Module 6: Media and Information Languages

At the end of this module, I can:

1. Describe the nature of genre in relation to understanding codes and conventions.

2. Evaluate everyday media and information with regard to codes, convention, and messages;
in regard to the audience, producers, and other stakeholders.

3. Discuss popular media tropes, specifically, television tropes.

4. Produce and assess the codes, conventions, and messages of a group presentation.

You are probably familiar with the word-guessing game more popularly known as charades. The
secret of winning a charades game is by being familiar with common hints that may be
recognizable to the player doing the guessing. The charades illustrate that you can be successful
when you use familiar and recognizable codes and conventions so that the person who is trying
to guess the word or phrase will interpret the message you are trying to relay. Media messages
and information use the same principle. Audiences interpret the meaning of these messages
through codes and conventions.

In media studies, codes are known as a system or collection of signs that create meaning when
put together. As boy scouts or girl scouts, you might be familiar with the use of the Morse code,
the smoke signals, or the signal flags for relating a message to another. What are the similarities
of all these codes? All three are organized and intelligible because the other person who sees
the code also understands the code. The meaning is agreed upon by the communicators
because the rules in understanding the codes are shared by members of a community that use
that particular code.

Differentiating Media Messages through Genres

Codes are better understood when you have a good grasp of what the genres in media are and
how they are classified and interpreted using codes and conventions. You know that a certain
written text is a news story and not a feature story because there are elements that you find in
news that you do not see in feature writing. Or, maybe, a science fiction or fantasy genre has a
different way of telling a story than a drama or a thriller.

Genre is a French word for "type" or "kind." Genre has been a major component in
understanding literature, theatre, film, television, and other art and media forms. The grouping
into categories of content of these forms is what characterizes genre. Each of these categories
is further marked by "particular set of conventions, features, and norms. (Neale as cited in
Creeber, 2003)." Some experts on genre (Bhatia, 1993) define the term as the following:

-Recognizable communicative event

-Characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s)

-Identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic

community in which it regularly occurs

The "communicative event" referred to is the nature of your media exposure such as reading a
book or a newspaper, watching a film or television show, or surfing the Internet. The
"communicative purpose" is the intention of the media messages that you are exposed to, e.g.,
a news report informs you of an event thus utilizing the principles of newswriting to do so; a
film entertains so it utilizes aspects of filmmaking (also known as mise-en-scene) to get you
engaged in the narrative. Being able to identify and mutually understand the messages simply
means that it does not matter who the audience is as long as he or she can understand the
messages the same way as other audiences would.

BIG IDEA!

Genres are comparable to the taxonomy of organisms. Taxonomy helps you organize and put
together elements that characterize a certain group.

Role of Genre in Understanding Media Messages

Genre helps audiences-readers and viewers-to understand the text by merely looking at those
signs that you can recognize and interpret. Oftentimes, you may not understand the whole film
you are watching but because there are clues in context that these codes or signs provide, you
are able to form interpretations. This is why those who construct the message should "conform
to certain standard practices within the boundaries of a particular genre (Bhatia, 1993)." The
codes in the genre guide the audience toward a particular understanding of the message.

But a genre is not fixed or static. There are factors that may influence how messages may be
understood. The factors include:

-one's role in the society. i.e., a student may interpret the message differently compared to
someone who is a working adult;

-group purposes your reasons for consuming the message affect your understanding of it, e.g.,
when you watch for entertainment, you may tend to be less critical of the hidden intention of
the message;

-professional and organizational preferences and prerequisites your biases toward the message
may also affect your interpretation of it; and

-cultural constraints the culture you belong to may have a different way of looking at things
compared to other cultures.

Hart (1986) points out that "genre analysis is pattern-seeking rather than pattern-imposing
(Bhatia, 1993)." It means that the genre already has embedded patterns of codes or signs that
you will have to merely identify, rather than having to force your own particular pattern just for
you to be able to understand the message of the genre.

Here are a few tips that Bhatia (1993) suggests when you analyze genre that you may be
unfamiliar with:

1. Place the given genre-text in a situational context. Literal understanding of the text may not
be helpful because messages have intentions. Some of the things that can help you understand
the messages you encounter in context would be your own prior experience and knowledge
about the message and the clues that are embedded in the message.
2. Survey existing literature. This simply means that you may also consult related or similar
genres that provide the same type of message or the tools such as film reviews, newspaper
editorials and commentaries, and guidebooks or manuals to help you construct an
interpretation of the text. One of the few things you can do to understand an art film beyond
your comprehension is to read synopses or reviews of that film.

3. Refine the situational or contextual analysis of the text by doing the following:

-Defining the speaker or writer of the text, the audience, their relationship, and

their goals

-Defining the historical, socio-cultural, philosophic and/or occupational placement of the

community in which the discourse takes place

-Identifying the network of surrounding texts and linguistic traditions that form the

background to this particular genre-text

-Identifying the topic, subject, or extratextual reality which the text is trying to represent,
change, or use and the relationship of the text to that reality In other words, you will have to be
more critical in analyzing the messages in the media texts by considering all the factors that
have influenced the creation of those messages.

4. Select corpus or body of works that characterize the genre. You have to define the genre and
the subgenre that you are trying to analyze "so that it may be distinguishable from other genres
either similar or closely related in some ways (Bhatia, 1993)"

Definition may be developed through citing examples of the texts that may belong to that
genre.
5. Study the institutional context. As stated earlier, messages have intentions. Propaganda
theories and agenda-setting theories on communication that were discussed in Module 4
explains why and how. You should then be aware of the institution or organization from which
the message originated because they may have influenced how the message

was constructed. For example, if a television network owns both a news agency and a public
utility company, the news agency may be influenced to frame their news to favor the public
utility company.

Codes in Media Messages

McQuail (2005) argued social and cultural values and beliefs are reflected in media content.
This is the reason why scholars and field experts in history, anthropology, and sociology study
how media content relay these values and beliefs of a particular time and place or social group.
In order to effectively understand how media content or messages produce desired effects by
both authors and audience, there should first be a familiarity with genre codes and
conventions.

Codes consist of signs that have meaning and the meanings are dictated by agreed rules of
interpretation. Although codes guide the way a message may be interpreted or understood, it is
not guaranteed that all people will understand the message in the same way that others would.
The message is still open to miscommunication and misinterpretation because of certain factors
such as culture, personal biases, and level of knowledge.

BIG IDEA!

Propaganda and agenda pertain to motives. In order to understand the motive behind a
message, you should see beyond the literal sense of it. Be on the lookout at how intuitively and
creatively messages are crafted to sway people toward a particular interpretation.
Culture affects the way codes are interpreted. For instance, a salutation in one cultural group
may be different in another.

Perhaps the most common area on which codes are expected to be strictly manifested are in
audio-visual media messages such as films and television programs. Some of these codes may
also be seen in printed media messages. Some media practitioners consider codes such as
those provided in Table 6.1. These categories of codes are not exhaustive and rigid. An overlap
may exist among these codes so the "most widely mentioned in the context of media,
communication and cultural studies (Chandler, 2014)" are considered in this module.
Meanwhile, Chandler's typology corresponds broadly to three key kinds of knowledge required
by interpreters of a text" like you.

1. Knowledge of the World (Social Knowledge)

2. Knowledge of the Medium and the Genre (Textual Knowledge)

3. Knowledge of the Relationship between (1) and (2) (Modality Judgments)

These areas of knowledge are the main motivations why you attempt to understand media
messages.

[INSERT TABLE 6.1]

At this point of your study of media and information, the knowledge discussed in the table are
meant purely to introduce to you certain concepts that you may encounter in further study of
the media. For your everyday consumption of media messages, the more common codes which
are characterized as technical, visual/symbolic, or written should be more practical at the
moment.
Technical Codes

When equipment is used to tell the story in a media text which consequently affects how you
can interpret the meaning of that text, you are dealing with technical codes. These are signs
that are produced when camera techniques, framing, depth of fields, lighting and exposure, and
juxtaposition are utilized. The type of film shot or the manner of capturing a scene or even the
way the scenes are spliced and put together through editing suggests a particular meaning. You
can notice this in certain genres of film and television. In Philippine independent films, you may
have observed that the camera is following a central character or the protagonist. Or, a thought
bubble on screen may suggest a character to be daydreaming or in a trance. You may also find
how the video editing technique, used in scenes in a film or in a television program, affects the
way we understand the narrative, e.g., a flashback would normally be shown in black and
white.

Visual/Symbolic Codes

There are codes that are embedded in the technical codes such as objects, setting, body
language, clothing, and, color. These codes suggest or connote, rather than explicitly state the
meaning of a media message. The understanding of the message may depend on the receiver
of the message. For instance, in a soap opera scene, you may see a character dressed in black
and crying while seated on a rocking chair and caressing an object of importance to him or her.
Because of your familiarity with the cultural symbolism of wearing black, you will begin to think
that another character very dear to the one crying has passed away. Another example is when a
drinking glass suddenly slips from the hand of a character which connotes a premonition that
danger looms or trouble waits. Symbolic codes are very effective in suggesting meaning
because they utilize our sense of imagination and rely on our familiarity with cultural signs and
symbols.

Written Codes

The use of language style and textual layout also express meaning. In newspapers for instance,
the layout speaks about the degree of importance of a news story with respect to other news
stories. Typically, newspaper editors follow the inverted "S" of news layout because the mode
by which people read would be from left to right and from the upper fold of the newspaper
down to the lower fold. Captions, titles, slogans, taglines, and some other language elements
are also utilized in a way that may suggest a particular meaning. This is more often dictated by
editorial principles and policies of a particular news agency/organization.

The Relationship of Codes and Textual Features of Audio-visual Messages

Again, codes are signs and for you to interpret what they mean, you have to be familiar with
how these signs operate. As an example, audio-visual media, i.e., film and television, may be
categorized based on recognizable genres, i.e., horror/thriller, fantasy, drama, science fiction,
Western, and so on.

For you to be able to recognize the properties. of a particular genre of film that you watch,
consider. the textual features found in Table 6.2. The features help you dissect the film and
interpret it accordingly using these same features. You will find that in your exposure to various
films on the same genre, they share similar distinctive properties attributed to that genre. Thus,
when taken collectively, all these films define the genre where they belong to.

BIG IDEA!

Communication breakdown happens when one of the communicators is not familiar with the
signs and cues used by the other. Language is a code. Effective use of a code means an attempt
for a more effective communication.

[INSERT TABLE 6.2]

Conventions: Indicators of Content Familiarity

When you are exposed to a certain message, often, you look for something recognizable or
familiar for you to be able to make sense of what it means. Say you read a highly complex
storyline in a graphic novel or comic book. You rely highly on the images or the illustrations
presented as a way of unlocking those that you find difficult to understand. Or, perhaps, when
you watch an episode of a telenovela that you do not regularly follow, you still seem to know
the story even if you have missed certain episodes. Or, when you watch a film produced by a
particular movie production house that resembles the same theme and structure of the
narrative that you have watched before. All these examples pertain to a "formula" for content
presentation.

Formulaic messages are what they are because of the use of conventions. A convention refers
to the generally accepted way of doing things that has formed into a habit because of repeated
exposure and experience of these messages. Sometimes, a convention may prove to be a
hindrance in critically assessing media content or messages because people may grow too
accustomed to them and they do not see the values and biases that are embedded in the
content. This tendency has been described as automaticity and normalization in Module 1. On
the other hand, recognizing a convention may also be useful for keeping the audience's guard
up. When you are able to spot the convention used, you may find it easier if there are any
agenda or propaganda in media messages.

BIG IDEA!

Codes and conventions are likened to rules on grammar. When you know the rules, you are
better equipped at using the language to communicate your thoughts.

Tropes in Television

Television is a very popular media form as this is perhaps the most "invasive" of all media
technology. You may have several television monitors in every corner of your home. Thus being
the case, you might have encountered, without you knowing it, the different tropes in
television programs.
Tropes are storytelling devices. They are also conventions seen in television genres. In the study
of literature, tropes are the figures of speech that audiences recognize too easily because of
their occurrences in almost all programs under a particular genre. In film language, these are
called motifs or recurrent themes. According to tvtropes.org, tropes highlight twists on the plot
or narrative, much like how an idiom is used to connote a meaning rather than being literal
about an expression. Tropes provide texture to a story.

Although very informal and not quite scholarly, the wiki site http://tvtropes.org presents an
interesting and extensive discussion on the tropes that several audiences of television have
mustered to list based on their exposure to television programs. The Web site is a starting point
for understanding how tropes work in television. Over the years, the Web site has slowly looked
into other types of media, and according to the authors of the site, "[t]ropes transcend
television... reflect life [and since] a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect
life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere."

"[T]rope" has the even more general meaning of a pattern in storytelling, not only within the
media works themselves, but also in related aspects such as the behind-the-scenes aspects of
creation, the technical features of a medium, and the fan experience. The idea being that
storytelling is not just writing, it is the whole process of creating and telling/showing a story.

- TV Tropes

BIG IDEA!

Humans learn by looking at the familiar. When patterns emerge from knowledge, humans find
it easier to decode the meaning of this knowledge. Tropes underline the meaning by being
suggestive rather than being literal.