Fiona writes:
 
> 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?
 
Well, I suppose that you *could* separate it into different levels,
but there would still be a lot of inter-level influence.  Let's look
at television (as opposed to film) for a quick example.
 
There are two major differences between television and film on the
physical level that I'd like to look at here.  First is the nature
of who foots the bills.  Film is what I would like to term a
first-order product.  (Yes, I know it's kind of a klugey term.  I
am open to other suggestions.)  That is, film is sold directly to
the consumer and the consumer is the one that pays for it (at the
box office).  On the other hand, because of its physical nature
(being broadcast), television cannot be so financed.  The television
programs are a third-order product.  The television programs attract
viewers, who are also consumers, and who are the true product of
television.  The television station interrupts the program briefly
at intervals to display advertisements for first-order products
which the consumers are to consume.  In this case the first-order
consumers themselves are the second-order product of television,
and they are sold to the advertiser!  (I bet you never thought of
yourself as a product before.  :-))
 
Second, film is a non-interrupted medium.  That is, when you go to
see a film it is not, except under extraordinary circumstances
(e.g., projector breaks, the film is many hours long, etc.),
interrupted.  Television, on the other hand, is an interruptable
medium, and we have come to expect it to be an interupted medium.
This is because a) we have control over the hardware ourselves,
and can flip channels or turn it on and off, and b) the difference
in who is paying for the programming that I noted above.
 
So now we actually *expect* interuptions when watching television,
even though they are not *physically* necessary, because of certain
social factors in our society (i.e., we are capitalist).  It turns out
that the lower levels of discourse, our direct dealings with the
hardware, are inextricably linked to our higher levels of discourse,
the kind of economic system we choose to live under.
 
> 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?
 
It can be done, to a degree.  It takes resources to communicate, and
those resources have to come from somewhere.  As the case of film and
television shows, our media can be very different depending on a) how
our society pays for things that consume resources and b) how the
nature of the medium affects society's ability to use the prefered
methods for distributing the cost of that communication.
 
> 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.
 
Get used it it.  You can't examine communication from outside
itself.  It's fascinating, but following all the implications can
make your head hurt.
 
> So what do we *get*, philosophically speaking, from this concept
> of discourse?  Or is that question too naive for this list?
 
I don't think that's a naive question at all.  As a matter of fact,
I think it's a very important question.
 
To my mind, discourse implies a semiotic viewpoint toward communication.
Rather than viewing communication as a sender taking a meaning and
giving it to a receiver, who passively accepts it, it looks at it
as a sender who attempts to encode a meaning in symbolic form, and
gives that symbolic form to the receiver (though a medium, which
may change it).  The reciever then becomes an *active* part of the
communication because she has to decode the symbols to get a meaning
(which may not necessarially be the original meaning).  So discourse
looks at communication as an *active* relationship between the
sender, the medium and the receiver.
 
So there's my two (well, probably seven or eight :-)) bits worth.
I hope it was moderately understandable.  I suspect that one of
the people out there who are better versed in communications theory
than I am can probably explain this a lot better, though.
 
cjs
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