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.