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

signifying practice media n. a way of using a sign system, such as language, in order to make and convey meanings. The signs of a system carry meaning in part by their place within the system but also by virtue of their characteristic patterns of usage, including their habitual modes of interpretation. mmo

silence media n. **** {see existing entry}

situated culture media n. the direct social enactment of meaning and value in face to face settings rather than their technological mediation. mmo

slander media n. => defamation mmo

soap opera media n. episodic work of dramatic fiction serialized on radio or television. The term derives from their emergence on radio programmes in the US that were sponsored by soap manufacturers. Plots are open-ended, with each episode ending on a suspenseful note. Typically soap operas are broadcast several times a week with some of the most famous continuing for several years, or even decades. mmo

social media media n. forms of electronic and digital communication by means of which users create online and virtual communities in order to share information, images, videos, personal messages and other content. Typical examples of social media include Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, Flickr and YouTube. mmo

social network media n. the overlapping dyadic interrelationships between a determinate set of social actors within a defined social space such as city, a kinship system, or a friendship group. Social network analysis attempts to model the ties between members of the network along parameters such as strength, durability and frequency. mmo

socialization media n. the ongoing process that an individual participates in throughout his or her life of inheriting, learning, and promulgating norms, values, behaviours, customs, and ideologies. Socialization can be described as a process of reciprocal social learning that occurs in order that an individual may effectively participate and assimilate with his or her culture and society. SJ

source media n. in journalism, a person, publication, document or other record that provides newsworthy information. Especially on controversial matters, journalists are expected to use multiple sources and to distinguish between information that is offered on-the-record (where the source can expect to be named and cited) as opposed to off-the-record. mmo

speech act LANG n.The action performed by an utterance as part of an interaction. The concept developed out of the work of the philosopher J/ L/ Austin, who demonstrated that many utterances are significant not so much in terms of what they say, but rather in terms of what they do. Indeed, in the case of many utterances it makes more sense to ask, ‘What is this utterance trying to do?’ than to ask, ‘Is what it says true or false?’ – as may be seen if we consider the following fairly unremarkable examples of everyday utterances:
‘I bet he won’t turn up.’

‘Stop here on the left.’

‘Hello.’

‘Please keep your seat belts fastened.’

‘Okay.’

‘Sod off’ (or words to that effect).

‘I now declare the Garden Festival open.’
These utterances exemplify a whole range of speech acts, including those of betting, commanding, greeting, requesting an action, acknowledging, insulting, and so on. None of them is limited to asserting some kind of propositional truth. This kind of observation led Austin to the conclusion that stating or asserting (in ways that can be judged true or false) is only of many kinds of action (or speech act) that language makes possible – actions as diverse as warning, promising, naming, exemplifying, commenting and challenging. Significantly, for many of these actions it is difficult to envisage how else they might be performed except in words. Since Austin’s pioneering work, most attention has been devoted to trying to identify a determinate range of speech acts, and also to specifying precisely the recognition criteria for the most common speech acts, such as questions or commands.

The concept is an important one for communication and cultural studies, partly as a way of countering simplistic linear flow models of communication that see it simply in terms of ‘information transfer’ or ‘exchanging ideas’. It has also been influential in studies of social interaction by providing an analytic tool for a variety of research traditions ranging from discourse analysis to the ethnography of communication.

speech balloon media n. a graphic device used mostly in comics and cartoons, in which a figure’s speech is enclosed in a diagrammatic balloon, often complete with signs of emphasis (bold and/or large type), or indications of swearing (a random sequence of non-alphabetic punctuation signs, usually enlarged, with at least one exclamation point). The fact that a particular individual is speaking is shown by a tail to the balloon, linked to or near to the mouth of the speaker. A similar convention graphically suggests a depicted person’s thinking process in a thought balloon. The mechanism is the same as for a speech balloon, except that the tail of the balloon is usually a trail of ever-smaller separate balloons back to the thinker.