Cultural Codes: Useful

Question 1

Adapters

Answer 1

Almost unconscious gestures used to relieve stress or boredom; for
example, drumming fingers on a desk or scratching the back of your head. Often,
adapters signal nervousness or anxiety in situations such as giving a talk or being interviewed, so we do our best to control them.

Question 2

Affective Function

Answer 2

Refers to the important role non-verbal communication has to play in establishing and maintaining relationships.

Question 3

Assertiveness Training

Answer 3

Courses in assertiveness training seek to build
confidence through the development of communication skills, which include the
recognition and ability to resist manipulative non-verbal controls.

Question 4

Bardic Function

Answer 4

Bards were the poets and minstrels of their day. They translated
the everyday cultural concerns of the Middle Ages into verse. In their book Reading
Television (1990), Fiske and Hartley argue that television plays a similar role today.
Television has its own specialised language and it helps to define reality for us,
reinforcing the dominant myths of our culture. The idea of the bardic function
stresses continuity; television is playing a role that has always been played.

Question 5

Body Language

Answer 5

Bodily mannerisms, postures and facial expressions that can be interpreted as unconsciously communicating somebody’s feelings or psychological state.

Question 6

Code Switching

Answer 6

Refers to the way in which we may change between languages or dialects depending on who we are talking to.

Question 7

Communicative Competence

Answer 7

The capacity to communicate; usually refers to the ability to use various communicative codes, verbal and non-verbal, appropriately in a variety of contexts.

Question 8

Convergence

Answer 8

The way in which we adjust our language to make it more like the
language style of the person we are addressing if we want to convey warmth,
friendliness and empathy.

Question 9

Divergence

Answer 9

Moving language style away from the other person’s way of speaking can signal status or the desire to avoid intimacy.

Question 10

Emblems

Answer 10

Gestures with the specific cultural meanings attached, often used as direct substitutes for words.

Question 11

Gaze

Answer 11

Looking, eye contact; a code of NVC

Question 12

Group Dynamic

Answer 12

How the individuals of a group relate to one another and the group.

Question 13

Hair/Hairstyle

Answer 13

A significant code of NVC.

Question 14

Illustrators

Answer 14

These gestures reinforce the words of a speaker; for example, by
pointing to something in a shop while saying ‘I’ll have one of those’.

Question 15

Intergroup Communication

Answer 15

Communication between groups.

Question 16

Interpersonal Communication

Answer 16

Communication between people at an individual level.

Question 17

Intragroup Communication

Answer 17

Communication within a group.

Question 18

Looking Glass Theory

Answer 18

The idea that we base views of ourself on how we thing others are perceiving us and judging us.

Question 19

Mirror Self

Answer 19

The tendency for us to see ourselves through a reflection of how others see us.

Question 20

Occulesics

Answer 20

Eye movement, length and direction of gaze, changes in pupil size.

Question 21

Olfactics

Answer 21

Smell, odour.

Question 22

Orientation

Answer 22

The way we position ourselves physically in relation to others.

Question 23

Phatic Communication

Answer 23

Aspects of language which serve to reinforce social relationships rather than to communicate information. (e.g. ‘Have a nice day.’)

Question 24

Pitch

Answer 24

The intonation of speech, the way in which our voices may rise and fall.

Question 25

Performance

Answer 25

Communicative behaviour.

Question 26

Received Pronunciation (RP)

Answer 26

Deals solely with the sounds of words (accent) and
can be described as the prestigious speech of educated people. It is usually
associated with London and the south-east and with the middle and upper classes. It
is sometimes known as the Queen’s English, Oxford English or BBC English.

Question 27

Reflexivity

Answer 27

Describes what it is to be self-conscious, to be self-aware and to reflect
on who you are, what you’re doing and how you present yourself in the world. It is a
feature of much of contemporary communication that it is similarly conscious and
aware. It is self-reflexive. In this way, for example, we are used to seeing films about
the making of films, advertisements that play with the conventions of advertisements,
and comedies that refer to the ‘rules’ of comedy.

Question 28

Skin

Answer 28

A significant code of NVC.

Question 29

Smell

Answer 29

A significant code of NVC.

Question 30

Sociolect

Answer 30

A social dialect.

Question 31

Staging

Answer 31

The way in which we manipulate the contexts of interpersonal communication (the physical locations, the props, the costume)

Question 32

Style Shifting

Answer 32

Refers to the way in which we may modify our use of the same
dialect within different situations. For example, we may use more formal language at
an interview than we would use at home.

Question 33

Teams

Answer 33

Those we communicate ‘alongside’.

Question 34

Touch

Answer 34

A significant code of NVC.

Question 35

Tone

Answer 35

The way somebody says something as an indicator of what that person is feeling or thinking.

Question 36

Timbre

Answer 36

The quality of a speech sound that comes from it’s tone rather than it’s pitch or volume.

Question 37

Transactional Analysis

Answer 37

An approach to understanding and ultimately improving
interpersonal communication introduced by Eric Berne in his book Games People
Play (1968). The essence of Eric Berne’s theories of personality is that each of us at
any one time has the option of adopting one of three ego states: ‘the child’, ‘the
parent’ and ‘the adult’. These are not stages of maturity, they are options within all of
us; a 6-year-old can adopt a parent ego state in conversation with a 30-year-old in
‘child’ ego state.

Question 38

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Answer 38

This is an approach to understanding the role of
mass communication in society. The basic premise runs as follows. We all have
various needs and desires, such as needs for information, entertainment and social
interaction which media texts (such as television programmes, video games,
magazines and newspapers) help us to fulfil. Hence use the mass media to gratify
our needs.