Week 13

In week 13, we studied the Muted Group Theory. Kramarae stated in Griffin (2009, p.454) that language is constructed by man. What women's says and what they think, have been ignored in the society. When women tried to overthrow this state of being unequal, the male control over communication puts them at a great disadvantage. The reason why women has been considered as a muted group because the language that has been made by man "aids in defining, depreciating and excluding women." (Griffin, 2009, p.454).

According to Griffin (2009, p.455), Edwin Ardener gave the idea that women is a muted group, where he stated that "many ethnographers to claim to have "cracked the code" of a culture without ever making any direct reference to the half of society made up of women." Muted Group is defined as "people with little power who have trouble giving voice to their perceptions because they must re-encode their thoughts to make them understood by the public; e.g. women." (Griffin, 2009, p.455). The reason for mutedness is due to the lack of power that surrounds group of  people with low social status. In Griffin (2009, p.455), Ardener said that "muted structures are 'there' but cannot be 'realize' in the language of dominant structure." So they're neglected. suppress and unseen, in short, they are merely black hole to others universe. 

The main issue is that whether people could say what they want when or where? Or they should adjust their thoughts so that they could be understood by the public? Kramarae's extended Adeners first concept to why women are muted and how to free them. Kramarae argue in Griffin (2009, p.455) that "the ever-prevalent public-private distinction in language is a convenient way to exagerrate gender difference and pose separate sexual spheres of activity." 

Women sees the world in a different way than men. This is due to the different in experience and activities. Because of men political dominance, the system how men sees the world is dominant also thus blocking on how women sees the world. Again, because of this, there's a lot of offensive, gender-specific terms that refers to women, even the sexual active women. 

In Griffin (2009, p.457) even thought the public mode of expression has a lot of vocabulary to describe the feminine experience, but they would still be muted if their mode of expression is still being ignored. Even the cultural establishment exclude women media entertainment virtually from the society mass media. "Kramarae sees traditional mainstream communication as malestream expression." (Griffin, 2009, p.457). Women aren't even give their rightful place in history. 

Griffin (2009, p.459) stated that "in order to participate in society women must transform their own models in terms of the received male system of expression." The process of translation requires a steady effort and leaves the women wondering whether she had done it right or not.

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In Griffin (2009, p.460-461), Kramarae stated "females are likely to find ways to express themselves outside the dominant public modes of expression used by males in both their verbal conventions and their nonverbal behavior." She labels this 'ways' as the female 'sub-version' that runs without the male beliefs. The men have more difficulty in understanding what the other gender means than female, this due the lack of effort. Also, the reason why men don't listen to women because it would be a resignation of their privileged position. The main aim of this theory is too change the man-made linguistic system that abuses the women, but this include in challenging the sexist dictionary. Sexual harassment is a popular term that represents a grand victory to the feminist communication scholars. 

I am going to use the "House Bunny" movie. Where even among those multiple group of sorority, there's one sorority that is considered as Muted. This sorority house is called the "Zeta Alpha Zeta". The reason on why they are muted because they are socially awkward. There sorority was going to be shut down unless they have 30 pledges. Shelley (played by Anna Faris) decided to help the sorority out by changing them. This means that they have "translate" themselves so that they could be accepted so they would receive this pledges. During the day of taking the pledges, they decided to change themselves again, this time, their personality is half themselves and half-shelley. Below is the video where they had to change themselves 

References

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.

week 12

Genderlect Theory is a theory of cross cultural communication between men and women. In Griffin (2009, p.430) is " a term suggesting that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects." The attempt to understand the different styles of communication between men and women helps to enhance better working relationship and lessen misunderstanding and conflicts. In Griffin (2009, p.429), Tannen noted that if we don't acknowledge the different conversational styles could get us into big trouble.

Tannen said in Griffin (2009, p.432) that when communicating, women seeks human connection while men are mainly concerned with status, but not all women seek human connection and not all men concern status. In Malone (1997, p.80) stated that "boy's socialization experiences lead to a sense of separation and a striving for action and achievement in order to differentiate themselves from those around them, while girl's socialization experiences lead to a sense of continuity, first with mothers, then with best friends in small, exclusive dyads, resulting in what Gilligan terms a morality of responsibility which stresses sensitivity to others and worry over inflicting hurt."

The women prefers rapport talk, while the men prefers report talk. According to Griffin (2009, p.432), rapport talk is "the typical conversational style of women, which seeks to establish connection with others." So when women communicate with others, they are trying to connect. While report talk is "the typical monologic styles of men, which seeks to command attention, convey information and win arguements." (Griffin, 2009, p.432).

Private speaking versus public speaking, where women talk a lot during a private conversation than men. In public speaking, the men compete to be dominant and they speak a lot in public than women. Men speak at a typical lecture style to set up a one-up position. When telling stories, men tells more stories then women and this stories tend to be jokes. According to Griffin (2009, p.433), by telling jokes it represents a manly way to negotiate status. If not telling jokes, men tend to tell stories where they are the heroes, while women tell stories that involves with others. Also, when women tell their stories, they tend to describe themselves as someone who is clumsy instead of somebody a well mannered person.

When listening, the women will show that she is listening either verbally, for example the word "yeah", or body language, for example by nodding the head. While men don't do this because it is to avoid from being seen as "one-down". Women tends to interrupt a conversation to show that she support with what the speaker is saying. This is known as "cooperative overlap". Men sees interruption as a "power move to take control of the conversation." (Griffin, 2009, p.434). Women also asked most of the question in a conversation. The reason is that women wants to "establish a connection with others." (Griffin, 2009, p.434). Women also add tag question when giving an opinion. Griffin (2009, p.434) define tag question as "a short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften the sting of potential disagreement." The reason why men don't ask question is that its exposes their ignorance.Conflicts, men usually starts it and they are comfortable with it. Women avoid conflict because to women, its a threat to connection.

For Genderlect, I'm going to use Shrek as an example when Shrek met Fiona's parents. When Fiona burp she apologize to avoid conflict, then Shrek decided to tell a joke to show masculinity but it failed. When Donkey entered the room, the king asked him to get down, and again Fiona explained the situation to avoid conflict. Shrek didn't even asked question when he was drinking that "so-called" soup and compliment it. Again both Fiona and the Queen tried their best to avoid conflict but when Donkey said "the swamp", the conflict starts. Which shows that men really starts the conflict. The conflict continues between Shrek and the King when the topic about the baby started to rise up. Both the ladies, Fiona and the Queen, tried their best to end the conflict but failed.

Reference:

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.


Malone, M. J. (1997).Words of talk:  The presentation of Self in Everyday Conversation. USA: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 

Week 11

In week 11, we studied about uncertainty reduction theory, which is a theory of interpersonal communication relationship development. According to Griffin (2009, p.125), "Berger notes that "the beginnings of personal relationships are fraught with uncertainties." What Berger trying to say is that, when we meet with someone for the first time, our main objective is to reduce the uncertainty or the doubt we have on that person. Trenholm and Jensen (1991, p.156) stated that "the more uncertainty we experience, the less we can predict events." Griffin (2009, p.125) also stated that this theory focuses on how the social interaction is used to increase the knowledge and to generate an understanding.

There is three condition that increases our wants or drive to reduce the uncertainty; "anticipation of future interaction" (Griffin, 2009, p.125), "incentive value" (Griffin, 2009, p.125) and "deviance" (Griffin, 2009, p.125).  Anticipation of future interaction is when you know that you are going to meet that person again. Incentive value is actually the benefit of having him or her as a friend. Deviance, which Napier and Gershenfeld (1993, p.155) define it as, "an act that violates a shared idea about what should or should not be done at a particular time."

In Griffin (2009, p.126), Berger stated that there is two types of uncertainty; behavioral questions and cognitive questions. Behavioral questions refers to how an individual should act or behave during certain situation when meeting someone new. Cognitive questions refers to how the person is as an individual, whether the person is shy or short-tempered or fussy.

In this uncertainty reduction theory, there is the axiomatic theory. The axiomatic theory is the certainty of uncertainty, by which a person has to go through a series of axioms to explain the relationship between uncertainty and the eight key variables. Axioms are what we see as truth without proving it. According to Grifffin (2009, p.126) are "verbal communication, nonverbal warmth, information seeking, self-disclosure, reciprocity, similarity, liking and shared networks."

The first axiom is verbal communication, if the verbal communication between people who just met increases, the uncertainty decreases. Griffin (2009, p.126) said that "as words begin to flow, you'll discover things about each other that make you feel more confident in each other's presence."

The second axiom is nonverbal warmth. Nonverbal means the body language, for example eye contact, body posture and so on. When there is an increase of nonverbal expressiveness, the uncertainty decreases. So when that person is already comfortable with the person, the body language will change from a stiff and awkward body posture to a more relaxing and less stressful  body posture.

Information seek is the next axiom, where the more information you seek about a person, the more the uncertainty you have on the person. Its the matter of trusting that person, the more you trust that person, there will be less question asked and hence less doubt about that person. There's three different strategies when seeking information; passive strategy, active strategy and interactive strategy.

Passive strategy is when the person is seeking information about the person just by observing him/her. Active strategy is seeking information of the other person via the third person, since the third person is a mutual friend so he/she must have info about the other person. Interactive strategy is seeking information via face-to-face directly with the other person.

The fourth axiom is self disclosure, where the more a person self disclose to the person he or she just met, the uncertainty level will lessen. The more intimate a person get with another person the doubtful feeling he or she have towards him or her will slowly fade. The fifth axiom is reciproctity, where according to Griffin (2009, p.127), when "high levels of uncertainty produce high rates of reciproctiy. Low levels of uncertainty produce low levels of reciprocity."

The sixth axiom is similarity. Where the more common thing they have, the uncertainty will reduce and the less common thing they have, the uncertainty will increase. The second last axiom is liking, the more a person like another person, the less the uncertainty there is. The last axiom is shared networks in which Griffin (2009, p.128) said that "shared communication networks reduce uncertainty, while lack of shared networks increases uncertainty."

Then there's theorems, where it is the logical force of uncertainty axioms. Griffin (2009, p.128) define theorem as "a proposition that logically and necessarily follows from two axioms." This theorems are created by pairing the axioms. To deal with uncertain responses, a message plan has been developed. Message plan is "mental representations of action sequences that may be used to achieve goals." (Griffin, 2009, p.129). In others words, we think before we talk. There is three strategy in message plan; seeking information, plan complexity and hedging. Seeking information has been explained above. Plan complexity is "a characteristic of a message plan based on the level of detail it provides and the number of contingencies it covers." (Griffin, 2009, p.131). Hedging is the "use of strategic ambiguity and humor to provide a way for both parties to save face when a message fails to achieve its goal."

There's another one strategy which is hierarchy hypothesis. Griffin (2009, p.131) define it as "the prediction that when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to alter lower-level elements of their message." When a person don't understand what you say, we switch our modes of talk so that they understand, like talking slowly or explaining what you just said even further.

Another theory also created by this theory which is the Anxiety Uncertainty Management theory, which is an intercultural theory. Where this theory states that the more uncertainty and anxiety will lead to misunderstanding between strangers who don't communicate well. The aim of Anxiety Uncertainty Management theory is the effective communication not how close you get to that person. Effective communication is "the extend to which a person interpreting a message does so in a way that's relatively similar to what was intended; minimizing misunderstanding. " (Griffin, 2009, p.132).

For this theory I'm going to use the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith as an example. The movie showed how Mr. Smith, played by Brad Pitt, and Mrs. Smith, played by Angelina Jollie, met. They met at a foreign country, where Mrs. Smith came into the hotel and stared at Mr. Smith for a few minutes or so. This shows axiom 2, non-verbal warmth It also showed axiom 3, information seeking, by using the passive strategy. Mr. Smith brought Mrs. Smith inside the room and they started to communicate with each other, where axiom 1, verbal communication can be seen. Later after that event, they hung out at a bar and raise a glass of alcohol to dodging bullets. This show that they have self disclose each other and they also had similarities. They started dancing together later in the movie which shows non-verbal warmth and before they dance, Mrs. Smith asked whether Mr. Smith could dance, which shows seeking information and using the interactive strategy. When they started kissing shows that axiom 7, liking, to a level called love.


References:

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.


Trenholm, S. and Jensen, A. (1991). Interpersonal Communication (2nd Ed.). California: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

week 10

This week we learned about the communication accommodation theory, which is a socio-psychological tradition. According to Griffin (2009, p.388) that accommodation is the "constant movement and toward or away from others by changing your communicative behaviour." Its a theory of intercultural communication that actually attends to communication.

Communication accommodation theory is when two people of different ethnic or cultural groups interact, they tend to accommodate each other in the way they speak in order to gain the others approval. This theory analyzes how a persons social interaction converges and diverges according to their forms or styles of speech. Under certain cases, speakers are driven to change their speech style in order to fulfill identity expectations. During intercultural interactions, people who see themselves as unique individuals, will change their speech style and content to mesh with others whose approval they seek. People who want to strengthen a strong group identification will interact with those outside the group in a way that focus attention on their difference.

There's two strategic forms of communication used to interact with diverse others, which is convergence and divergence. Griffin (2009, p.389) defined convergence as the "strategy of adapting your communication behavior in such a way as to become more similar to another person." It's where a person adapts there way of communicating to others by being more similar to them. Another way of converging, when communicating a person with a huge generation gap is by discourse management. Discourse management is the sensitive selection of topics to discuss. Convergence includes meeting the emotional needs of another and it is seen as expressing a desire for social integration. 

Then there's divergence, in which Griffin (2009, p.389) defined as " a communication strategy of accentuating the differences between yourself and another person." Divergence main aim is to promote the social distance. There's three types of divergence; Counter-accommodation, over-accommodation and under-accommodation. Counter-accommodation is the direct way of maximizing the difference between two speakers. Over-accommodation is "demeaning or patronizing talk; excessive concern paid tp vocal clarity or amplitude, message simplification or repetition." (Griffin, 2009, p.391). Lastly, Under-accommodation, also know as maintenance,  is where a person "sticks" to his or her original communication style, ignoring the other person communication style. 

There's different motivation for convergence and divergence. The main motivation of convergence is the desire for approval. Before the motivation of divergence is explained, the social identity theory has to be explained first. According to Trenholm and Jensen (1991, p.115), "when we conform to standard roles and rules, we are taking on a social identity defined by and borrowed from society." In other words we communicate not as an individuals but as representative of groups that define us. Divergences occurs as the result of when the communicator need for individuality. 

Initial orientation is the willingness of a person to focus on either their individual identity or group identity. There's five factor that impact on the understanding of a conversation as an intergroup encounter. First is the collective cultural context, where its the difference between collectivistic and individualistic culture. Then we have the distressing history of interaction.If the previous interactions was negative, both interactant will blame each other for the cause of negative interactions. If it were positive, they'll ascribe the results to themselves instead of others.

Next we have stereotyping, if one of the people has a bad image in a group, a divergent type of communication strategy to this person with bad image. Fourth is Norms or expectations for treatment, where        Griffin (2009, p.393) define norm as the "expectations about behavior that members of a community feel should (or should not)  occur in a particular situations." In other words, what a member of a group expects from a member from another group affects whether he/she should be seen as an individual or as one of "them". Finally is high group solidarity and high group dependance.

For this theory, I am going to use when Tarzan met Jane as an example. Tarzan is a man of the jungle and Janes is a women from the city, they come from different cultures. When Tarzan met Jane, Tarzan spoke in a way so that Jane could understand him. This is what you called convergence. When Jane speaks, Tarzan started to copy her. This shows that Tarzan is trying to adapt to Janes communication style, even though Tarzan is copying everything that Jane said.





Reference:

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.


Trenholm, S. and Jensen, A. (1991). Interpersonal Communication (2nd Ed.). California: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

week 9

For week nine, we studied about symbolic interactionism. According Priest (1996, p.56) is the a subdiscipline where our sense of identifying comes from what we think of others thinks of us and what they expect us to be. It means that our identity comes from by what people think of us and what they want us to be. Humans are differentiated from animals by the extensive ability that we have to use symbols in communication. 


In this theory, we have another theory called "the looking glass" theory. In Griffin, (2009, p.63), “According to Mead, the self is an ongoing process combining the “I” and the “Me”.” The "I" is defined through pre-reflective action. "I" is an evolutionary process that works through memory. "Me" is the self with an identity. A self can only be describe through social interaction and language. The "Me" is able to create multiple-selves. Argyle (1973, p.356), stated that the “I” is the “concioius subjectand active agent in behavior, that takes decision” and the “Me” is our reaction to others by being a specific person (Argyle, 1973, p.356). In other words the "I” is the person true form, what he/she is really like, while the “Me” is the false identity of the person, where the person is being someone else to fit in with others.


The symbolic interactionism sees society as being made up of people that takes roles to form cooperative social action. According to Griffin (2009, p.65), with continuous symbolic interaction the "me" is able to formed. The "generalized other" are the commonsensical meanings generated by a culture. Griffin (2009, p.65) defined the "generalized other" as "organized set of information that the individual carries in his or her head about what the general expectation and the attitudes of the social group are." 


Criticism with Symbolic Interactionism is that its non-empirical. What is meant as empirical is the scientific methodologies: quantitative, classifactory, testable hypothesis and variables, and systematic. This theory is also criticized for overestimating the power of an individual. There's lack of methodology to show how an individual actually define or perceive meaning of symbols and language.  


For this theory, I'm going to use the movie "Mulan" as an example. In the beginning of the movie, we see that her family expects her to be a lady and nothing else. When she started to sing a song called "reflection", where the society sees her "I", but all 
she wants to be is "Me". Below are two different videos of the song "reflection" from Mulan. The first video is the cut scene from Mulan and the second video is the music video of "reflection" by Christina Aguilera. 

Reference:


 Argyle, M. (1973). Social Interaction. London: Tavistock Publication Ltd.

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.). Glencoe, IL: McGraw Hill.

Priest, S. H. (1996). Doing Media Research: An Introduction. California: SAGE publications.

week 8

This week we learned another theory from the socio-psychological tradition, which is the Social Penetration Theory. According to Griffin (2009, p.114), social penetration is "the process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-disclosure and other forms of vulnerability." In other words, for a person to get close with another person by slowly self-disclose to this other person. They will get close slowly as they slowly exchange story about themselves. Social penetration theory suggest that as the relationship develops, the communication level will move from a less personal level like introducing your name or your age to a more deep personal level like the story of the past or sharing secrets.

In Griffin (2009, p.114), a comparison was made by Altman and Taylor between people and onion. What is being compared is not literally the people, but the personality structure of the people, which Griffin (2009, p.114) state that they are "onion-like layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others, and the world; deeper layers are more vulnerable, protected, and central to self-image."

The deep personal level in a relationship could be reached if a person self-disclose him/herself. According to Griffin (2009, p.114), self disclosure is "the voluntary sharing of personal history, preferences, attitudes, feelings, values, secrets, etc., with another person; transparency", and also Jourard (1964, as cited in Fisher and Adams, 1994) defined self-disclosure as "the act of making yourself manifest, showing yourself so others can perceive you." In self-disclosure, there is the depth of self-disclosure and breadth of self-disclosure. The depth of self-disclosure is the degree of self-disclosure in a specific area of an individual's life. While the breadth of self-disclosure is the range of areas in an individual's life over which disclosure takes place.

Then there's depth of penetration, where according to Griffin (2009, p.115) is the "degree of intimacy".. In the early level of penetration is that the external part of the "onion" is exchanged more often and sooner than the deeper part of the onion. What it means that the less private information, like your name and age, is exchanged quickly than the more private information, like your past or your problem.

Also in this early level of penetration, the self disclosure is reciprocal. It means that when one persons open him/herself, the other will also open him/herself. This is called "law of reciprocity". The speed of penetration is very fast at the start but it quickly slows down as the more deeper and private part has been reached. If penetration is done too fast, the more risk too vulnerability and its not normal to society for a person tells too many too fast.

Then there's depenetration, where slowly the layer-by-layer of "onion" are withdrawn. What it means that a relationship will end in a slowly way, where the person step-by-step close him/herself. It will go back to the talking of the less private matters instead of the more private matter.

As relationship grew, the person will penetrate to a deeper and personal matters, due to this, it will make the person more vulnerable and thus trust has to be develop as the relationship grew. Penetration goes through multiple stages.

First is the orientation stage, where the conversation is small and simple, information that are normal and appropriate. The next stage is the exploratory affective stage, this the stage of casual friendship. In this stage, we start to reveal ourselves, expressing personal views on common topics like the government or education.

The third stage is the affective stage, where the deeper part of the "onion" has been revealed. The personal and more private matters will be told. Criticism and Arguments might occur in this stage, but intimacy might occur also.

After the affective stage is the stable stage. The stable stage is where the relationship reaches at a constant level stage. Here, the private and personal story are frequently shared and each could predict the emotion of the other person. When the stable stage goes unstable, depenetration will occur. The relationship will start to break down and this will lead into the end of the relationship.

Griffin (2009, p.116) stated that social penetration depends on the cost-benefit analysis, where if the benefits of the relationship outweigh the cost of greater vulnerability, the social penetration will continue on. In social penetration theory, there's the social exchange theory, which Griffin (2009, p.116) defined it as the "relationship behavior and status regulated by both parties evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interaction with each other."

The social exchange theory assume that people can accurately check their benefits of what they done and make logical choices based on their prediction. In other word, this theory is saying that people are like accountants. The outcome, where the reward is subtracted with the cost of personal interaction, meaning people predict the outcome of the interaction before it occurs.

The outcome is compared with the comparison level, which Griffin (2009, p.118) said that its "a standard for relational satisfaction." Meaning to say the outcome on how the participant feel from the interaction. Then there's the comparison level of alternative, in which Griffin (2009, p.119) define it as the "standard for relationship stability." It is the alternative outcome outside from the current relationship that you are facing. This explain why people stay in abusive relationship because, because sometimes there's no alternative outcome.

For this theory, I am using the movie that has been release in Brunei last week, which is The Vow. Below is the trailer of the movie which shows the Social Penetration goes from the orientation stage to the stable stage, which is the man and the woman gets married. Then, it went through depenetration due to the accident, cause she got amnesia and the man tries his best trying to restart the relationship back to the orientation stage.





Reference

Jourard, S. (1964). The Transparent Self. In Fisher, B. A. and Adams, K. L. (1994) . Interpersonal Communication; Pragmatics of Human Relationships (2nd Ed.).

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th Ed). Glencoe, IL: McGrawhill.

Week 7

Griffin (2009, p.334) defined cultural studies as "A neo-Marxist critique that sets forth the position that mass media manufacture consent for dominant ideologies." While Priest (1996, p.240) defined cultural studies as a "branch out communication scholarship that looks at the mass media as products of a particular cultural tradition with a certain set of ideological beliefs. The cultural studies approach originated in Great Britain." In my point of view, its the study of what people do in their daily life, how one persons idea becomes a standard definition to other and also, on the cultural differences in the society.

Before we go more further with cultural studies, we also have to understand the definition of visual culture. Visual culture is "the shared practice of a group, community, or society through which meanings are made out of the visual, aural and textual world of representation and the ways that looking practices are engaged in symbolic and communicative activities." (Sturken and Cartwright, 2009, p.3). In this post I will use the famous Television Series called "Glee" as an example.

The key terms in cultural studies is representation, discourse, ideology and politics. According to Lacey (1998, p.131), representation is "the conventions which are used to represent the world to the audience." The conventions used are also called as referent. Representation involves with interpretation. For example; "Glee" represents how life of a high school student, the challenges of being an American student, the rankings in high school like the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds and so on, and also the life of an American teen.

Discourse is also known as cultural frameworks or as Griffin (2009, 337) stated that discourse is "frameworks of interpretation". According Fairclough (1999, p.310), "discourse is the language used in representation a given social practice from a particular point of view." In other words, whenever there's a representation, there's always a discourse. The discourse of glee is the "L" symbol on the forehead or just plain doing the "L" symbol.

According to Griffin (2009, p.335), Ideology is "frameworks through which we interpret, understand, and make sense of social existence." In other words Ideology is commonsense. Where there's ideology, there's discourse. The ideology of Glee is that American High School Teens has to follow the two divisions of class which is popular kids and non popular kids. There's no mean of equality of there high school society, however, when they socialize with each other the popular will automatically become unpopular also known as the "underdogs".

The major problem of ideology in a discourse is that they don't represent the whole truth. Counter discourse and counter ideology is the part of the ideology and discourse which people don't want to hear or see.

Stuart Hall defined politics as "struggle over meaning". The politics in Glee is that they're trying their best to promote equality of high school stereotype and they also focus on the gay and lesbian controversy in America whereas they still struggle the equality of acceptance. In conclusion, certain cultures follow the stereotype ideology of social norm.

External Reference

Fairclough, N. (1999). Critical Analysis of Media Discourse. In Marris, P. and Thonham, S. (1999). Media Studies; A Reader (2nd Ed.).

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th Ed). Glencoe, IL: McGrawhill.

Lacey, N. (1998). Image and Representation; Key Concepts in Media Studies. MacMillan Press Ltd: New York.

Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. ( 2009). Practice of Looking