Purposive Communication: Evaluation of Messages, Texts, and Images

Vocabulary flashcards defining key concepts, scholars, and text types for evaluating messages, texts, images, and audiovisual media.

Evaluation (Hunston, et. al, 2000)

A broad term to express the speaker or the writer's attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities of propositions that one is talking about.

Value-System

A component of the ideology of the society that has produced a text, built up through acts of evaluation that express communal beliefs and opinions.

Message

A verbal, written, or recorded communication sent to or left for a recipient, or an underlying theme or idea put forward by an author or a source.

The Medium is the Message (McLuhan, 2012)

The concept that personal and social consequences of human activities and social associations are put together within the medium itself.

Texting and Text Messaging

Brief typed messages sent using short message service (SMS) or multimedia message service (MMS) of mobile/cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), smartphones, or web browsers.

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)

Technology-based communication whose success or failure depends on the user, technology availability, and the context of use (Thurlow, et. al., 2013).

Text (Ricoeur, 1991)

An utterance or set of utterances fixed by writing.

Ordered Hierarchy of Content Object (OHCO)

The structural definition of electronic text documents in computers (DeRose, et. al., 1997).

Text (Barthes, 1981)

The fabric of words which make up the work and are arranged in such a way as to impose a meaning which is stable and as far as possible unique.

Audiovisual as Text

Images or moving images presented through nonverbal and other verbal means, experienced through seeing and hearing (Zabalbeascoa, 2008).

Audio-verbal

A form of audiovisual text consisting of words uttered.

Audio-nonverbal

A form of audiovisual text consisting of all non-word sounds.

Visual-verbal

A form of audiovisual text consisting of writing.

Visual-nonverbal

A form of audiovisual text consisting of all other visual signs.

Instructive Text

A type of text that is the process of conveying knowledge or the means/instrument used to perform an action, often using direct verbs, 'must' and 'must not', diagrams, or numbered/bulleted lists.

Descriptive Text

A type of text that aims to give readers an image of what is being pictured, employing adjectives, adverbs, comparisons, and the five senses (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory).

Informative Text

A type of text that tells readers something has been done or how something can be done, avoiding repetition, specifying clear details, and containing facts.