Language and Media Dictionary of Key Terms (April 2016) Martin Montgomery

modes of address media n. the ways in which texts establish their relationship to their audience. Texts generally imply a position from which they are most intelligible and this is constructed and made manifest through the text’s habitual modes of address, which may be direct or indirect. For a multi-modal text this may be done through visual techniques as well as verbal devices. mmo

multi-actuality media n. ****

multi-accentuality media n the potential for the meaning of a word, or more generally a sign, to vary according to social context, especially as a result of contending social forces or interests. mmo

myth media n. in anthropology, a traditional story designed to explain the origins of things, usually featuring supernatural or fantastical characters and sacred elements. Myths may play a role in ritual, carry important truths and ideals from one generation to another, and are usually endorsed by leading figures of a society. The term is used in a more technical sense by leading structuralists such as the French anthropologist, Claude Levi Strauss (1908-2009) and the semiotician Roland Barthes (1915-1980). For Levi Strauss, myths express fundamental laws of human thought and are constructed around underlying oppositions, alongside other elements that reconcile them. In this way they resolve important paradoxes of the human condition. The basic mechanisms of myth are universal so that, underlying their apparent diversity, a few highly abstract structures may be discerned. Levi-Strauss’s examples came from oral cultures. Roland Barthes applied his basic insights to elements of popular culture such as the output of the film, entertainment and fashion industries. Indeed, the narratives of popular culture are seen by some scholars as a continuation of myth. mmo

narration media n. techniques for telling a story that may involve variously the use of temporal dislocation, such as presenting events out of their chronological sequence through flashbacks or flashforwards, variations in point of view, and the use of different kinds of narrator, reliable versus unreliable, telling rather than showing. mmo

narrative media n. sequence of a least two events, involving human or anthropomorphic actors, told as a story. The simplest narratives express some kind of consequential or logically-connected relationship, such as ‘complication-resolution’ or ‘puzzle-solution’, between its core events. Core events are termed narrative kernels and are crucial to the advancement of the story, providing nodes or hinge points in its development. Narratives may also contain minor or subsidiary events, termed narrative satellites, that fill out the spaces between kernels, containing information about scene or character, without playing a crucial role in advancing the story. Without kernels there would be no story. Most scholars also make a fundamental distinction in some way within narrative between the story itself and the manner of its telling, between the tale and its teller, between story and narration. mmo

narrative codes media n. associated particularly with the work of the French semiotician and literary theorist, Roland Barthes (1950-1980), and his detailed analysis of a short story by Honore de Balzac. Barthes identified five codes for the purpose of his analysis: the hermeneutic code, the proairetic code, the cultural (or referential) code, the semic code and the symbolic code. The hermeneutic code is the code of puzzles or enigmas (particularly important in detective stories); the proairetic code is the code of actions in which any narrative kernel action sets up expectations of a further narrative action; the cultural code makes reference to and draws upon established frameworks of knowledge and science; the semic code organizes the connotations used to give emotional color and value to characters and scenes; the symbolic code organizes the elements in a narrative that generate meaning through symbols, metaphors and oppositions. These codes operate like threads that, woven together, constitute the totality of the narrative text. mmo