> > How 'bout translating some of your jargon into English, Jeremy?  'Sounds
> > like interesting stuff, but I don't have the background.  For example:
> > discourse theory, text-oriented, audience-oriented, the viewer as
> > "subject" and so on.
> >                                                        --Fiona
>
> The reason that "jargon" gets used is that if you had to explain
> what "discourse theory" means every time you wanted to use the
> word, you'd never get to _say_ anything: you'd spend all your time
> defining words.
>
> M. Tepper Brown University
 
One book that I would recommend to those new (and even not so new) to
communications theory is _Key Concepts in Communication_, by
O'Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders and Fiske (Methuen: New York, 1983).
This is essentially a glossary which provides brief explanations of
popular communications "jargon."  Here's a sample entry related to this
discussion (words between slashes are defined elsewhere in the book):
 
			-  -  -  -  -
 
discourse:  television discourse  * Television discourse is, most
obviously, the output of television.  Thus it includes the familiar
/codes/, /styles/, /genres/ and /conventions/ of mainstream
television, together with established scheduling and continuity
habits, and the whole complex of /professional/ practices, /textual/
devices and strategies that we learn to identify and expect as TV. *
  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.  These representations can be traced in, for
instance, government reports and legislation, the output of
campaigning groups who wish to affect some change in policy, newspaper
reviews and previews of TV programmes, `news' stories about stars,
celebrities and TV personalities, the internal communications of media
corporations, academic and other studies of TV, spin-off products,
promotions and publications tied to TV, literary, cinema or comic
reworkings of familiar TV characters or series, parodies in any form,
and the almost irrecoverable talk and conversation which people use to
place and render personally meaningful their own immediate experience
of watching TV.
  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.  Social differences will produce different
discursive resources for different viewers--so TV discourse includes
social relations and divisions, such as /class/, /gender/, age,
ethnic, national, regional, family and others.  All these relations
can be and are themselves represented more or less coherently, and
some (for example, the family) are more systematically encouraged for
viewers to identify with than others (for example, class).
 
			-  -  -  -  -
 
Of course, it is very helpful to have read the entry on /discourse/,
but I'm too lazy to reproduce it here.  :-)   However, the book seems
quite good, and includes a 13 page bibliography and many references in
the entries.  It is certainly a good way to get a start on certain
aspects of communications theory.
 
Though I am a novice at the communications game, I find the field
quite interesting and would look forward to discussing these ideas
further, even if it does involve "jargon."  Television is amazingly
pervasive in our society and, given the number of hours people spend
watching it, it must have a large influence.  (Neil Postman, author of
_Amusing Ourselves to Death_, certainly makes a strong argument that
this is so!)
 
One of the areas that strikes my curiousity seems to be related to the
line that Postman takes.  There seem to be two extremes of behaviour
when watching television.  One, which only emerged with the advent of
the VCR, is very similar to film:  dedicating a chunk of time and
sitting straight though the entire programme.  (Of course, this isn't
quite so far in that direction as a film since one has the option of
pausing the show, rewinding it if one missed something, etc.)  The
other extreme is behaviour I have noticed among people who are not
tuning into a specific show: "channel flipping."  In this case the
viewer is not following any sort of theme or story but is simply
viewing images for a short time (usually ranging from less than a
second to about ten seconds, sometimes with pauses of a minute or more
on one station) and then moving on to the next.  There are also
behaviours in between these two extremes.  Viewing a show that is
interrupted by advertisements at periodic intervals is closer to the
film end, and MTV is closer to the "channel flipping" end (though with
significantly longer segments--ranging from 15 seconds to several
minutes).  Once in a while one also sees behaviour where the person
will follow the current segment (say, part of a movie or show) until
it is interupted (usually by an advertisement) and will then "channel
flip" for a short time until they discover another segment of
interest.  They will then stay with that until interupted and repeat
the procedure.
 
Television seems to be one of the few mediums or entertainments where
involuntary interruptions of the programme/text/whatever are not only
tolerated but even encouraged.  It's certainly a phenomenon that
deserves discussion and study.
 
cjs
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