- Understanding what communication is and how it works
-
Potential problems with communication:
Level
1 Technical Accuracy
Systems of encoding and decoding
Compatibility of systems/need for specialist
equipment or knowledge
Level
2 Semantic Precision of language
How much of the message can be lost without
meaning being lost?
What language to use?
Level
3 Effectiveness
Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to?
What can be done if the required effect fails
to happen?
- Different ways of defining audience: e.g. social class, occupational, ability, gender etc.
BARB definitions:
•The main audience categories are:
individuals, adults, men, women, children, and housewives. These are further
subdivided by age and social class.
Semiotics:
–Semantics addresses what a sign stands for.
Dictionaries are semantic reference books; they tell us what a sign means.
–Syntactics
is
the relationships among signs.
Signs
rarely stand alone. They are almost always part of a larger sign system
referred to as codes.
–Pragmatics
studies the practical use and effects of signs.
Codes
are organized rules that designate what different signs stand for.
Rhetoric:
Synedoche: 'a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part'
Hyperbole: 'obvious and intentional exaggeration.
an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intendedto be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”
Irony: 'the use of words to convey a meaning that is the oppositeof its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when Isaid I had to work all weekend.'
