Identity Crisis

Simon During has used this article to explore and debate identities. In his analysis of identities, he reveals that we all have more than one identity labelled to us by society and that these identities have roots in gender, ethnicity, religion and nationality among others. According to During, these labels can be used interchangeably for both positive and negative effects, based on the situation and the persons involved. The article delves into the usage of the ‘N’ word and how it can simultaneously be used as an affectionate form of socializing between African Americans and yet still be an offensive term towards them if used by other races.

Personally, I find it easy to recognize myself in During’s research because I am a Persian Norwegian student living in Australia therefore I am exposed to varying degrees of prejudice, both good and bad, by my social network on a daily basis. Primarily the types of prejudice I have experienced are based on the stereotype persona Australians have about Norwegians and Europeans in general. In my opinion, I believe that people’s predisposition to judging and labelling into stereotypes is a universal behaviour. During a visit to Bulgaria a couple of years ago, I encountered such an incident whereby upon disclosing Norway as my home country, the locals would remark ‘Black gold’ (oil) in recognition of the country I came from, thereby instantly implying a wealthy family and background.

In conclusion, I believe the labels we get inadvertently assigned to us in life help to dictate most of our behaviour in society. Perhaps if I had been brought up in Iran instead of Norway, my values, personality, sense of humour, disciplines and morals would differ from the ones I have now. However I would still not be able to determine if that would be of a change for the better or worst and this very insight is supported by During’s proclamation that “it makes more sense to regard [social identities] as simultaneously limiting and enabling”.

Multimodal News Text

Mary Macken-Horarik has explored the how multimodal grammar ought to allow us to understand composite texts that produce meaning in its interaction with visual, verbal, typographic and layout. She explains that a great number of political argumentation channeled through media is depending on its effectiveness on visual data. She uses the events leading up to the second Gulf War, where the United States used visual ‘evidence’ of Iraqi ‘dishonesty’ in relation to their interests in weapons of mass destruction. She illustrates that the photos taken of the camouflaged bunkers would have not made much impact without the verbal clarification.

Macken-Horarik elucidates the powerful effect that lies in the interaction between communicative resources, and she belives that it is linguists have a responsibility to develop tools for analyzing multimodal texts. By looking at an interoperation of news created being a direct result of the interaction between a photograph and story. A great misuse of multimodal text was committed by an international news agency Central News Network (CNN) in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. While verbal text explained the reaction of people across the world were diverse, but most were shocked by the horrific event developing in New York and Washington, a short visual motion picture was shown by a Palestinian woman eating cake and jumping for joy. Later it was exposed that the short video of this woman was recorded long before the events of 9/11.

The author has looked into Michael Clyne’s analysis of the linguistic dimension of hatred agains asylum seekers. He has investigated the narrowing of terms for refugees and also the excluding terms used, such as ‘illegal refugees, ‘queue jumpers’ or ‘illegals’. In Norway, similar use of multimodal is used by the media, where if an person with immigrant background commits any criminal act is referred to as ‘Man, 19, with immigrant background’. However, if an ethnic Norwegian commits the same crime, the media referrers to the case as ’Boy, 22’ or ’young man’.

She goes into more detail with the affair of ‘children overboard’ incident from Australia, however I feel that the Bush-administrations use of multimodal text in the UN, where Colin Powell gave the story which complimented the satellite pictures and 3D animations, is the best example.

Signs and meaning

Firstly, this article introduces the relationship between sings and meanings. It examines the difficulties associated with trying to understand signs by themselves and then trying to interpret those signs in different contexts. The article explains that labeling objects, acts or experiences with words will not go without predicaments due to the disagreements caused by what the words may ‘really’ mean to the individual. This suggests that people’s understanding of sings can differ based on their personal experience and the context the signs are used in. A possible example of this dilemma is the word ‘sex’. While a religious person may associate the word ‘sex’ with the mechanics of ‘intercourse’ and the sole purpose of reproducing, someone else may view the word ‘sex’ as an act of pleasure and affection towards a loved one.

According to Saussure, words have not been created by the objects, instead the objects have been made identifiable by the words allocated to them. Such as the words of William Shakespeare‘s “a rose called by any other name with still smell as sweet”. This implies that if the red petal flower had been called a ‘lamp’ instead, we would still associate the word ‘lamp’ with sweet aroma, soft petals and thorns. In summary, we have not made objects definable because of the sounds or words we assign to them but instead have tried to differentiate objects by creating an ‘arbitrary relation between itself and something else’.

Lastly, based on the German philosopher Nietzsche’s notion that ‘the production of meaning is always, first and foremost, a sign of power’, a modern example of this can be seen by the international R&B performer Beyoncé inventing the word ‘bootylicious’ in one of her singles. Given that Beyoncé is a multi-platinum album selling artist, her highly influential stature in the entertainment business made it possible for her to easily encourage the masses to start associating the word ‘bootylicious’ to her own newly founded concept of referring to a ‘sexually attractive woman, especially because of her buttocks’ (Webster 2003-2009).

Evolving Communications Landscape

Haddon has in this article taken a closer look at four issues related to ‘the evolving communications landscape’. To begin with he looks at what could be regarded as communication practice and then moves on to look at how that some of the practices are a continuity of pre-existing techniques. He follows this with exploring what factors shape the choice among communication alternatives and finishes by contemplating long term alteration that some make to their communication selection.

Haddon looks at the communication- related practice beyond the actual act of communicating itself also includes the way we control the communication device or platform. Haddon’s description of practice include manipulation of communication, this can be involve changing of status on various of chatting software’s to ‘offline’ or storage of a script of a communication. With this Haddon indicates that communication –related practices operate beyond the act of ‘live’ chatting.

The second issue Haddon studies are the continuities between media, where he reveals that a seemingly ‘new’ and revolutionary practice of a new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be a extension of a earlier practice. This can be seen in practices as sending an e-card for birthdays instead of sending a traditional birthday card with ‘snail’ mail or using Skype to speak and see (with webcam) family abroad instead of calling with fixed line telephone.

Furthermore, Haddon explores what factors are in play, in the process of choice between communication selections. Haddon states that there are many factors that influence the selection, among these factors we can find quality, economical (financial cost), technological forms and capabilities (plays music and video, storage, and other features). However, Haddon points out that there are also sociological factors that can have a impact on the choice, like disturbance of public place by calling someone with mobile phone, can lead to the choice of sending a text message instead.

In the end Haddon deals with the issue of long term alteration that occurs in some peoples communication selection. Here Haddon indicates that such alteration can be caused by factors such as change in household (arrival of a new family member), changes in the communication practices in a social network (entering young adulthood) or wider societal changes (health issues related to mobile phone usage).

Haddon has attempted to reveal future patterns by looking at current and historical patterns, it is far less complicated to recognize patterns I retrospect, however as Haddon draws attention to the fact that ‘small changes in practice escape the research eye, it is difficult to say how much of the pattern that did emerge could easily have been otherwise’.