07118: Communication: Rhetoric and Reasoning L

Weeks 11 and 12
Communication and Culture

* Reading
* Discussion/research topics
* Writing

top of page Reading

Core reading

CR&R Readings

  1. Kress, G (1988). Communication and culture: an introduction. Kensington, NSW: NSWUP.
  • Chapter 1 ‘Communication and culture’, pages 1-19.
  1. Halliday, M A K and Hasan, R (1985). Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Victoria: Deakin University.
  • Chapter 1, ‘Context of situation’, pages 3-14.

Extension reading

CR&R Readings

  1. Black, P and Muecke, S (1992). ‘The power of a dress: the rhetoric of a moment in fashion’. In Rebirth of rhetoric, edited by R Andrews, London and New York: Routledge, pages 212-227.
  2. Copping, B and Fiske, J (1982). ‘The Australian’s Australian: an analysis of two newspaper pages’. In The Australian Journal of Communication, Dec-Jan, pages 22-26.

top of page Discussion/research topics

The readings for this week give further information on the relationship between language and the way people use language in different contexts. Thus we will also consider the relationship between communication and culture.

Do all three tasks listed for this fortnight.

Task 1

If possible, carry out this task before you read the chapters by Kress and Halliday & Hasan in the Core reading.

Write the word culture at the head of a page and take a few minutes to list or describe what you understand (or understood) this term to mean. Now write or discuss how this understanding has changed with your reading of the chapters by Kress and Halliday and Hasan.

Task 2

Discuss the implications of Kress’s model (in Reading 21), which turns S—>M—>R into S—>M<—R. How does this model help to understand the rhetoric of Jean Shrimpton’s dress (discussed in Reading 23)—or of any other ‘fashion statement’—over time?

Task 3

Define what Halliday and Hasan mean (in Reading 22) by the terms field, tenor and mode. Take a short article from CR&R Resource material and analyse it using these terms. Discuss the ways that such an analysis helps you to understand how texts are ‘a social exchange of meanings’.

top of page Writing

Remember that your Journal is due for submission by the end of week 13, Friday 6 November.

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For assistance contact: paul.skrebels@unisa.edu.au
Copyright ©1997 University of South Australia
Prepared by the Flexible Learning Centre, University of South Australia
Prepared: 28 January 1997
Revised: December 1997
URL: http://www.roma.unisa.edu.au/07118/wk11-12.htm