COM 204 Final; Key Concepts

How to make a critical claim

To write a critical claim you need to:

Skim the text - see who the ad is advertising and if you're in the market for that, then make a decision

Consider the author

Consider the context

Discern purpose

Evaluate - credibility, quality, and thoroughness

General principles of argument building (including how to make a more sophisticated critical argument than a simple 5-paragraph essay

Some general principles for argument building are as follows:

Decide what you have to say - what is the topic? what is the subject of your critique? what gives you the standing to say anything about this? what is your thesis (can always change later)?

Consider your audience - who are your readers? what do they know? what do they believe? what background information do they need to understand your argument?

Establish common ground - are there general principles that you and your audience members agree on? do you share a background or experience or education that they relate to? how can you help them see you as a person like them, a person with whom they are likely to agree?

Acknowledge those who disagree with you - (this is the biggest difference) what are obvious arguments against your position (avoid fallacies)? how can you grant the reasonableness of those arguments while disagreeing with them? what is surprising, but true about your position in contrast to these counterarguments?

Provide good reasons for your position - what evidence would it take to persuade someone of the rightness of your position? What are sources of evidence your audience would recognize as credible? how many reasons are necessary? will examples or analogies help explain your stance? have you avoided fallacies (selected instances, pos hoc ergo proper hoc, red herrings, pooh-poohing, straw person)?

Differences among Gorgias, Aristotle, and Plato

Gorgias: famous Sophist, believed sophistry was manipulative use of language

Aristotle: thinks plato is a little extreme

Plato: (came before Aristotle) saw what the sophists were doing and that they got paid and realized they didn't actually have to know anything and believed you needed to have content for an argument so argued against rhetoric

How to state a metaphor

Simple sentence communicating a relationship between tenor (idea we're trying to understand) and vehicle (helps us understand the tenor, carries the idea along)

Example: War is hell. (Tenor = war, vehicle = hell)

Characteristics of qualitative communication research

Interested in theory of human interaction: how we understand things, why do we recall the stories we do when people bring things up

Studies socially situated human interaction: watch people, learn from people in their real lives, better because it's more natural

Depends on human investigators: "numbers don't lie" is bullshit, think about own biases, relies on narrative forms for coding data and writing the texts to be present to audiences, end up with narrative forms of coding

Primary goal of qualitative communication research

"Understanding of the lived experience of human beings" understanding the qualities of human communicative behavior - studies fewer numbers of people, much more in depth

How rhetorical and qualitative approaches to a communication question would differ

Idea that you can study the same general thing with a lot of different methods/approaches

Example: Purdue buying Kaplan can be looked at by asking students in focus groups how they feel about it or looked at by what Mitch Daniels said about it and how they're doing it

Rhetoric looks at texts

Qualitative looks to bring people together and get ideas by using the people

APA style basics

In-text citation: (Pateck, 2017)

Use quotations when you're using other people's words or ideas

Attributes and commitments of narrative research

Concerned with meanings people assign to their lives: learn that by listening to people's stories and what they place importance on

Explores particularities of individuals' lives

Places great value upon hearing the voices and perusing the actual words of people

Concerned with the context in which events transpire

Seeks to understand how events unfold on time according to the teller: aren't going to fact check you, looks at how your brain places importance on different things

Highlights peoples' conceptions of turning points in their lives

Composes and present versions of personal identitiy/character: moral and ethic code comes out in the story because you can tell what the person cares about, what role you are playing in the story which makes it important and memorable

Enacts and expresses cultural values and world views: makes you think about how you see and value things compared to others

Oriented historically

What pointillism has to do with conversation analysis

Looking at it from a distance, but if you want to understand the bigger picture you need to get up close and look at all the dots, it's easy to see the basic building blocks then you can understand the bigger picture, pausing and looking at blocks of the conversation so you can better understand it

Time involved in transcription for conversation analysis

One minute takes one hour to transcribe

Normal time between conversational turns

1/10th of a second

Basic transcription signs and transcription principles of conversation analysis

Basic symbols:

(2.3) Pause, measured in seconds

CAPS - loud

Stre:::tched sound

? - upward inflection

. - downward inflection

How to solve problems in a culture-centered approach to ethnography

Trying to help the culture fix problems through mutually meaningful solutions that you have found from experts in the society and things you've studied

The three contexts to consider in a culture-centered approach to ethnography

Social, political, and economic

Logistical issues of setting up focus groups

Recruiting: where you get your people from, what people you're looking for, each requires a different way of recruiting

Incentives/payments to participants: may seem sketchy, but very common, what kind of payment is appropriate; enough so they participate, not too much where they just tell you what you want to hear

Refreshments: being able to eat and drink while you're talking is going to help people feel like they can participate

Human subject approval: if it's going to be published then you need to get approval from the university

Who's going to mediate: researcher or outsider

Typical focus group formats

Participants: in quantitative research they're interested in random samples, but here we're interested in certain types of people and what they think, usually targeted

Structured interview questions: need to get approval from the Institutional Review Board to make sure the questions are okay, market research is different but you're going to come up with the basic questions that you need to ask

Moderator role: should the moderator be the researchers or not connected to the research at all, people have jobs that are focus group coordinators so they're professionals trained to moderate focus groups

Why we listened to "Close to Fine"

We listened to this song because it outlines a postmodernist perspective, the song seems to demonstrate more of a crooked like like postmodernism talks about

How different qualitative methods would approach the same question or problem about communication differently

All research can be broken down, one way that you can distinguish is where the areas of weakness actually are

Example: Semiotics - study of signs

Conversation analysis - signs of what people place importance on in conversations

Background of Modernism

Began with the enlightenment, intensified during the industrial revolution and arguably continues today - looks at oppression

Commitments of Modernism

Closure: close ties with something is over with

Certainty: plans, lists

Control

Rationality

Reason and scientific, empiricism, positivism, bass for most research done here at Purdue, basis for the existence of universities; knowledge out here somewhere and people can help you get it

Dualism

From Descartes, subject separate from object, reflexivity (self-examination) made possible, self-improvement/self-help made possible

Taming the natural world

Exploration, exploitation of natural resources, settlement, progress; continents, seas, poles, space

Order and organization

PowerPoint is modern, technology imposes order, military examples

Consensus

One of the explicit roles of communication in the modernist project, American forms of government exemplify this commitment, the emphasis on rationality assumes that the better argument will gain acceptance

Progress

Hegel: development nd improvement of the human spirit

History: from slaughtering indigenous people to advocation from civil rights

Sports: Olympics, recording records, breaking records

Continuum from Modernism/Positivism to Postmodernism

Modernism/positivism: a discourse of representation

Modernism/interpretivist: a discourse of understanding

Critical modernism: a discourse of suspicion

Postmodernism: a discourse of vulnerability

Knowledge goals (3) of Critical Theory (and which ones Critical Theory emphasizes)

Technical: facts (thinks this is usually the best done one)

Practical: put what you've learned and create a project (emphasizes this one)

Empancipatory: take our knowledge and application and give people freedom (emphasizes this one the most)

How Critical Theory brides modernism and postmodernism

Bridges them together on a continuum

The significance of a Fijian cannibal fork

Used to show that no one has rights to make normative judgements even if it is unfordable for us; emphasized the idea that there's not only one right way to think of something

Gendered behaviors that are discounted

Feminine style of talk is the main one that is discounted because man style is treated better in the American work place; an argument could be made that feminine approaches are sometimes better, but no one has an open mind to talk about it

Twin goals of feminism

Gender: creation of awareness about the systematic trivialization of people's concerns due to gendered behaviors

Praxis: advocacy for change, what we can do to make this society more equitable

Quotatives vs. Triangling

Quotatives: make a statement fro something that can't actually speak for itself

Triangling: vet talking to the pet instead of the owner so the owner doesn't feel bad, but the owner gets the point

Characteristics of Postmodernism

No standard practices for achieving truth, separation of signifiers and signified, just signs (both), "crisis of representation", tolerates multiple meanings, sometimes goes to excess; relativism, self-indulgence, studies resistance, truths: no objective scientific truths, no universal audience - audience is always localized, rejects consensus as a value or a worthy goal, sees all knowledge as political, superficial, celebrates fragmentation, no grand narratives