Toolkits: Essential

Question 1

Anchorage

Answer 1

Directing receivers towards one particular meaning from a range of possible meanings. A caption can anchor the meaning of a photograph.

Question 2

Barrier

Answer 2

Anything which interferes with the processes of communication.

Question 3

Channel

Answer 3

A communication route or connection.

Question 4

Connotation

Answer 4

The meanings in a text that are revealed through the receiver’s own personal and cultural experience.

Question 5

Convention

Answer 5

A rule of artistic practice.

Question 6

Decode

Answer 6

To convert an encoded message into a form that can be understood.

Question 7

Denotation

Answer 7

The specific, direct or obvious meaning of a sign rather than its associated meanings: those things directly referenced by a sign.

Question 8

Encode

Answer 8

To convert a message into a means capable of being transmitted.

Question 9

Form and Content

Answer 9

These describe the essential relationship between the ‘shape’ of a text (how it’s made) and ‘what’s in it/what it’s about’.

Question 10

Function

Answer 10

What a text, group of texts, or indeed communication itself ‘does’ (inform, persuade, entertain, socialise, ect).

Question 11

Gatekeeper

Answer 11

Someone who controls the selection of information to be offered to a
given channel. Thus, for example, newspaper editors are significant gatekeepers, but
we are all gatekeepers in an interpersonal sense, deciding as we do what we
communicate and what we omit or hold back.

Question 12

Genre

Answer 12

Describes the subdivisions of the output of a given medium (e.g.
television, film, magazine publishing). A genre is a type, a particular version of a
communication medium. For example, soap opera is a television genre, for it
represents a particular approach to theme, style and form.

Question 13

Icon

Answer 13

A sign that works by its similarity to the thing it represents.

Question 14

Index

Answer 14

A type of sign (in C.S. Peirce’s categorisation) that has a direct or causal
relationship with its signified. The sign points (like an index finger) to its signified.
Smoke is an index of fire.

Question 15

Medium (and Media)

Answer 15

The method(s) we use to communicate.

Question 16

Message

Answer 16

The meaning carried by an act of communication or text.

Question 17

Model

Answer 17

A graphic or verbal representation of communication processes or aspects of them: a diagrammatic representation of a communication issue.

Question 18

Noise Source

Answer 18

The origin of any barrier to communication.

Question 19

Open and Closed Texts

Answer 19

Eco talked about two tendencies of texts: the tendency to
be ‘open’ and allow/invite/encourage a wide range of different interpretations: the
opposite tendency presents ‘closed’ text which can only be read in a limited number
of ways, sometimes only one way.

Question 20

Process School

Answer 20

A school of thought in which communication is conceived as a process whereby information is transmitted.

Question 21

Reader

Answer 21

The active interpreter of a message.

Question 22

Reading

Answer 22

Hall et al. conceive of three distinct ‘varieties’:
a) Dominant-hegemonic: the ‘intended’ meaning or ‘preferred’ reading
b) Negotiated: an interpretation of a text that identifies the dominant reading but
also seeks to mediate this
c) Oppositional: any reading that rejects or significantly ‘quarrels’ with the
dominant reading and/or presents different/contrary meanings.

Question 23

Receiver

Answer 23

Someone to whom a message is directed.

Question 24

Register

Answer 24

A form of linguistic performance which is responsive to the situation in which communication is taking place.

Question 25

Semiotics

Answer 25

The study of signs and how they communicate.

Question 26

Sender

Answer 26

The originator of communication.

Question 27

Sign

Answer 27

That which stands for or represents an object, idea or mental concept.

Question 28

Symbol

Answer 28

An arbitrary sign that works by the agreement among people as to what it represents.

Question 29

Text

Answer 29

This term is used to refer to anything which can be ‘read’ for meaning. In this
sense, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a bowler hat, a television advertisement and
Buckingham Palace are all texts.