Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Chapter 27 & 28

Chapter 27

Overview:
In this chapter, I believe Barthes goes to a very extreme level trying to find a deeper meaning to very ordinary thing.  He talks about the myths behind soap powders and detergents. I really do not understand this chapter.

Keywords:
myth
ideology
semiology
sign-systems

Chapter 28

Overview:
This chapter talks about books that are written that turn into cultural myths.  Books such as Don Juan, and Don Quixote are brought up as examples of myths.  The chapter also talks about how an author does not make a story a myth, but the public/society makes it a myth because it involves some kind of cultural values.

Keywords:
myth
idealism
hero
symbolic
society/public
values

Chapters 25 & 26

Chapter 25
 
Overview:
This chapter talks about women in advertising and how the image ultimately comes out not being the real woman used for the ad.  They talk about the provocateur and how that image can only be achieved artificially.

Keywords:
femininity
provocateur
cultural ideology
ultimate image
ingredients
packaging, promotion, marketing

Chapter 26

Overview:
This chapter talks about the advertising in our society and how our bodies have been turned into an object to sell a product.  And because of this, we have broken away from our bodies, creating an estranged relationship with our bodies.

Keywords:
capitalist societies
consumers
sexuality
advertising
correct packaging
humans-objects
estrangement
commodities

Monday, October 27, 2008

Chapter 23 & 24

Chapter 23

Overview:
In this chapter, Milton R. Sapirstein talks about how a woman defines herself by the way she decorates her house.  However way she decorates her house describes her personality.

Keywords:
Biedermaier
protuberances
masculine identification
reaction formation
Sassure
Freud

Chapter 24

Overview:
This chapter talks about the myth behind Miss America and how she has been idolized by little girls for so many years, but now little girls are starting to idolize more sexual stars like Britney Spears or Madonna.  Our society's morals are changing and little girls are picking up on it.

Keywords:
cultural behavior
symbolic heroes
paradigmatic figures
desexualization

Friday, October 24, 2008

Chapter 21

Overview: 
In this chapter, Johan Huizinga talks about the "deeper significance in ordinary things".  She talks about religion in the Middle ages and how everything had a connection to God, no matter what it was.  There was "meaning and significance in everything" because God was found to be everywhere.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Keywords:
Middle Ages
religion
symbols
Freud
unconscious
commonplace things
manifest function
latent function

Monday, October 20, 2008

Chapter 22

Overview: 
This chapter talks about the meaning of symbols and how they are created.  They state that we tend to understand symbols unconsciously and subliminally.  They also talk about the use of symbols in religion.  Its like when we do not completely understand a topic, we put a symbol towards it because we don't know what else to do.

Key Words:
symbol
unconscious
dreams
subliminally
Icon/Resemblance/Picture/Can see
Index/Causal Connection/Smoke-fire/Figure out
Symbol/Convention/Flag/Learn

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Chapter 16 & 17

Chapter 16: Questions for Discussion and Further Research

1.) Abraham's essay agreed with Tannen's because they both were studying the patterns of speech.  Even though Abraham was looking at Black Speech, and Tannen was just looking at the speech of female and male.

2.) They use rhymes just in regular conversation like Abraham said the saying "See you later alligator, for a while crocodile" or they'll use it as comebacks like "what I said cabbage head".

3.)  He's saying that its a lower way of speaking, because they learned it when they were children and they still use it.

4.)  Well, apparently people are saying that it is considered black speech, which I had never even thought to relate it to.

5.) Cannot think of any right now, but I'll add some if I think of any.

Chapter 17: Questions for Discussion and Further Research

1.) I do agree, I think people are starting to see how much more important it is to incorporate the different races and how it is more interesting if we do.

2.) I'm not sure if I understand what she means by the "otherness".  I think she means the other races other than white but I'm not completely sure. 

3.) Commodifying otherness:  

4.) It brightens things up, it makes things more interesting, and without the "spice" it is not viewed as interesting.

5.) I don't want to agree with her, but it seems natural to think that way. I don't like that people think this is a "white suprematist capitalist patriarchy" but it just seems that is what surrounds us.

6.) She thinks that there could possibly be some resistance to inviting the "other" and that it is a big possibility but if we do invite the "other" than it could be a critical interevention.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Chapter 15

Summary

This chapter talks about the different conversational habits of boys and girls while in education and men and women in general.  Berger talks about the dominant voice of a male and how women tend to hold back usually.  

Questions for Discussion and Further Research

1.) Yes I believe the media has changed the conversational style of men and women because just like Berger said, women are becoming more in charge and masculine while men are starting to step back.

2.) When she studied the conversational styles of boys and girls, she found that boys are very competitive with each other and that is how they talk to one another but girls talk in groups and conversations were full of secrets and gossip.

3.) I do believe he is right because women are becoming more powerful in our society and this is because women have more opportunity than they used to and they are taking advantage of it.

4.) Boys are more aggressive in the classroom giving the girls a reason to hold back and that is why girls to better in an all girls school.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Chapters 12, 13, & 14

Chapter 12:

Summary

This chapter discusses the the four elements that are involved in a piece of artwork. Abrams states that there is the work, artist, universe, and audience and it is all based around the work.
Berger writes almost the same thing as Abrams, but a little more updated. He uses the terms: artist, artwork, medium, audience, and America (society). Berger also talks about how these two models also relate to Laswell's formula: Who, says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect?

Questions for Discussion and Further Research

1.) The four "coordinates" involving works of art for Abrams are Universe, Work, Artist, and Audience.

2.) Work: The artistic product itself
Artist: Human product-Artificer
Universe: the feelings towards the work
Audience: listeners, spectators, viewers

3.) I'm not sure, I don't really understand why he says this.

MY QUESTION: Is there an example where it shows that most theories only concentrate on one coordinate?

4.) First he tries to use all A's to catch the attention more, then he adds the point of the medium because thats how the theories get to other people, then he changed the Audience to America or the society because that is really what Abrams was going for anyway.

5.) He meant that how the message gets there is more important than the actual message itself.

Chapter 13:

Summary

This chapter is about the two way aspects of communication and dialogues. They talk about the anticipation during a conversation and what you need to remember while having a conversation. Intertextuality is mentioned, which is the strong relationships between texts being produced at any time.

Questions for Discussion and Further Research:

1.) He asserts that the word is born in a dialogue because everything in the dialogue shapes what else could be said.

2.) Dialogic means it was characterized by the dialogue. Dialogism focuses on the two-way aspects of communication.

3.) It is understand because of the other language being spoken, and the actual meaning is picked up amongst the other utterances being spoken.

4.) Intertextuality is the strong relationships between texts being produced at any moment in time and other texts that were previously produced.

5.) I think it would be hard for a work to never be intertextual because we discussed before how there are hardly ever any original thoughts because everything has been thought of before.

6.) This affects media because there aren't too many things they can do to surprise society and they have to stay within certain boundaries or nothing will seem real.

7.) I believe that conversation and dialogue are the same thing. They're both the interaction between a certain amount of people.

MY QUESTION: How can having a conversation/dialogue come so easy to us at such a young age?

Chapter 14:

Summary

In this chapter they talk about Labov's rules during a conversation and also the rule of narration how there has to be a beginning and an end. There has to be an order when there is a conversation or a story being told.

1.) Labov's six rules and examples are abstract (a fight), orientation (phone with mom), complicating action (I yelled, she yelled...), evaluation (we were both mad for no reason), resolution ( we both apologized), and coda (we're fine now).

2.) The order of events cannot be changed without effecting the meaning because the person hearing about the conversation or story would be confused.

3.) They can be considered a glorified conversation because it is like a longer conversation, just someone narrating what is happening in the story.

4.) I believe they do follow Labov's rules, but its just an elongated process.

5.) We tend to compare narratives to what is going on in the world. When we think of love, we think of the basic stories we were told when we were little.

6.) Narratives are very important for the mass media because it is kind of the understructure of everything else that is hitting society.

MY QUESTION: Why do we base everything off of narratives?