Let me see if I've got this straight so far:
     --Jim Barnes says jargon can be useful.  (Have you noticed how many
"JB" people are on this list?  Are they aliases of the same guy?  Only
time will tell, huh?)
     --J. Berkley says Neo-Marxist critical theory is "one of the best
tools we have" in approaching film theory and semiotics.  (Fascinating--
I want to here more from Berkley about that!)
     --Malcolm objects to jargon when it's used (as it is all too often,
he says) to hide a lack of genuine understanding.  ('Can't argue with
that!)
     --Ian Jarvie says that "starting in on" discourse theory is a good
idea.  (more on this in a moment...)
     --Curt Sampson is eloquent on the subject of the "complex and
tangled nest" of associations that lurk just beneath the simple
surfaces.
 
I especially admire what Curt says here:
>Let's face it:  television is more than a "box that shows images."  It
>is inextricably linked with our cultural mores and attitudes.  A
>"simple" discussion of it is just making use of unstated assumptions.
 
But let's get back to the group process issues for a moment: in
discussing the pro's and con's of jargon, I notice that we were getting
pushed into unrealistically polarized opinions.  We probably have more
in common--in terms of the balance of tolerance and skepticism necessary
to all readers of theory--than we think.  I'm sure we all think too much
or too vague jargon is obfuscatory.  And I'm sure that most (if not all)
of us think a that total absence of jargon terms makes for very slow,
tedious exchange.
 
What I see jargon as being useful for, in a group such as this, is as a
starting point for discussion.  Or, rather, as Ian Jarvie so aptly
expresses it, as a starting-*in* point.  It conjures up an image of the
various members of SCREEN-L all standing 'round a table, rolling up
their sleeves and getting ready to do some serious work: let's "start in
on this discourse theory thing" says Ian, and we all begin to do...
whatever it is we're doing there on the table.  Watching the picture
slowly come into focus, as the list develops over the next few months,
will be half the fun.
 
                    *    *    *    *    *    *
 
That said, I'm gonna to flounder on into the *content* of this discussion--
which is (I think) the subject of discourse theory.  Curt Sampson was
most kind in typing some info about this area into a posting:
 
[after an elucidation of the many levels of creative production
and consumption involved in the "output" of television, Curt's reference
says:]
>However, television discourse is much more than this and much if not
>most of it can be found outside the programmes, or even outside the
>medium itself.  Television discourse includes the enormous amounts
>of sense-making /representations/ that have been established as the
>available mode by means of which our watching or `reading' of
>television is fixed, directed, regulated and encouraged along
>particular lines.
 
Would it make sense to say that first-order discourse is the actual
process by which the medium is produced and consumed?  And that second-
order discourse is the collective set of "maps" through which we build
our understanding of the medium?  Are there two levels here, or am I
just imagining it?
 
> It is clear that television discourse is much more than `what's on
>the telly.'  From the point of view of the viewer, it follows that
television discourse includes the discursive resources available to
>that viewer.  These will be determined by education, political
>/ideology/, and the particular inflections of /common sense/ that are
>most widely encouraged.
 
Each individual has her own unique set of discursive resources.  That
seems obvious.  Why did it need to be said?  Because we're going to turn
discourse analysis on its head, and figure out what society is like,
from the patterning of available discursive resources?
 
Uh oh...my brain's freezing up now.  All that discourse--flowing all
together into the great cosmic web of Information itself--kinda makes me
feel ethereal--I lose my grip on what this is all about.
 
So what do we *get*, philosophically speaking, from this concept of
discourse?  Or is that question too naive for this list?
 
                                                      --Fiona