From Language to Communication - Term Paper Example

Communication Paper: Frankfurt school Introduction: The capa to communicate is something inherent in human beings, animals, birds and insects. Infact it is considered to be essential for the survival and growth of a species. The field of communication studies is very strong and many scholars and researchers have extensively studied this aspect with regard to both humans and animal worlds. This has resulted in a host of theories and observations regarding the evolution and science of communication. Scientists have studied communication among the great apes, among ants, bees, and dolphins. On the human aspect of communication, many theories on individual and mass communication have evolved over the years. They include (taken randomly) the agenda setting theory, classic rhetoric, hypodermic needle theory, face negotiation theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and uncertainty reduction theory. This random list was provided to illustrate the seriousness and earnestness by which communication is seen by scholars and scientists. Another line of thought that emerged with regard to communication and culture was the Frankfurt School during the 1930s primarily through scholars associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. This paper is a study on communication theories with special relevance of the Frankfurt School of thought in modern day capitalistic structure. Communication and communication theories: The one term that comes to mind regarding language is glottogony. Campbell and Mixco, in their book A glossary of historical linguistics define the term as “the emergence (origin) of human language, the study of the origin and earliest development of human language, the name for a kind of linguistics concerned with the origin and evolution of language” (Campbell & Mixco 72). There is no clear evidence as to when language evolved. It is believed that communication started with guttural sounds and actions or pantomimes which later led to the development of a pidgin language. According to Ellis, “when a pidgin language becomes more accepted and standardized, when it becomes the native language of a generation of children, then it is called a Creole” (Ellis 149). Language further developed with structure and grammar and came to be referred to as prestigious forms of speaking, for example the English language. As mentioned earlier, both humans and species in the animal kingdom communicate. In the latter case, communication is primarily through sounds (including variations in pitch) and actions. The monkey watchman on the tree top will cry in alarm at the approach of the predator. The tigress will communicate the nuances of hunting to her cubs when she is stalking prey. Even though the language of the animal kingdom is not clearly understood in most species, the range of tools used is limited. But the world of human communication is much more complicated because of the use of speech, and structured language. Apart from speech and language, humans also rely on pitch, actions, clothing, body language and guttural sounds to communicate. It would be worthwhile to look at the term communication, because defining it precisely is difficult. There are many definitions of communication which looks at the term in different levels. For example, Devito feels that communication is transmitting of a message by whatever means, while Gerbner sees it as interaction between people (Heath & Bryant 47). So, in the former instance, only transmission, a sender, a message, and a receiver is required for communication, Gerbner’s definition requires, in addition to the above, interaction. It would seem that a television or radio transmission will not amount to communication according to his view. In this instance, it is more practical to take the first definition since mass communication (which is primarily a one way communication channel) feature prominently in the Frankfurt school of thought. Study of communications is important, according to Heath and Bryant, because it provides an insight about human nature. The authors state that “communication research is not interested I k wing about the world independent of people. It focuses on how people interact in all contexts: interpersonal, group. Organizational, and mediated” (Heath & Bryant 46). As stated in the introductory section, there are many theories that have evolved over the years and some of them will be discussed briefly before review of the Frankfurt School of thought. One prominent mass communication concept is the Agenda setting theory by Mc Combs and Shaw. They argued that the media was so powerful as to influence public opinion according to agendas set by the people who controlled the media. Election news is provided as an example, and the media had the power to influence votes in favor of a preferred candidate or party. The Barack Obama fixation of the media prior to US presidential elections would certainly have influenced many voters. Rhetoric theory is old as the times of Plato and Socrates is states that effective communication is done effected through persuasion and arguments. Starker, in this regard, states that “the hypodermic needle theory of media influence, in its most blatant form, views audiences as passive receptors of virulent “viruses” produced by the media. These pass directly into our brains, there to bring about destruction of rational thought, the undermining of moral structures, and the generation of impulsive and/or criminal behaviors” (Starker 11). Face negotiation theory (not necessarily a mass communications area) states that people behave in a particular way through negotiations (communication) to save face in tense or conflicting situations. Cognitive dissonance theory states that people may lose their cognitive ability through communication of messages that are inconsistent with one’s beliefs or is conflicting. Uncertainty reduction theory states that people act (and communicate) in a particular way when faced with an uncertain situation: “uncertainty can be about both what they are thinking and what they might do. Seven concepts related to uncertainty are: verbal output, nonverbal warmth, information seeking, self-disclosure, reciprocity of disclosure, similarity, and liking” (Uncertainty Reduction Theory). What the above studies of communication suggest is that it does have the power to influence people in both positive and negative ways. It would depend on the influence of the sender and the mindset of the receiver/s on the effectiveness of the negative or positive communication. The next section deals with the Frankfurt school of thought and its similarity if any with the theories mentioned above. The Frankfurt School: Wiggershaus and Robertson succinctly defines the thought process of the school in the following manner – “To start with, it described a critical sociology which saw society as an antagonistic totality, and which had not excluded Hegel and Marx from its thinking, but rather saw itself as their heir” (Wiggershaus & Robertson). There are three points to be cleared here. One is that the School does not exist as a brick and mortar institution, but is purely the combined and individual thinking of several influential sociologists associated with Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. The second is that even though each proponent of the school was influenced by Marxism, none of them were party members or activists. The third one is that there was no unified body of work or a theory for the school as a whole. In the words of Robertson, what they had was “the ‘materialist’ or ‘critical theory’ of the general process of social existence, which was characterized by a combination of philosophy with social science, and which systematically integrated psychoanalysis and certain ideas of critics of rationality and metaphysics such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Klages into historical materialism” (Wiggershaus & Robertson). So, the famed critical theory of the school is a combination of thoughts and ideas from many writers and disciplines. The most influential among those associated with the school were Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowental, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, and Habermas. According to Littlejohn, “communication takes a central place in this movement, and the study of mass communication has been especially important” (Littlejohn, 212). The unofficial starting of this line of thinking was started during the 1920 after Karl Marx published his path breaking treatise on the condition of the society at that time. The formation of the National Socialist Party and the spread of Nazism in Germany under Adolf Hitler forced the members of the school to relocate to the United States. Even so, they were highly critical of capitalism, its ways of mass consumption and the techniques used in communication. Critical theory argues for activities that promote human emancipation, as in the words of Horkheimer, it should “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Hansson, 458). Culture Industry: The term cultural industry was first coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment in the year 1947. The work is a critical look at the influence of commerce and industry on culture. Both of them were closely associated with the Frankfurt School of thought which is said to be responsible for the creation of the Critical Theories like Marxism. According to the authors, this trend started during the Victorian era novels that were written for commercial gains rather than as a medium of artistic expression. The trend caught on and continues to this day. This is a classic example of one of the characteristics of the modernism and post modernism periods mentioned earlier in this paper, the disappearance of the difference between high and low art. Advertisements now use artistic expression to sell products. The authors say that this is true for the movie industry as well. An example they give is the western movies that were popular in the US and in other places where American movies were popular. The term western in the movies became a commodity that a certain section of the audience preferred to watch. It did not really matter what the story was or the quality of the movie. To a certain extent, the star of the movie was able to influence the success of the product. So, art is used to here for profitability and not for art’s sake. The cliché that customer is the king is not true in this context. The culture industry has made them objects and victims of mass production. As Adorno & Bernstein point out, “although the culture industry undeniably speculates on the conscious and unconscious state of the millions towards which it is directed, the masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an appendage of the machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would have us believe, not its subject but its object” (Adorno & Bernstein 99). In fact mass production is one of the reasons for the emergence of this industry. When the US began mass production of goods and the motive to make the citizens of the country into a group of mass purchasers, businessmen and their advisors began to incorporate art into the business world. Advertisements no longer were the work of an individual. It became a planned event, incorporating artists who could visualize and create, ad writers who could write with creativity, imagination and brevity. Art in the earlier periods were created by individuals who by strength of imagination and ideas created paintings or books. But in the modern ages, it changed from individual to team work, something that is essential in the business. So, a merger of art and business came into being. This merger ultimately resulted in the creation of the culture industry that we see today. Arguments: There can be arguments that support and oppose the view of the Frankfurt School of thought. Deregulation has bought about the existence of a lot of organizations that are privately and publicly owned. There also came about a host of organizations that were formed for causes like environmental protection and animal rights. Greenpeace International, the world famous organization formed for protection of the environment and human rights is an example. People who are affiliated it do not buy products that are eco-unfriendly. Take the instance of music groups organizing concerts for the protection of the environment. Fans of the group or environmentally conscious individual could change their buying habits depending on the message that is conveyed by the band. For Isin “Burgess describes new forms of cultural politics involving purchase: ‘the alliance between actors, musicians, Brazilian Indians, population music promoters, conservation organizations, the media industry and mainly young consumers who buy records to support the campaign against the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest’ (Isin,71). There is a general trend that consumer culture in the west leans very heavily towards mass consumption. In the United States, this culture of mass consumption was actually artificially created to offset the effects of the great depression of the late 1920’s and the aftermath of World War II. War efforts had created enormous production capacities for the country and a way out to make use of this was needed. Victor Lebow who was a retailing analyst stated that during that time Americans need to purchase in large quantities as a solution: “our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way or life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate” (Rae & Wong 358). This was compounded by the fact that people were starved of purchasing because of the war and they took it up with a vengeance. Cars were bought and replaced as soon as a new model was introduced. Certain products were able to give a certain identity to its owner and people purchased to be identified with it. For example, a motorcycle culture had developed and young people as soon as they were eligible to get a license would purchase it to be identified with that culture. This was the case with cigarettes too until tobacco ads were banned. The Marlborough cow boy ads had initiated a number of youngsters into the unhealthy practice of smoking. There have been countless instances where media has been held responsible for negative effects and acts by members of the society. Mass communication and mass audience: The controversy of the OJ Simpson jury being influenced by an all pervasive media in one example (Ruddock 19). There had been so much publicity and hype over the trail especially in the TV that it was impossible for anyone to miss it, including members of the jury The uncensored internet in such an instance can equally influence people to act negatively since it has been more or less proved that that this power of the media exists. Activities like voyeurism are now easily accessible on the net, with hidden cameras in spaces like toilets and bedrooms capturing intimated or private acts. With proliferation of media, its convergence and availability, the influence is now more widespread than ever before.  The perceptions of theories of Marshall McLuhan deserve mention here in the sense that it substantiates the power of the new media and at the same time speaks against its power. What is striking about his thinking is that his writings were done during the 1970s when digital media and the internet were unheard of. Even the computer during that time was mainly a piece of equipment used by corporations who had the means, resources and needs for large computing power (by the standards that existed at that time). But with whatever information he had about computers and the level of penetration of TV and radio at that time, McLuhan propounded that technology is only an extension of one of the senses or some faculty of humans. He says that all technology, in whatever fields they emerge are developed solely for the purpose mentioned above. In his bestselling book, McLuhan proclaims: “We again meet the wheel as an ‘extension of the foot’, while the book is ‘an extension of the eye’, clothing is an extension of the skin, and electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system. In other places he speaks of money or gunpowder as a medium. In each case, then an artifact is seen as extending a part of the body, a limb or the nervous system” (Dovey et al 83). Bearing this idea in mind, every invention and innovation is an extension to improve man’s faculties and senses. Hence the internet and the computer screen is an extension of the eye, interactivity is an extension of the mind, the TV is again an extension of the eye and so on. This argument dilutes the power of the media to a certain extent since it essentially says that every media has been developed for human use. But McLuhan adds that certain media has more power than others and that media is more powerful than the content it conveys: “an analysis of media content is meaningless—misses the point—since it is the medium which carries the lion’s share of the communication. Simply put, the medium affects the body and the psyche in relatively unconscious ways; thus it is more powerful than the message, which largely appeals to the conscious mind” (Media: McLuhan). So watching a movie on a big screen in darkness may influence a person more than when he or she reads a book on which the above mentioned movie is based. McLuhan spoke his mind nearly forty years ago, but his foresight and lingering influence even today cannot be denied. He could foresee that the communication capability of the new media will be able to make the world smaller and was the person who coined the term ‘global village’. Even though mass communication is strong, the concept of a mass audience is losing ground. According to Fiske, “the ‘mass’ audience is relatively free from direct media-organized constraint. It is in a laterally ‘familiar’ environment, and each viewer of family group is able to respond to the television message in terms that intimately meaningful for themselves personally” (Fiske 86). The post Fordist economy is oriented towards customization and specialization so that even small sections of the audience can have a product of their liking. But this does not mean that the influence of media in communication is less effective. The effects of communication are relatively the same in all societies where globalization and deregulation is taking place. Even though TV, press, and many forms of mass communication can be censored, the internet is still something that accessible to many. With billions of websites, it would be extremely difficult to control the content on the net. The negative effects of communication as propounded by the Frankfurt school hence holds good in all societies where communication technology exists. Conclusion: The human mind will continue to develop technology and people will embrace it. There is no doubt that mass communication and technology is a lethal combination in the hands of people intent on selfish motives. It is true that there are many activists who fight against the greed and evils of the society as is seen in the case of Greenpeace. But on the whole, what is propounded by the Frankfurt School scholars holds good to a large extent even today. Capitalism through its concept of free enterprise and non-interference is failing to keep watch on degradation of what could be referred to as true morality, honesty, and sincerity. Technology is only a medium. Society and its individual members are still enslaved to a large extent by culture industry and those who have the power to communicate effectively in the capitalistic world. 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Littlejohn, Stephen W. Theories of human communication. 7th Edition: Tsinghua University Press, 2002. Rae, Scott B. & Wong, Kenman L. Beyond integrity: a Judeo-Christian approach to business ethics. 2nd Edition: Zondervan, 2004. Ruddock, Andy. Understanding audiences: theory and method. SAGE, 2001. Starker, Steven. Evil influences: crusades against the mass media. 2nd Edition: Transaction Publishers, 1989. Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Changing minds.org. Syque, 2009. 11 July 2009. < http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/uncertainty_reduction.htm> Wiggershaus, Rolf & Robertson, Michael. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. Michael Robertson. MIT Press, 1995. Read More