UNIT 5. MEDIATED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Flashcards
What is Social theory?
A generic term used to describe any attempt to theorize the modern world in any of its spheres, it’s a discipline outside sociology because it doesn’t follow the scientific method. Instead it focuses on the less objective issues and the brute fact of human suffering.
What is the single most important principle in MDA?
The principle of social action
What does the principle of social action mean in the context of MDA?
1) That discourse isn’t a system of representation, thought or values, but as a matter of social actions.
2) It helps develop the idea of Mediated Action, which is the ecological unit of analysis for MDA scholars.
3) That all social action is based on tacit, normally unconscious actions which form different practices.
4) It expands the idea of habitus by Bordieu by arguing that habitus is an accumulated experience of social actions.
Explain the concepts of social actor and interaction order within the mediated discourse analysis approacch.
Social actor: A person who moves and acts in the physical world, and who “gives off” different signals (such as race, sex, age, etc).
Interaction order: The set of social relationships we take up and try to maintain with the other people who are in our presence.
What is Scollon’s view of discourse? Why is he skeptical of the traditional model of communication?
That all discourse is mediated and all mediations are discursive.
He’s skeptical of the traditional model of communication precisely because of his conception of all discourse being mediated.
Let’s look at it with an example:
In the news discourse the primary social interactions are among the producers (e.g. journalists, photographers, editors etc) and not between the producers AND the audience (who are merely spectators compared to the way the producers are interacting with each other, i.e. the wauy they’re having more discourse between one another).
Since the sender-receiver/producer-audience model of communication is flawed, because it makes us think that the social interaction occurring in texts is between the author or producer and the reader or audience exclusively.
What is Scollon’s famous example of how social actions are analyzed in MDA? What does it consist of?
Scollon analyzes the social action involved in having a cup of coffee with friends, where he finds many different types of discourse and actions:
The action of having a cup of coffee with friends involves a very complex and nested set of actions (e.g. lining up, ordering, paying, etc.)
Therefore the conversation among friends isn’t the only discourse or action implied, there are others such as the discourse of service encounters, of the international marketing of coffee, etc.
Scollon focuses on the coffe cup as the primary MEDIATIONAL MEAN.
What did Scollon mean to explain by considering the coffee cup the primary mediational mean?
He was trying to point out that the cofee is the “Mediational mean” by which all discourse and social actions are centred around.
Also he wanted to point out how the cup itself is an impressive semiotic complex where at least seven different discourses can be found:
1) The discourse of commercial branding
2) Legal discourse
3) E-commerce discourse
4) Consumer correctness discourse
5) Service information discourse
6) Manufacturing-information discourse
What are the central concepts in MDA?
1) Mediated Action
2) Site of engagement
3) Mediational means
4) Practice
5) Nexus of practice
What is Mediated Action?
The unit of analysis in MDA.
What is the site of engagement?
The social space where mediated action occurs.
What are Mediational Means?
The material means (e.g. the body, object, sound etc.) through which mediated action is carried out.
What is practice?
The way mediated action happens and that lets us interpret it.
What is the Nexus of Practice?
Discursive and non-discursive practices are interconnected to form nexus of practice. No idea what this is acc.
What is Geosemiotics?
A broad analysis of discourse, and therfore it not only applies to signs or other symbols, but also to signals and messages such as those sent off by our bodies and whose meaning depends greatly on where they are and wha they are doing “in place”.
What is the main assumption of Geosemiotics?
That a very important aspect of the meaning of all language is based on the material, concrete, physical placement of that language in the world.
