Seminar 3

Models of communication studies. Message. Message coding. Communication

channel. Feedback. Miscommunication
1. Comment on quantitative methods in communication research.
2. Comment on ethnomethodology as qualitative method of communication
research.
3. Comment on participant observation as qualitative method of
communication research.
4. Comment on post-modernist approach to communication studies (social,
cultural and psychological phenomena associated with postmodernism and its main
peculiarities).
5. What phenomena is this article from Marie Claire magazine based on?
http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/men/bachelor-pad-dating

6 Things You Can Learn from a Guy's Apartment by Rich Santos

Remember my friend who was trying to figure out if her hotel-renting guy had been a
jerk? When I suggested to her that he might be married, her defense was: "No, I've been to his
apartment. It's a total bachelor pad."
Looks can be deceiving, but it got me to wondering if there are certain nuances of a guy's
place that tip off that he's single. I wrote about my apartment's limitations when it comes to
making out with girls. As soon as you enter there are a number of unattractive things that scare a
woman off.
A bachelor pad doesn't necessarily scare women off. It simply contains clues that there is
no other woman in this guy's life. Even when a woman doesn't live with a guy, she shapes him
up and improves his domestic habits. Bachelors are at one end of a spectrum; at the other end of
that spectrum is my parent's house: everything is perfect, and my dad is out-ranked by my mom
in specific decisions regarding the beauty and functionality of the house.
I went through my apartment and picked out some elements that cried "bachelor":
have a good table at the TV for eating.
Towels Hold Many Clues
My mom keeps trying to give me tea towels, but they have
a way of disappearing into thin air. And I'll never hang
decorative towels in the bathroom - all towels in the
bathroom are for drying purposes. Towels that hang there
just to look pretty make no sense to me. None of the towels
in my bathroom match. I use one towel as a facial towel and
a rotation of bath towels to dry myself off after the shower.

No Dining
Room/Kitchen Table
The ultimate bachelor behavior
is eating in front of the TV:
breakfast, lunch and dinner. No
need for a sit down kitchen
table, but it is imperative that I
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I also don't care what's on the towel, considering one of them is green with frogs sitting on lily pads.
Also, in the bathroom, I never have more than one solitary towel hanging on that rack.
Awful DVD Collection
Take a look at a guy's DVD collection to gain some clues. A bachelor shamelessly displays horrible
movies, or at least random movies. Because there is no girl for a guy to watch movies with, or to
share the DVD shelf with, it will be a "male" collection of movies. If he's like me, quality of movie
is not a pre-requisite for making it on to the shelf.
Attempts At Decorative Art
When I'm walking in NYC I can tell the apartments of established people by the fact that they have
art with specific lighting trained on that art. Now, bachelor guys will try to put up art on the walls,
but there's not much rationale behind it. It does not match the surroundings, and the imagery is
random.
The Ultimate Lounging Center
Bachelors love their TV, so it's important that they have an amazing area to watch it. More attention
is paid to the couches and TV than the bathroom, kitchen, or non-TV sections of the bedroom. In
fact, it's a status symbol among bachelors to have a great lounge/TV area.
6. Analyse the following dialogue.
We sat in silence as if the people we had once been no longer existed. As if there was nothing
between us. And it wasnt true.
Hes my son too, she said.
Biologically, I said.
What else is there?
Are you kidding me? Look, Gina I think its great youre back.
Liar.
But I dont want him hurt.
How could he be hurt?
I dont know. New man. New job. New country. You tell me.
I didnt break up with our child.
I love that when people say that to me. Because its just not true. Plenty of people break up with
their children, Gina. Mostly, they are men. But not all of them.
Do you want to draw a diagram, Harry?
Hold on Ill get you a pen.
I lifted my hand for a waitress. Gina pushed it down. It was the first time we had touched in
years and years, and it was like getting an electric shock.
I broke up with you, Harry not him. I went off you not him. I stopped loving you not him.
Sorry to break this to you, Harry.
Ill get over it.
But I never stopped loving him. Even when I was busy. Preoccupied. Absent. She sipped at her
tea and looked at me. How is he?
Fine. Hes fine, Gina.
Hes so tall. And his face he has such a lovely face, Harry. He was always a beautiful kid,
wasnt he?
I smiled. It was true. (.)
Hes in the Lateral Thinking Club, I said, warming up to the theme, happy to talk about the
wonder of our son, and we both laughed about that.
Bright boy, she said. I dont even know what Lateral Thinking is thinking outside the box?
Training the mind to work better?
Something like that, I said. He can explain that better than me. I had finished my coffee. I
wanted to go home to my family. What do you want, Gina?
I want my son, she said. I want to know him. I want him to know me I have wasted so much
time. Thats why I want it now. Before its too late.

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 And I thought it would never be too late. There was a Gina-sized hole in Pats life, had been for
years, but I thought that it could never be too late to fill it. (.) Already my mind was turning to
practicalities of shipping Pat around town.
Where you living, Gina?
Ive got a two-bedroom flat on Old Compton Street, she said. Top floor. Nice light. She
looked out the window. Five minutes from here.
I was amused. Soho? I said. Thats an interesting choice. What you trying to do recapture
your youth?
Her mouth tightened at that.
I didnt have any youth, Harry, she said. I was married to you. [ Parsons, T. Men from Boys. L.:
Harper, 2011. P.32-33]

7. Brainstorm some cultural assumptions about identity that typical of your

culture. These could include assumptions and stereotypes about gender (for example,
the belief that girls do not understand mathematics), about age (for example, the
belief that those over the age of 50 do not enjoy wild parties), and about sexuality (for
example, the belief that women over the age of 30 are mothers). Then three issues of
a popular magazine and watch three episodes of a popular TV series. How are the
stereotypes and assumptions that you brainstormed represented in these texts? You
could extend this exercise by discussing the magazine articles and the shows with
people you know who are consumers of these media objects. Did they notice the
assumptions you noted? What was their reaction to them?
8. Identify the methods of analysis used in the article by David Crystal:
Mother-tongue India by David Crystal
Talk for Lingua Franca (ABC, Australia), January 2005
India currently has a special place in the English language record books as the country with the
largest English-speaking population in the world. Ten years ago that record was held by the United
States. Not any more.
The population of India passed a billion thats a thousand million a couple of years ago,
and is increasing at the rate of 3% per annum. In 1997 an India Today survey suggested that about a
third of the population had the ability to carry on a conversation in English. This was an amazing
increase over the estimates of the 1980s, when only about four or five per cent of population were
thought to use the language. And given the steady increase in English learning since 1997 in
schools and among the upwardly mobile, we must today be talking about at least 350 million.
Thats equal to the combined English-speaking populations of Britain, the USA, Australia and New
Zealand.
All of these speakers bar a lakh or so have learned English as a second language. A lakh,
by the way, is the Indian English word for a hundred thousand its spelled l, a, k, h. English has a
special regional status in India, and is an important unifying linguistic medium between the Indo-
European north and the Dravidian south. Special status means much more than having a place in the
public institutions of the country in parliament, the law courts, broadcasting, the press, and the
education system. It means that the language permeates daily life. You cant avoid it, especially in
the cities.
A couple of months ago, my wife and I returned from a two-week lecturing tour of India,
sponsored by the British Council. We visited Chennai (or Madras, as it used to be called), Delhi,
Kolkata (or Calcutta), Pune, and Mumbai (or Bombay), and we found ourselves surrounded by
English everywhere. The roads into city centres from the airports would pass through some very
poor areas, but even the smallest shops and stalls would have an English sign or poster nearby. Nor
were the slums exempt: on the corrugated walls of a straggling Mumbai complex was a series of ads
for vitrified tiles, all in English.
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 Outside the Red Fort in Delhi, a Hindi-speaking teacher was marshalling a class of 30 Hindi-
speaking teenagers, and giving them instructions about where to meet and when their bus would
leave all in English. Outside St Thomas Cathedral in Chennai we met a group of primary-school
Tamil children coming out of the local school. As soon as they saw us they waved excitedly we
were the only fair-skinned people to be seen and we received a chorus of hello, hi, how are
you? Fine thanks, how are you? we replied. Were fine too, they said. Seven-year-olds, we
marveled, on a confident career-track towards English.
Towards Indian English, of course. India has had a longer exposure to English than any other
country which uses it as a second language, and its distinctive words, idioms, grammar, rhetoric and
rhythms are numerous and pervasive. By the way, dont confuse Indian English with what is
sometimes called Hinglish a vague phrase which can refer to a use of English containing
occasional Hindi words or to a much more fundamental code-mixing of the two languages,
unintelligible to a monolingual English speaker, and heard daily on FM radio. Indian English is a
much broader notion, applicable to the whole of India, including those regions where other
languages are used. There we find Punglish (mixing with Punjabi), Tamlish (mixing with Tamil),
and much more.
Collections of Indian English vocabulary have been around for over a century. A large book
known as Hobson-Jobson was the first, published in 1886. It is largely of historical interest now,
and there have been attempts to supercede it, such as Hanklin-Janklin (a book compiled by Nigel
Hanklin, and published last year). But no dictionary has yet catalogued the extraordinary stylistic
range and regional diversity of Indian English. Just as Australian and New Zealand English have
developed in their own directions, so it is with Indian English. We encountered hundreds of
distinctive usages on our travels, such as pre-owned cars (meaning used cars). Phone numbers for
calling friends and family are called near and dear numbers. Something thats free of charge is said
to be free of cost. A work surface in a kitchen is called a kitchen platform. Words are also broken in
different ways. In New Delhi the signs warn of an approaching ROUND ABOUT the two words
are separated by a space. Above a store we read SUPER MARKET. A housing ad offers PENT
HOUSES. Outside the University in Mumbai is the greeting WEL-COME, with the two elements
separated by a hyphen. A roadside warning reads LAND SLIDE PRONE AREA. Another says
OVER-SIZE VEHICLES KEEP LEFT. I was continually being surprised by distinctive uses of
space and hyphens.
It is far more than just vocabulary, as we saw on the 132-km of road between Pune and
Mumbai. Listen to these examples. Theyre all signs we saw on the roadside. Theres nothing like
them in British English or in Australian or New Zealand English either.
OVERSPEEDING AND TYRE BURSTING CAUSE ACCIDENTS
DO NOT CRISSCROSS ON EXPRESSWAY Id only ever encountered crisscross in
informal usage before
DO NOT LITTER ON YOUR EXPRESSWAY
SPEED BREAKER AHEAD referring to road bumps
LANDSCAPING AND BEAUTIFICATION
ROAD IN CURVE AHEAD in curve
PARKING INSIDE THE LAWN IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED dont park on the grass.
And then there was this one, which we saw approaching an expressway:
NO 2-/3-WHEELERS. 2-wheelers is the generic term for motorbikes and scooters; 3-
wheelers is the everyday description of auto-rickshaws.
The historical background of India is never far away from everyday usage. What do you
think youre doing? Cutting grass? says a boss to a worker lazing about. How can cutting grass be
equivalent to doing nothing? Because grass-cutting was done by servants. But this history also
promotes correspondences. In particular, there is a remarkable sharing of linguistic humour between
India and other parts of the British-influenced English-speaking world. In particular, theres a
common delight in word-play. A review headline about a critical book on Jane Austen begins:
Austensibly, its about Jane, with the o of ostensibly spelled Au. Be Ecofriendly says a sign
in Delhi but it spells the second word Ecofriendelhi.
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 Indian English is changing. Regional dialects are increasingly apparent an inevitable
consequence of a result of this countrys cultural and linguistic diversity. There are noticeable
differences of accent and dialect, especially between north and south, and regional jokes are
common you know the sort of thing there was this man from Kerala, or some other rural
region distant from the joke-tellers location. On the ad billboards, and in Bollywood film posters,
there are now Hindi slogans written in the Roman alphabet. You can see change in the newspapers
too in the matrimonial columns, for instance, where families advertise for desirable brides or
grooms. A generation ago these were full of such terms as wheatish, describing a type of
complexion. Today, these have largely gone, and we find such criteria as professionally qualified
instead a linguistic reflection of an important social change.
Three generations on after independence, Indian English is still having trouble distancing
itself from the weight of its British English past. Many people still think of Indian English as
inferior, and see British English as the only proper English. It is an impression still fostered by the
language examining boards which dominate teachers mindsets. At the same time, a fresh
confidence is plainly emerging among young people, and it is only a matter of time before attitudes
change. Its a familiar scenario, for everyone living in Australia and New Zealand.
It could hardly be otherwise when we consider the way Indian writing is increasingly
reflecting indigenous varieties. Gone are the days when everyone in a novel, from sahib to servant,
spoke standard British English. The same linguistic diversity is apparent in the films over a
thousand each year produced by Bollywood and the other growing film studios. Theres the less
well-known Kollywood in Chennai beginning with a K, which stands for the suburb of
Kodambakkamin where the studios are located. And theres Tollywood in Andhra Pradesh the TY
stands for Telugu. If I had to choose a single instance of this newfound confidence in films, I would
cite the cheekily titled Bride and Prejudice.
What status will this rapidly growing English dialect have in the eyes of the rest of the world?
Linguistic status is always a reflection of power political, technological, economic, cultural,
religious - so this is really a question relating to the future of India as a world player. If I were a
betting man, I would place quite large sum on India as an eventual cyber-technological super-
power. The amount of daily text-messaging (or SMS) exceeds the amount taking place in the UK,
USA, Australia, and New Zealand. The call-centre phenomenon has stimulated a huge expansion of
Internet-related activity. When I call up British train enquiries about how to get from Holyhead,
where I live, to, say, Manchester, I speak to someone in Hyderabad. The IT press is always
speculating about where future Googles will come from. One day I feel sure it will be India.
India has a unique position in the English-speaking world. I see it as linguistic bridge between
the major first-language dialects of the world, such as British and American English, and the major
foreign-language varieties, such as those emerging in China and Japan. China is the closest
competitor for the English-speaking record. Currently with some 220 million speakers of English, it
plans to increase this total dramatically as the Olympics approaches. But China does not have the
pervasive English linguistic environment encountered in India; nor does it have the strength of
linguistic tradition which provides multiple continuities with the rest of the English-speaking world.
When Indian operators answer my call about train times between Holyhead and Manchester, they
are far more likely to be aware of where you are travelling than would any equivalent operators in
China. Apart from anything else, they probably have relatives in Britain.
And it is the Indian presence in Britain which marks the other end of this linguistic continuity.
British people are familiar with (British dialects of) Indian English as a result of several generations
of immigration. When The Kumars at Number 42 became successful, I heard local English kids
using its catch-phrases and copying its speech rhythms, just as they did when Crocodile Dundee
made them play with Australian English. There are parallels in the literary world. Suhayl Saadis
new novel, Psychoraag, is an amazing mixture of South Asian English (Urdu, in this case), Standard
English, and Glaswegian. We aint seen nothin yet.
And India is special in one other respect. Alongside the spread of English there is a powerful
concern for the maintenance of indigenous languages. I repeatedly heard young students express the
need for a balance between an outward-looking language of empowerment and an inward-looking
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language of identity. CHOOSE YOUR LANGUAGE FOR YOUR POWER BILL, says one of the
Mumbai billboards, offering Marathi, Hindi, Gujarathi, and English. Many of the smaller tribal
languages are seriously endangered, there is no denying it, but there is an enviable awareness of the
problem which is lacking in many Western countries. India, it seems, can teach the rest of the world
some lessons not only about multidialectism but about multilingualism too.
9. Find an article in an academic journal that presents quantitative research.
Notice how facts and figures are used in combination with reasonings and
interpretation in the writing of the article. How would the research findings be
different if the writers had not used a quantitative method? Could the writers have
used a qualitative method, or was only a quantitative approach suitable for this
research topic? You may want to do this exercise in a small group and then describe
your conclusions to the class.