the world we live in, we are surrounded by narratives. In the morning on the way to work or school, we hear narratives in the car on the radio. At night, we see and hear narratives on the television. These narratives "organize in advance our work, our celebrations, and even our dreams". Our society is "defined by stories (the fables constituted by our advertising and informational media), by citations of stories, and by interminable recitations of stories". De Certeau describes the word imprint by meaning how narratives affect us everyday, but we are not always conscious of them.

Chapter 39

In this chapter, Neil Postman describes television as the "big bang of our century past". The t.v. is a form of technology that has revolutionized. From starting as one big giant box with antennas on top to get a black and white image, forming into what we have today: a flat screen that comes in all different sizes displaying high-definition color images. Postman's goal is to make the epistemology of television visible again. He wants to show that television promotes "incoherence and triviality" and speaks in only one voice: the voice of entertainment. He then stated that television "transformed our culture into one vast arena for show business". I agree with this fact because television is used for advertising by showing commercials. Television has gone from a revolutionary invention to a method for parents to give punishments to their children by banning their t.v. time. For example, there are shows on MTV about the lives of rich, young adults. These shows such as The Hills, 90210, and The O.C. deal with drama in the different actors' lives. Jersey Shore is another example of a poor use of television. This show has absolutely no point in being aired. They use improper language, they wear distasteful clothing, and they make immoral decisions. The goal for television now is to get the most ridiculous shows on the air, because these shows are what attract viewers, which brings in the money because of high ratings. This is not what television is used for, and Postman recognizes this issue.

Chapter 38

In this chapter, Martin Grotjahn expresses his ideas about television and art. He makes a good point that television could be used for something influential like education or learning programs. However, it is mostly consumed by reality shows and pointless, meaningless television series that fill our brains with mush. He relates a television show to a manifest function ("witnessed by the viewer") and the show's content as a latent function ("symbolic meaning of the performance which is beamed at our conscious perception and unconscious understanding"). He also relates television to a dream, because a dream has a manifest content, but a latent meaning. There is a specific reason why a dream is occurring. This could be your underlying thoughts, or it could just be relating to a memory or something that was previously in your thoughts. Grotjahn states that television avoids solving conflicts. It has drifted away from the idea of art. In art, one must interpret a message, whereas in television, the show is meant for entertainment that is easily understandable.

Grotjahn also believes that the main purpose for a t.v. is for the display of commercials. Instead of spreading the arts and important information, it is "sold out to the hucksters". The manifest content (which is similar in television and dreams) is what the viewers see and hear. The latent content is the hidden symbolic meaning that is perceived. Three main differences between art and television are that art works through unconscious conflicts, has tensions about psychic phenomena, and participates in facing the repressed, while television distracts from conflicts, pays attention to commercials, and presents a show that is used for amusement. Television is not always negative. There are some beneficial informational shows on a couple channels. The television is also helpful when viewing political speeches, or while watching crucial news stories. However, most people do not spend their time watching the informational, educational shows. At the end of the chapter, it said that on average, young people spend three hours a day watching television. These are most likely pointless shows. If reality t.v. would add morality and useful information into their shows, television could become beneficial.

Chapter 33

This chapter starts off with Hans Magnus Enzenberger's ideas of the human mind. He includes the statement, "What is going on in our minds has always been, and will always be, a product of society." This is a very true statement because how we perceive things affects the way we act, speak, and think, which also affects society. The media targets our minds to attract them to their brand or whatever they are trying to sell or convey. Enzenberger argues that our minds are "industrialized" because we cannot completely control the contents of our minds. This is also a true statement because sometimes our minds tend to think of things that you do not want to imagine. He also argues that the media is what has made our minds industrialized and can be known as the "mind-making industries". Our minds are triggered to think of what the media wants us to think. If a company is advertising a very expensive, fashionable pair of shoes, then the mind is going to always revert to the idea that shoes that are expensive are more fashionable then shoes that are cheap. Even if shoes may look the same, but have a different brand name, the mind has convinced us the more expensive pair are better.

Chapter 29

Chapter twenty-nine compares and contrasts myths and fairy tales. Fairy tales help humans to understand their inner problems and how to solve these problems in a correct manner. Fairy tales are often used to teach children the difference between right and wrong and how to make correct decisions. Hence, most every fairy tale has a moral of the story. Fairy tales have both overt and covert meanings. This idea came from Bruno Bettelheim. Bettleheim believed fairy tales "came to speak simultaneously to all levels of the human personality, communicating in a manner which reaches the uneducated mind of the child as well as that of the sophisticated adult". This simply means that even though most fairy tales are targeted towards children, the messages may apply to adults as well. Fairy tales carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and he unconscious mind.

Fairy tales come from ancient times and continue to play a very important role in our lives. Over time, the tales are modified by their tellers to help children deal with different psychological pressures of growing up. Fairy tales often include a hero or heroine and a villain. Fairy tales are similar to myths, but are not the same thing. A myth "shows idealized characters who are dominated by the demands of their superegos" and a fairy tale "shows an ego integration that makes possible the satisfaction of unrecognized, unconscious id desires felt by the child".

Chapter 27

This chapter elaborates on the double meanings within the book. These two meanings include ideology and semiotics. Saussure's ideas of semiotics were located in the beginning of the book. Roland Barthes uses this chapter to discuss ideology and the way it is used in the media. He noticed that newspapers, art, and common sense were often "dressed up by reality". Basically, this means that society has changed the perception we have by looking at different things in media. Barthes also stated that "myth is a language". This is a very interesting idea because it can be interpreted differently. It is kind of confusing because the statement makes it seem like you can communicate by telling myths to each other. Barthe defined a myth as the way in which an object utters its message.

Roland Barthes was a very intellectual literary and cultural theorist that wrote the book, Mythologies. He believed that anything in society has a different meaning that can be perceived differently. For example, he used the idea of professional wrestling. One group of people may see professional wrestling as a revolutionary sport or activity, whereas other people may see it as a very fake performance. This is how Barthe studied. He would find the underlying mystification "in the way popular culture and everyday life is presented to the public". Then, he would compare his findings to semiology and find the deeper meaning of the signs and meanings.

His book, Mythologies, is "characterized by fascinating insights into aspects of everyday things that generally escape our attention". For example, the detergent Omo claims that it can clean "deep". However, linens and clothing are not "deep". Myths are all around us in our everyday lives, and it is our job to find them and understand their true meanings.

Chapter 26

This chapter discusses how powerful advertising in a capitalist society really is. Each advertiser has a specific target audience, which is used as a commodity. However, the problem with this is that commodity aesthetics is taking "possession of people" because of the goal to promote sales. The two ways advertising companies resolve this problem is to follow a career of the labor market and to gain the respect of and attract others. You have to market yourself as if you are marketing a product. These ideas of Wolfgang Haug suggest that advertisers tempt us into buying products that will make us happier in our lives as consumers. Advertising in a capitalist society has been taken to a whole new level. Advertisers know how to effectively promote a product by targeting our jobs and our sexuality. They reach out to us and try to make us "happy" while tempting us to buy a new suit so we can look more professional or to buy a certain beauty product so we can look prettier in the eyes of others. Humans are being degraded to objects. We can now be compared to a dog, while advertising companies are the humans trying to bribe us to do something by giving us a treat. These companies make us consumers by advertising something that we think will better our lives. The "dog treat" or whatever form of promotion they are doing, has to be packaged correctly so that we are even more prone to giving them business.  Haug argues that because of this commodity problem, men and women have developed new relationships with their bodies. This is true because now, people use their bodies as a way to advertise themselves. A woman who dresses sexually probably is looking for a man, and a man who dresses professionally wants to show off the hierarchy principle which shows how he is upper or middle class and has a more professional status.

Chapter 24

In this chapter, author Harvey Cox says that the Miss America Pageant "represents the mass cultic celebration, complete with a rich variety of ancient ritual embellishments, of the growing place of The Girl in the collective soul of America". This is a very interesting fact because I always thought it was an event to see which girl can almost reach the "sexy, ideal image" of the provocateur. This would be through their looks, walk, personality, and actions. Cox's idea is very similar, however, because he then describes the young women participating as "The Girl", or the primal image, "the One behind the Many". He then states that "The Girl" is perfect in any consumer society she is put in. She has a glowing smile and sexual openness, yet is completely virginal at the same time.

Cox's ideas of Miss America are closely related with Freud and Jung's theories of symbolism. In the last chapter, Jung explained how there are symbolic heros that trigger our unconscious psyches. Cox referred to Mircea Eliade, and said that these contests or pageants were symbolic of ancient myths and rites. He thinks our behavior can be more understood if we recognize how our modern practices can be tied to ancient myths. For example, Miss America symbolizes fertility goddesses from ancient days. Madonna and Britney Spears replaced the modern day "sexual yet virginal" image of "The Girl" because of their clothing and music videos that convey sexual desires. They have lost the innocence and "virginity" that a typical Miss America should have. Modern images of "The Girl" would include models, athletes, celebrities, and movie stars.

Chapter 22

Chapter twenty-two is a continuation on the meanings of symbols as previewed in chapter twenty-one. Carl  G. Jung states that a symbol is "a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning." A symbol implies something that is in our unconsciousness or something that we cannot quite grasp. This is the reason why there are symbols in society. Symbols are used to represent "concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend". Symbols are often present in our dreams. We have dreams for a reason because they symbolize an event or something we are thinking about in our inner thoughts.

The word "symbol" comes from the Greek word "symbolon" which means a token. A symbol is something that represents something else and is used in our thoughts to represent something in the unconscious. A semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce believed that signs worked in three ways: an icon (resemblance of something that we can see, i.e. a picture), an index (a casual connection of something that we can figure out, i.e. smoke or a fire), and a symbol (a convention of something we must learn, i.e. a flag). In order to learn symbols, we must give meaning to them and teach others the same meaning. Many meanings are based off of historical significance or religion. Jung believes that we realize what different symbols mean unconsciously. Symbols play an important role in society because they are used everywhere and must be recognized and understood by everyone.

Symbol - The cross has a deeper meaning of hope and religiousness.

Index - The "perfect golf swing" is something we see but must figure it out.

Icon - A music note resembles music or a song or harmony.

Chapter 22

Chapter twenty-two is a continuation on the meanings of symbols as previewed in chapter twenty-one. Carl  G. Jung states that a symbol is "a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning." A symbol implies something that is in our unconsciousness or something that we cannot quite grasp. This is the reason why there are symbols in society. Symbols are used to represent "concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend". Symbols are often present in our dreams. We have dreams for a reason because they symbolize an event or something we are thinking about in our inner thoughts.

The word "symbol" comes from the Greek word "symbolon" which means a token. A symbol is something that represents something else and is used in our thoughts to represent something in the unconscious. A semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce believed that signs worked in three ways: an icon (resemblance of something that we can see, i.e. a picture), an index (a casual connection of something that we can figure out, i.e. smoke or a fire), and a symbol (a convention of something we must learn, i.e. a flag). In order to learn symbols, we must give meaning to them and teach others the same meaning. Many meanings are based off of historical significance or religion. Jung believes that we realize what different symbols mean unconsciously. Symbols play an important role in society because they are used everywhere and must be recognized and understood by everyone.

Chapter 21

In this chapter, Johan Huizinga relates symbolism and religion. He includes, "When we see all things in God, and refer all things to Him, we read in common matters superior expressions of meaning." Huizinga believes hat this is the psychological foundation from which symbolism arises because with God and religion, there is a deeper meaning. He describes symbolism as a "short-circuit of thought", which I think is very clever and accurate. When a person sees or thinks of a symbol, the meaning of the symbol automatically pops into their mind without really having to think about it. For example, when driving along an unfamiliar road and a stop sign appears at the bottom of a hill, a driver sees the sign and automatically slows down the car because he or she knows they need to stop soon.

In Huizinga's studies, it is apparent that people found meaning and significance in everything that happened because everything was related to God. Some people practiced extreme asceticism to show their dedication to the Lord. Examples of asceticism would be fasting, living in silence (like in the desert), not sleeping, or wearing itchy wool clothing. These sacrifices were a sign of holiness and devotion to God. These were the Middle Ages when everything revolved around religion. Now we live in an age of science, which also connects society to symbols. Symbols are related to Freud's theory because they have to do with the unconscious psyche. For example, a very simple symbol can have a powerful, emotional effect on someone (a transcendental meaning can be found in anything).

Symbols play a very important part in social sciences as well. Sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists probably have to deal with symbols on a day-to-day basis. One job of a sociologist is to differentiate between manifest and latent functions of behavior. A manifest function is why we choose to do something and a latent function is the unconscious reason we do something. This is one of the reasons why symbols play such an important role in our lives.

Chapter 16

This chapter started off with the regressive idea from a folklorist, Roger Abrahams. Being regressive simply means that you revert back to songs, rhymes, and taunts that have very important meaning in the form of a childhood expression. A Camingerly Negro goes through a regressive process when he reaches adolescence. Part of this device is when the African American would recite rhymes to entertain an audience in a social situation.  Black people often speak in rhymes or clichés. A new fact that I learned was that the phrase "See you later alligator" and "After 'while crocodile"was from a Negro origin. These rhymes are used in verbal battle, when men gather together and teas each other or boast. This is known as "sounding."

Roger Abrahams studied the patterns found in African American speech in 1963. He found that their speech was very reliable on materials from their childhood days. This is why he stressed the idea of regression, because this is very common for African Americans. Regression is "momentarily returning to our childhood days." An example of this is eating an ice cream cone, because while you are eating that ice cream cone, it reminds you how happy and young you were when you were a child eating an ice cream cone. This is also an intertextual example, because the person is using what happened in their childhood (something they are familiar with) to create new perspectives (eating an ice cream cone in the present time as an adult). Abrahams discovered that African American adolescent men are able to create rhymes and insert them in any social situation. The author relates this rhyming verbal dueling to rap music. I think this is a very interesting observation. It is true though, because African Americans are able to use rhymes and give them a beat, creating a song. Due to this ability, African Americans introduced a very popular genre of music to America.

Chapter 15

This chapter contained a lot of information about the different ways men and women communicate. One interesting fact was that males talk more when they go to a coeducational school. When surrounded by males, females tend to speak less in class. I always thought that women like to dominate the conversations and volunteer to read more. However, now that I think about it, women are more likely to be embarrassed if they say the wrong answer or do not read correctly. This is why women who go to single-sex schools do better later in life. The author, Deborah Tannen states that boys and girls learn to communicate differently based on their "sex-separate peer groups". For example, girls tell secrets, gossip, and chat with their best friends and guys do activities with their friends. Boys have a hierarchy principle, similar to the display of classes that they have in fashion. Boys use language to put other boys down and establish how much power they have in school. By doing this, boys learn language skills by fighting off challenges and challenging others. This makes them "adversative" which makes them more assertive than girls. While boys are displaying their knowledge by competing with one another for attention, girls are just telling secrets to their friends and keeping to their personal social zones. Sociologist Charles Winick shared his ideas of desexualization by saying that females are becoming more masculine and males are becoming more feminine. This is shown in the way we dress, the people we idolize, the kinds of pets we have, the names we give our children, etc. I can see how Tannen's ideas make sense, but I do not necessarily agree with everything. First of all, girls who go to a same-sex school have a disadvantage as well as an advantage by not interacting with boys. Yes, they may have better language skills, but that does not necessarily cause them to do better in life. When they grow up, they have to get a job where they will most likely be surrounded by boys. School did not prepare them for this because they did not have any experience in that area. Also, guys may try to "seize the spotlight" and try to answer questions, but there are plenty of guys that are lazy and prefer not to answer even if they know they are correct. This plays in the the "being cool" factor that guys often try to uphold. There are also plenty of girls who are not shy and volunteer to answer questions a little too much. It really depends on the comfort zone of the person as well as the environment the person grew up in. For example, a girl who was raised in a family with three brothers may be more open to answering questions than boys would be.

Chapter 14

While chapter thirteen discussed language as a dialogue, this chapter discusses language as a narrative. Each narrative has a beginning, middle, and an end. (Aristotle) There is a specific sequence in narratives that carries out the conversation being told. A narrative always responds to the question "and then what happened?" (Labov and Waletzsky) I think this is very true because when people are having a conversation and someone is telling a story, the audience is often left in suspense wondering what the next order of events is in the story. Sometimes when telling a story, the teller lets the audience know when a story is about to be told or when it is over. In research interviews or other examples, it can be hard to identify whether a story is being told or not. The author, Catherine Kohler Riessman continued to say that personal narratives need structure to hold them together. Stories may contain the same ideas or concepts and be told differently, which is why the placement of events are very important in narrative. Labov had a paradigmatic structural approach to narratives. He said that there are six common elements in a narrative that include an abstract (summary), orientation (time, place, situation, characters), complication action (sequence of events), evaluation (significance and meaning of the action, tone or attitude of the narrator), resolution (what happened at the end), and coda (returns the perspective to the present).

The purpose of including all of these different narrative techniques and ideas from different people is to portray all of the rules we use when we converse. When we are young, we do not think about the rules of conversing and telling stories. Instead, we learn them from our culture. Riessman reiterates that we need to keep remembering in the middle of our stories that we need to answer the audience's question "what happens next?" Jean Francois Lyotard, a French scholar of postmodernism, said that when we speak we are in a sense playing games. This is because like a game, our speaking has rules and factors that play into it. Laurel Richardson stated that narrative is both a mode of reasoning and a mode of representation. People are able to understand the world by using narrative and they are also able to speak about the world narratively. Jerome Bruner said that narrative is one of the two basic and universal human cognition modes. The other mode is logico-scientific, which looks for universal truth conditions and is taken from spatial and temporal events. Narratives play a very important role in our lives because they surround us and they are used in everyday language to understand what is going on in the world.

Chapter 13

The beginning of this chapter, "Dialogic Aspects of Communication", was hard to understand. The chapter said that words come from dialogue. Words get their meanings from the way people use them in day-to-day language. Words do not only have a specific meaning in the present, but they are also informing about the meaning of something in the past. These ideas from Bakhtin also stress the importance of responsive understanding.  Michael Holquist defines responsive understanding as "a fundamental force that participates in the formulation of discourse". He also describes this discourse as an active understanding which is resistance or support to the discourse. Mikhail Bakhtin was a theorist of communication from Russia. He studied dialogism, a theory of language. Dialogism focuses on "taking dialogue as its main metaphor for the communication process." He is basically saying that to have communication, two people must partake in a dialogue. A monologue is only one person speaking to themselves and that is not how you are supposed to communicate with people. When we speak with other people, we must remember what was said in the conversation and we must think about what will be said. Intertextuality is another one of Bakhtin's theories. Intertextuality simply means that texts that are being produced at any moment in time are related to texts that have already been produced before. In many instances, people are not aware that are are influenced by previously produced texts such as books, television, songs, movies, etc. Usually there is a purpose as to why we create dialogues with other people. These dialogues have to do with something that is influenced by something else. In our ad, we have an intertextual example of a parody. The man makes eating the freeze pops with the glass comparable to smoking cigarettes. They are both ridiculous concepts and hazardous actions. There is not really a dialogue in our ad because there is only one man speaking to his consumers promoting his product. It is a monologue, rather than a dialogue, because there is only one person talking. There is not a narrative either, because he is promoting a product instead of telling a story to someone else.

Chapter 12

There are four elements that are distinguished by one or two synonyms in society. These four elements discovered by M.H. Abrams are work, artist, universe, and audience. The work (artifact) is the "artistic product itself"and the artist is the artificer. The work must have a subject, which comes from something that already exists and signifies or reflects an object. This subject that consists of people and actions, ideas and feelings, material things and events, is called universe or nature. The audience is the final element and it includes the listeners, readers, or spectators to whom the work is directed to. Abrams arranged these four elements into a triangle. Artist, universe, and audience all surrounded the word work, because work is the most important element that must be explained.

The author of this chapter (Arthur Berger) uses five terms to describe mass-mediated communication. These include an Artist (sender, creator or group of creators), Art (the texts created, conveying a message), an Audience (those who receive the message), America (a society in which the message is created and disseminated), and a Medium (radio, television, film, books, and magazines). In Berger's model, each of the words have arrows pointing to each other because they are all influenced by eachother. Abrams' and
Berger's theories can compare to Lasswell's formula. Berger's model hints that communication has effects on society. I agree with Berger's theory because it is true that any kind of communication effects the artist or whoever is sending the message, what is being said, and who they are telling the message too. It is very common in our society for magazines, television commericials, and any other type of advertisement to convey a message to consumers. This type of communication is part of what helps our economy function successfully.

Chapter 11

In order to describe an act of communication, one must answer the questions, "Who?", "Says what?", "In which channel?", "To whom?", and "With what effect?". These questions were derived from the thoughts of Harold Lasswell, and are now known as the Lasswell formula. In this chapter, a formula is defined as "a statement expressing some fundamental truth or principle." Lasswell's formula can be applied to Jackobson's model of the communication process. Lasswell's "Who?" relates to Jakobson's addresser or sender of the message, "Says what?" is the message or content, "In which channel?" means the medium or contact, "To whom?" refers to the addressee or receiver of the message, and "With what effect?" would be compared to the functions of the message.

Chapter eleven defines models as "abstract representations of processes that occur in the real world." A model has a value that means it may be portrayed graphically, which would give it an easily understandable interpretation. Models also have limitations such as simplifying something complicated and leaving out important information. I agree with what these men are saying, because in order to communicate, people do have to send messages that contain content back and forth. There has to be two people (the sender and the receiver) and there has to be something specific that they are talking about (message or content). To understand what is being said, the receiver has to know the code, or meaning behind the message.

Chapter 10

Language has a wide variety of functions that helps convey verbal communication. These fundamental units of language and communication created by Roman Jakobson are the addresser, the message, the addressee, the context, the contact, and the code. The addresser sends the message to the addressee, so the addresser is the sender of the message, the message is the content sent, and the addressee is the receiver of the message. The addresser is responsible for catching the addressee's attention. Therefore, the emotive function is for the speaker to have an expressive attitude toward whatever he or she is speaking about. The message requires a context (or referent), which is the circumstance in which the message is given. This is the main denotative, cognitive function that is the leading task in most messages. A code is understood by both the addresser and the addressee and a contact is the channel in which the message is sent. This enables both the addresser and the addressee to remain in communication. I agree with Jakobson's ideas because it is true that in order to communicate, there has to be messages sent. There has to be an addressor or sender to communicate the message and there has to be someone to send the message to (addressee or receiver).

Robert Scholes studied Jakobson's ideas and concluded that even if we know the code, we must still receive the message. Sometimes, the message can be interpreted in different ways. This unites the sender and the receiver, but the sender must be sure that the meaning must be the same as what he intended in the message. An example of this would be in advertisements. Advertisers may try to send a message, but the receivers (consumers) may not understand the real meaning of the message, or they may not realize they are decoding a message at all.

Chapter 8

In this chapter, Levi-Strauss studies anthropology (the study of culture and civilization). He knows that culture involves art, music, clothing, morals, law, etc., and he thinks that the reasons people do some of these things to make up their culture are unconscious. He then goes on to say that table manners, etiquette, and fashion are important in our society, but nobody really pays attention to their origins or why we do what we do and what it means.

Levi-Strauss is a strong believer in the importance of unconscious elements. He makes a good point that if we knew why we do everything that we do, then there would be no reason for social sciences. Franz Boas is another anthropologist that stressed the importance of grammar. No one would know how their language would work unless they have rules for speaking. People are raised to speak the way their surrounding culture does.

Chapter 7

Chapter seven is about Claude Levi-Strauss and his structuralist perspective. Strauss believes in his theory of the structural analysis of linguistics, cybernetics, communication theory, and the theory of games (these are all derived from myth). The basis of these ideas is that the mind works through form. Any experience that a person may have is considered unconscious because it is in a structured form in their mind. These forms are always in pairs that are opposite of each other, but yet are always balanced. Strauss states that there are three different types of social communication: kinship (rules for transferring women), economy (transfer of goods and services), language. I do not really understand this chapter, because these concepts are really confusing. Clearly it's about transferring ideas that are balanced unconsciously. Levi-Strauss myth's structures are different than everyday language because they are separate units and do not have any meaning by themselves.

Mary Douglas is a very important social anthropologist that studied Strauss. She claims that meaning is relational and that the meaning of a term comes from its place in a sentence and "the meaning of anything is dependent upon the context in which we find it." Everything comes in pairs of opposites. If there were not opposites in this world, then some terms would not even exist. For example if stop was not a word, then go  or proceed would probably not be a word. This is the same with the words dark versus light and rich versus poor. Structuralism is a perspective that "analyzes phenomena in terms of their basic units and the way these units are assembled." Basically, opposites are essential to our society and they need to be discovered. The way things are related are very important to society. The way we think and the way we act can be more clear if we can understand these underlying structures.

Chapter 6

This chapter discusses different language codes. Children learn these codes at a young age because of socialization. These codes are used to describe a word without using the actual word. One type of language code is an elaborated code. Elaborated codes have universalistic meanings, so a specific word could have infinite meanings. Because elaborated codes are so broad, they have potential to change. Elaborated codes could mean different things to different people, because everyone is so distant and they speak in different ways. Sometimes, people can evoke deep thought for some while using these articulated symbols. Another type of code is a restricted code, which is more particular and specific. These type of codes are tied to a local social structure and have condensed symbols. For this reason, restricted codes are not likely to be misused. Therefore, they do not require deep thought because they are straight and to the point. An important part of this reading is the understanding that restricted codes draw upon metaphor and elaborated codes draw upon rationality. If a term is more concise, then it is likely to be a restricted code, because it has a restricted meaning. If something requires reason, then it is an elaborated code, because ideas can be elaborated upon.

This theory by Basil Bernstein is controversial because Bernstein claims that parents of different social classes raise their children to speak and think differently based on these two codes. Elaborated codes have a more complex grammar, the vocabulary is varied, there is a sentence structure complex, they are logical, and they are usually used by the middle class. Restricted codes have simple grammar, the vocabulary is uniform, the sentence structure is simple, they are emotional, and they are usually used by working classes. I agree with these rationalizations because middle class is more likely to be educated than working classes, and therefore the conversations at home will shape their children's minds on how to think. Since working classes use a restricted code, words will not not have as many meanings as those in an elaborated code. Therefore, children who are raised learning restricted codes will not be able to interpret ideas and different meanings of words. As children grow up, these codes shape their perspectives on different things throughout their life.

In our ad, there are elaborated codes. There are different meanings that can be interpreted when viewing shards of glass in popsicles. It is supposed to show how hazardous cigarettes are to your health. The man in the commercial says the best way to eat a popsicle with shards of glass in it is to not eat it at all. This is a parody because it is saying that the best way to smoke a cigarette or use tobacco is to not do it at all. There is no good that can come out of it. They are targeting this commercial towards smokers. This is to show smokers the reality of how hazardous smoking and tobacco really is.

Chapter 5

In Chapter five, Jonathon Culler questions the thoughts and ideas of Freud, Saussure, and Durkheim. He does not understand why these three men think behavior is based off of individual actions. His search is for a system that explains why there are signs and why there are semiotics and meanings to what we do. He figures that there must be a society that interprets signs. Unlike the three men previously mentioned, Culler focuses on society, rather than the individual. He states that individuals are not the creators of society and and you need a society for individuals to exist ("to learn how to speak a language and to learn what signs mean").

We learn that individuals come from a society from a book called Ideology and Utopia, by Karl Mannheim.  In the portion of the book included in this chapter, we know that Mannheim focuses on society as a whole. He relays the importance of thinking "further what other men have thought before". This means that it is impossible to think as an individual. This theory came from a French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Durkheim claimed that there is a "complex relationship between individuals and society: individuals are in society and society is in individuals." This means that we may have our own individual thoughts, but our thoughts come from society. This is known as individualism. Individualism is a term created by Alexis de Tocqueville i his book Democracy in America. He claimed that American society has a egalitarian nature because we forget about our social institution and tend to focus on individualism.

After adopting some of these ideas, Culler criticizes Saussure, Freud, and Durkheim for praising individualism and its benefits of making communication successful with the ability to create unique ideas within individuals. Culler argues that this "self-made" non-societal image is an illusion because society is what teaches individuals what signs and language mean. Individuals may enlighten themselves with new ideas, but these ideas come from society. Social institution is what truly makes a person distinctive.

Chapter 2

Chapter two defines language as "a system of signs that express ideas." To study these signs, people use semiotics. Semiology is "a science that studies the life of signs within a society." Semiotics are the rules that govern signs and shows what would constitute them. The author, Ferdinand de Saussure, was a little bit confusing in this chapter, but basically he described a sign as a combination of a concept and a sound-image. Saussure calls a sign "the idea of a sensory part defines an idea as a whole". This means that a sign is something that represents an object, event, feeling, etc. In Saussure's example, arbor stands for the word tree. Because people may be confused and ambiguous about the definition of a sign, Saussure created three new concepts: sign, signified, and signifier. He decided to keep the word sign, and replace the word concept with signified and the word sound-image with signifier. The sign is the whole and the signified and signifier are the parts that oppose each other. These three concepts are different, which is what defines them and makes them unique.

The chapter then goes into a miniature biography of Saussure and says that he was a Swiss linguist and was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. He founded the science of signs (semiology) and suggested how signs work. Saussure thought that language, speech, and speaking were different. He said language or langue was a social institution, language and speech could never be classified but are social and individual, and speaking or parole was something done by an individual. At first I did not understand how speaking was an individual activity, but now i understand that it is something only one person can do on their own (formulate their own thoughts and say them). Since speaking requires two people, one person thinks of something and then says it (sound-image) and the idea is transferred to the other person's brain that they are speaking to. Then, Saussure stresses the importance of recognizing the difference between a signifier and a signified. Signs in this world, and the language we communicate with, is constantly changing. The meanings of words change to what society uses them as.

To end the chapter, the terms signifier and signified are closely analyzed. These words are closely related, but at the same time are complete opposites. The importance of these words is in their differences. For example, this is why we can tell the difference between light and dark. We know when we look out the window and our eyes squint due to the the sun rays that it is not dark outside. This means that we configure things in our lives based on the differences of other things and ideas. Saussure's ideas about signs can relate to facial expressions, body language, and fashion as well.

My advertisement was of a toilet seat and it was connected in between two wheelchair wheels. Above the contraption is a sign that reads, "Drunk behind ONE WHEEL could land you in between ANOTHER TWO." The concept, or signified, is to not drink and drive. The signifier is the toilet seat made into a wheel chair. This picture goes to show that if you perform a stupid action such as drinking while driving, then you will result to look like a stupid person (like having to roll around on a toilet seat).

Chapter 9

Metaphor is the main topic of this chapter. A metaphor is a "device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish - a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language." Metaphors are used in language, thought, and action. Another concept that plays an important role in the way we think is metonymy. Metaphor is based on analogy and similarity (one thing in terms of another), while metonymy is based upon association. This is when something is called a different term that is very similar. For example, "crown" and "royalty" are two words that could be replaced with each other because they have similar meanings. When people speak of England, or any event in past history with a king or queen, people refer to the power as the "crown". Another example are the words "Washington D.C." and "government". People often simultaneously use these words because Washington D.C. is where the President of the United States lives and it is the capital of this country. Also, the Supreme Court justices meet there, as well as other very important politicians that determine the fate of our country. Synecdoche is a form of metonymy and it means that a part is used to stand for the whole (or vice versa). Synecdoches are useful as part of our thinking, but are not as strong as metonymy. (Likewise, similes are not as strong as metaphors). Even though metaphors are used everyday, not very many people realize the importance of them.

Chapter 4

This chapter included information about the antithetical meanings of words. Overall, I thought the beginning of the chapter was kind of confusing because it started out with many quotations. This was definitely the least interesting chapter out of the book that we have had to read so far. Also, the author, Sigmund Freud, did not make it clear what a Traumdeutung is. Continuing with the language theme, antithetical meanings of words means that there are several words that have two meanings, one which is the direct opposite of the other.

The chapter goes on to give a short biography of Sigmund Freud. Freud is "considered the father of psychoanalytic theory" and was a very profound thinker in the nineteenth and twentieth century. He was the man to come up with the Iceberg Theory. This theory states that there are three levels of consciousness (which can be represented by an iceberg). The tip of the iceberg that is visible represents consciousness, the small portion below the sea that we are able to view represents preconsciousness (material that we are not aware of but we can bring to consciousness), and the rest of the iceberg represents the unconscious (the darkness that portrays what we are unaware of). The unconscious makes up ninety percent and is the material that is not accessible to us, but is nevertheless in our minds. Freud stresses the importance of the unconscious because it shapes our behavior. We do what we do because of a "power" within us that we can not control (the unknown).

Freud also introduced the idea that there are three unconscious forces operating in the human psyche: the id (lust and desire), the superego (conscience and guilt), and the ego (mediates between the two other forces). In his book, Freud writes about dreams with ideas being opposite of each other, and he forms a reaction formation, or a defense mechanism. This simply means that we express a feeling based off of the opposite feeling that we have. An example is when junior high boys and girls pick on each other and make fun of each other just because they secretly have crushes on each other. Freud was also interested in the ideas of sexual content of symbols which is called a phallic symbol (symbol of the penis). This chapter explains that even though people may say something, it could just be a reaction formula, when really they think the exact opposite (which is why body language is very important to read and understand).

Chapter 3

This chapter is very thought provoking because it raises the idea that a word can mean whatever you want it to mean. However, in order to communicate with a society, a word has to mean the same thing or be used in the same context so that everyone can understand what each other is saying. This is already complicated in the English language because there are so many words that are the same but have different definitions or meanings. For example, the word ate can be used as the past tense of the verb eat, but it sounds the exact same as the number eight. Another example is the word read. Read can be used as a present tense or past tense form (whichever is in the correct format in the sentence). When looking at a dictionary, there are various words that have several meanings. Dictionaries are constantly updated every year because new words or meanings are formed. Some definitions have more important meanings than others. Two words that have changed meaning throughout history are wicked and tweet. Wicked used to mean that something was very cruel and unjust. Now it means the complete opposite (cool or exciting). Tweet used to be a type of onomatopoeia for a sound that a bird would make. Now it is a verb used for updating your status on the social networking website Twitter. A recent word that has become very popular is a grenade. This word was used on the show Jersey Shore to describe a very ugly person. Over a few weeks, this word has become overly used and nationally known. Another really popular word is creeper. This word is used a lot to describe someone who is really weird and likes to stare at people or stalk people. The meanings of words are always going to be changing. Words that used to be popular such as "groovy" and "far out" are not used anymore and even though they were slang, they were probably written in a dictionary at one time. This just goes to show that society is always communicating to keep the culture alive.

Chapter 1

Words and communication are used in our everyday lives. By the age of four, children are able to speak and after a few years later, they are able to form complete sentences. This chapter states that language is a system of grammar, as well as a human behavior that can be analyzed according to theories of interaction, play, and games. At first I was confused how language could be a system of human behavior, but now I understand that this statement basically means that the way things are said can portray someone's behavior. This chapter also talks about how language is like a game played with phonemes (a fixed number of pieces). Phonemes are "the basic units of sounds by which morphemes, words, and sentences are represented." In the English language, there are a total of forty-five phoneme pieces. They are broken down into consonants, vowels, stresses, pitches, etc.. This is very interesting to me because I never thought of language like this before and I never knew there were only a certain number of these different phoneme in our language. The author, Peter Farb, states that children are usually able to speak recognizable words around one year of age. That is amazing to think that infants or toddlers, who are not very knowledgeable, can learn how to speak and understand words, while adults have to take years of classes and studying in order to learn a different language. Once children learn the basic words of the English language, they are able to form sentences.

It is crucial to understand language, so that a person is able to communicate. Communication is necessary for a society and culture to grow. The chapter ends after including the historical meaning of words. For example, the words honor, democracy, God, patriotism, and freedom all are connected with every individual's values and beliefs. The word freedom is linked with every American's history and personal beliefs. When I think of freedom, patriotism, and honor, I think of how our ancestors fought to secure this land so that we could live freely. Three other words that are very significant in our country's history are declaration, slavery, and confederacy. Declaration, or the Declaration of Independence, is very meaningful to our country because men risked their lives declaring their independence and signing this document to free themselves from England. Slavery and confederacy are two other important words because slavery was a huge problem in this country. After we fought for freedom, we denied other of their freedom. There was a war in our country between the northerners and the Confederacy due to this issue. The Confederacy is still a significant word today, because whenever someone says they are a Confederate, we know they are from the south. Strong words like these are able to trigger a person's thoughts and emotions. In my life, three words that play an important role are family, faith, and golf. Family and friends (who are considered family) are very important to me and are one of my highest priorities in life. Without people who are there to love and support you in all that you do, you will not be able to succeed. Faith is also very important to me. I am a practicing Catholic and without God by my side, life would be very difficult. Golf is another word that is important to me because golf is a big part of my life. I have been golfing since I could walk and it is a sport that my family plays together. Golf teaches you moral life lessons such as patience, perseverance, honesty, and teamwork. These are some of the reasons why language is such an important part of communication.

Chapter 20

This chapter relates fashion and the way people dress as a way of communication. Research shows that as babies, before their sexual identity is portrayed, they are characterized by their clothing. For example, females are usually dressed in pink or another soft color with flower or "girly" patterns. Males are generally dressed in blue, or have patterns that are related to male interests (baseballs, dinosaurs, etc.). Male and females portray their bodies differently in two types of gender scripts. Men use their bodies in a straightforward manner: they manipulate, grasp, and hold. Women convey their bodies as delicate and precious: they tend to caress objects and people. The way people dress is relevant to their sexual interdependence. If a person dresses in an immodest way, it signifies their suitability for sexual intercourse. The purpose of sexual attire is to attract attention from the two opposite sexes. These articles of clothing can be anything from a female's bra and high heels to a male's tie, jacket, and shoes.

Fashion is a form of collective behavior because it shows why people believe the way they do. Some people have worn the same type of dress for hundreds of years, because it shows their culture and what they stand for. For men and women, the seductive articles of clothing that they wear excites the opposite sex, which is imperative for the "survival of the species". Men's clothing involves a "hierarchy principle" that shows where men belong in the class system and women's clothing is designed based on a "seductive principle" so that women can be desired by men. Because women are being seen as sex objects, fashion makes them seem as if they are less important then men. Women dress to impress men and men dress so show who is wealthier and more proper. Fashion also involves obtaining the latest trends or accessories. This helps the economy, as well as a person's social status.

Chapter 25

This chapter claims that advertisers are responsible for portraying what a beautiful woman looks like. In order to do this, advertisers have to use the concept of the provocateur. A provocateur is an ideal image that arouses feeling or reaction. This image is most likely to show youth (no wrinkles), sexuality, and seduction. The provocateur is the female figure that women are compared to every day. This image defines what women wear and how they wear their hair. Many women are not accepted in our society because of their failure to adapt to the idealistic, yet unrealistically perfect image. As much as anyone tries to look like a perfect model, it will never happen. The provocateur is just a reminder of what a real woman will never look like. It is every woman's fantasy. Women are able to buy as many beauty products and they can, but they cannot buy long legs, unblemished skin, and perfect hair. Photographers and advertisers use cosmetics, airbrush tools, and photography to create this perfect image. Women succumb to this unrealistic image, because they believe that it is the only way to capture a man's heart. The provocateur image is just another way to portray women as sex objects. As much as this can hurt women, men do not seem to mind because it pleases them. Once again, fashion is used to make men more powerful.

Youtube Videos

These videos on Youtube were both very informational and interesting. The video titled "Why a scared expression brings a survival advantage" describes the differences in facial expressions between fear and disgust. This study done in Toronto proved that if someone is scared, their eye brows will raise, causing their eyes to widen. The eye balls are likely to shift from side to side. The study also shows that if someone is disgusted, their nose will cringe and their eye brows will lower. The video uses a rat as an example. If there was a dead rat in the road, one would squint and wrinkle their nose if they saw a dead rat in the road, but if the rat was alive in one's bedroom, they would open their eyes, nose, and mouth wide. Students from the University of Toronto found research that disgust and fear "not only convey how you are feeling, but also alter your sensory relationship with the world around you". While experiencing fear, one would receive an increased air take, because while being scared it is natural to have a large gasp. These are all signs of how to differentiate disgust from fear.

The next video called, "FBI Agent Explains How to Spot Liars", explains how to tell if someone is lying or not. Bill Brown, a polygraph examiner and ex-FBI agent, interviewed five people and could tell whether they were lying based off of their facial expressions. Brown calls the eyes "the window to the soul because you can see right through them." If someone looks up to the right while answering a question, they are thinking of a story that never happened. This is also known as lying. If they look up to the left, they are trying to recall something that happened in the past. However, it is the opposite if you are a left-handed person. If someone shifts their eyes and then looks at the interviewer, they are lying because they are trying to see if the interview believes their fake story. If the interviewee is sitting comfortably, then they are most likely telling the truth. Liars show signs of rubbing their neck, tapping their fingers, looking at their watch, leaning back in their chair, sitting to the side, keeping their arms crossed, or tightly folding their hands in their lap. They may also put some kind of barrier between them and the person they are telling a lie to. Another way to tell if a person is dishonest is listening to their tone of voice. If they change the way they are talking to you and they change their volume, then that is an indication they are lying. These are all very great ways to act as a human polygraph and decipher whether people are telling lies or not. This shows why being able to read facial expressions or body gestures is very important in today's world.

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen describes the importance of facial expressions. Facial expressions portray your attitude towards something in your affective state, or your emotions, such as fear, anger, enjoyment, sadness, disgust or any other mood you may be in. For example, a smile is an expression of happiness or enjoyment. Your cognitive activity can also be exemplified through facial expressions. If someone is yawning and is staring blankly across the room, you would assume this person is bored. Hostility, sociability, and shyness are three traits that can be shown through facial expressions that portray a person's temperament and personality. Someone who stars at the ground while surrounded by a few people may come off as shy. Facial expressions show a person's truthfulness, because your expression on your face during a situation reveals your true emotions and how you feel about what is going on. Psychopathy is another trait that includes information relevant to depression and many other less severe disorders, and the response to the treatment.

Facial expressions are also very important due to medical research that uses imaging technologies to show when specific mental processes are occurring (such as learning about coronary artery disease). Expressions are also important in education, because the teacher's expressions affect whether the students are learning or not, and the students' expressions show the teacher whether they are learning or not. For criminal justice, expressions portray a person's credibility. Everyone in the world uses facial expressions, and it is very important to understand what certain expressions mean.

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen was about the use of nonverbal communication. It stated that our actions are more important than our speech. This makes sense because what we do (our actions) are closely tied with our feelings and emotions. We are bound to act truthfully in accordance with our thoughts, while speech can be falsified. Also, nonverbal communication is extremely important while dealing with the language barrier. People around the world may not be able to communicate using their voices, but they can with their body language. Nods, pointing, handshakes, hugs, etc. are all ways to show your feelings towards another person without verbally communicating.

There are three important dimensions in nonverbal communication that help people to express their feelings. The book, "50 Ways to Understand Communication", states that the first dimension requires little definition (liking or disliking). I don't really understand what this dimension means, because the book does not explain it clearly. My guess would be that you give off a first impression with your actions. This could be the way you look at someone or motion towards them. Obviously refusing to shake hands would be a negative action and would display the fact that the person refusing the handshake does not like the other person or has negative feelings towards them. A more relaxed, casual attitude makes this dimension important so that the other person can succumb to their true feelings through their actions. The second dimension is dominance. Dominance is the difference between a controlling and a submissive attitude. An example of this dimension would be if someone rolled their eyes or glared at you. These actions would portray their snobby reputation. Responsiveness is the third and final dimension of nonverbal communication. This would include the awareness of others actions and the responses to these actions.

Facial expressions, gestures, and body language are three ways of communicating these feelings. Commercials are a very popular way of advertising in today's world. Listening to a radio commercial is not nearly as convincing as watching a commercial on the television when you can see the actor or actresses facial expressions and gestures. Even if the T.V. was on mute, people would probably be more convinced to buy something than they would if they listened to a commercial on the radio. Nonverbal communication is very significant in today's society. People can say whatever they want to, but what they do is what is most important.