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