Critical Studies Lecture Four.

Communication Theory

There are 7 traditions of the communication theory.

1.

• The information or cybernetic theory of communication, useful for:
  - Researching how as a designer your work makes effective communication.
  - Main limitation is that it is a linear process and is not concerned with the production of meaning itself, which is a socially mediated process.
• Shannon and Weaver Bell Laboratories 1949.
• There are three levels of communication problems:
  LEVEL ONE: Technical – Accuracy systems of encoding and decoding compatability of systems/need for specialist equipment or knowledge.
  LEVEL TWO: Semantic - Precision of language how much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost? What language to use?
  LEVEL THREE: Effectiveness - Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to? What can be done if the required effect fails to happen?
• BARB (Broadcasters, audiences research board)
• Semiotics There are three basic concepts
  1. Semiantics – addresses what a sign stands for (dictionarys)
  2. Syntactics – relationship between signs.
  3. Pragtactics.
• Semiotics and the ‘Semiosphere’ semiotics examines signs as if they are part of the language.

2.

• Semiotics useful for researching how we make meaning within any given situation and how art/design is ‘read’ within that situation. Teaches us that reality can be read as a sstem of signs and can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and the roles played by us and others in constructing it.
• No language, even if its visible is self explanatory, all languages must be learnt.

3.

• The phenomenological theory
  - is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come to understand the world.
• The Embodied Mind communication seen as an extension of the nervous system. It starts with the awareness of the body, langauage is seen as part of that system existing as an neuronal pathway that are linked within the brain. The key is the physiological classification of coding and encoding.
• The process of interpretation is central unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality in the phenomometical tradition we are interested in what is real for the person.

4.

• Rhetoric How to project your voice, personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanize inanimate objects or ideas, such as rhetoric itself. It is a type of rhetoric trope such as irony, hyperbole, personification. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion.
• Images with no text underneath them are not anchored they have no explanation.
• Metaphor meaning transfer is a language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities. Enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by creating associations.

5.

• The sociopsy chological tradition
  -The study of the individual as a social being
  -Three key areas of socio psychological communication expression, interaction and influence.
• Internal co-determinants, core processes and external co-determinants.
• Communication as the act of sendind a message to a receiver and assessing the feelings and throughts of the receiver upon interpreting the message and how these will effect an understanding of the message.
• Useful for: deep analysis of the moment of communication. Psychotherapist Psycho rapist
  There is just a small space added here but it changes the meaning of the words dramatically.

6.

• The Sociocultural tradition
  -In defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as father, catholic, student you are defining yourself in terms of your identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity.
  -The sociocultural tradition looks at how these cultural understanding roles and rules are worked out interactively in communication. Context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication.
• How power structures effect us within communication theories.
• Feminist studies examine or critques assumptions about and experiences of gender that pervade all.
• Post colonial studies.

THE RHETORIC OF IMAGES

Saussure believed that the sign was a linguistic unit consisting of signifer (sound image) and signified (concept) in visual culture the signifier may be thought of as a physical object, which has been given a meaning.

Pierce is interested in how signs represent and relate to an object. Identifies three different types of signs icon, index and symbol.

Icon: Relation between sign and object is one of likeliness. It looks like the thing or person it is meant to represent.

Index: Casual relations between sign and object. Indexical signs are really affected by their objects. For example a fire alarm would be a signifier of fire or danger they have a relationship.

Roland Barthes-Denotations and Connotations

Examined a famous pasta advert for Panzani pasta. The name is Italian so therefore straight away people are going to believe that this pasta is genuinely Italian. You are buying into the Italian country ‘The real deal’. Panzani denotes a range of pasta products but also connotes the general idea of italianicity. The colours used for this advert red, green and white are the colours of the Italian flag again supporting the idea that this pasta is actually from Italy. In the shopping bag there is a lot of other fresh products