Understanding Key Terms 3

    No matter if we are aware of it or not, there isn't a single thing around us that doesn't carry meaning. Media is no exception to this, it certainly does send a particular message. What that message is depends on media, we are only here to receive it. Messages and meaning can never be objective and neutral and this stems form the fact that all media products are rhetorical. 

    As Aristotle defined it, rhetoric is “an ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion.” In simplified terms, we can just define it as the use of symbols by humans to influence and move other humans. Even though these symbols and signs individually are key to a meaning in a message, they never really stand alone but are rather combined with other signs and symbols to create media products or texts. Though the organizational pattern of signs that can exist in a text is potentially infinite, there are some general rhetorical structures that are shared by many.

    One prominent rhetorical structure in texts is form. Form can be defined as the creation and satisfaction of desire. For example, in a TV crime show we see a dead body at the beginning of the episode and gradually we get clues as to who the killer might be or is. This heightens our desire to know and find out who it is at the end if the episode. I would be pretty disappointed if in the end they don't catch the killer and this would also be known as bad form since my desire for catching the killer would go unsatisfied. 

    Another rhetorical structure is genre. Genre are defined as combinations of messages that share discernible stylistic (syntactic), substantive (semantic), and situational (pragmatic) characteristics. We can also see genres as modes of social action; they are patterned responses to situations that audiences perceive as somehow similar or comparable. For example - horror movies are scary (or at least we expect them to be), we expect a few jump scares, we expect to see at least a little bit of blood, etc...

    

    How individual members of the culture see the world is heavily influenced by ideology. The way we unconsciously define the world around us, the explanations about the world that we take for granted, and the unquestioned beliefs that we hold are all the result of our cultural ideologies. 

One of the ways that ideology structures our social world is through interpellation. We can see the process of interpellation clearer through an example - when does one person start to identify as "straight"? Even before a person consciously starts to think about this and whether they are or not, they are already ascribed as straight since that is the norm and it is considered the "default". 

    A number of theories explain how certain ideologies within a culture become widespread, common, or dominant. There are three that are interrelated: Roland Barthes’ myth, Pierre Bourdieu’s doxa, and Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony. According to Bourdieu, doxa represents knowledge “which is beyond question and which each agent tacitly accords by the mere fact of acting in accord with social convention.” Doxa can simply be seen as "common sense". In my opinion, it just sounds like internalized norms that were made to not be questioned or criticized. 

    An ideology of class helps explain the presence of these messages in American media. We have the famous American Dream, which is essentially a construct in which the person's amount of effort or drive that he puts in attaining his goal is directly related to his level of success. Simplified - the more hard work you put in, the more money and success will you have. I don't see this as possible or even true, maybe some individuals can make it, but fooling ourselves that we can ALL be successful and rich if we just work hard enough is an illusion.