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GLOSSARY OF TERMS 2

[] Jakobson's model of communication

Where function of meaning is attached to the matter of communicating. The message from the addresser has a context, a contact and a linguistic code, but the function is the addresser being emotive (or expressive), communication is kept open (phatic), the code is indentified for lts language (multiolingua) and there is the expressiveness of the message (poetic) all on its way to be conative (effecting a change) on the addressee.

[] Jazz

Extemporare music with black origins in the American slave culture and white origins in Methodist revival hymns, both centred on New Orleans; but the term Jazz was first used in Chicago in 1916 (the movement to there caused by economic depression and the impact of the cotton bol weavil). Dixieland was a white version. Ragtime was earlier music (1890's on) inspired by the cakewalks of American blacks. Boogie woogie was based on the 12 bar blues with a rolling base, and centred on Kansas. The blues comes from the cultural and socio-economic oppressions of the blacks in American society. Big Band Music was in response to the Stock Market Crash to offer easy and comforting listening, but this broke with the spontaneous basis of jazz. Swing was a return to improvisation but always optimistic and racially mixed. Be-bop after the war was more complex and gave greater space to soloists. Some like it hot and others cool (laid back). Some jazz is quite avant-garde.

[] Jet lag

Because flying happens across time zones, the rhythm of sleeping and rising becomes instantly upset and it takes adjustment to match the personal clock to the clock of the new place, and the shift in dark and light hours. It seems to be experienced more eastbound than westbound (going to where the sun rises and sets earlier).

[] Kinesics/ Kineme/ Kinemorphs

Communication through non-verbal means. This can be information, emphasis to the spoken world, emotions with feelings, self-expression and close relationship. A kineme is a fragment of a larger non-verbal message or a kinemorph. Main person: Ray Birdwhistell.

[] Kinetic art

Art with any active moving parts or elements or giving an impression of movement in the subject.

[] KISS

Keep It Short and Simple. From Management studies. Main person: G. Wells.

[] Kitsch

Fake, trashy, undemanding and materialist art. Jeff Koons and his once relationship with La Cicciolina, the Italian pornography model and politician, indulged in producing deliberate kitsch claiming its relationship with human experience and feelings.

[] Kuleshov effect

Editing and juxtaposing creates different significance in the adjacent shot, so that the same scene can be given different meaning by what is edited in next to it.

[] Label libel

Mass media stereotyping to the point of defamation. main person: Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).

[] Labelling

Identifying a deviant in society as a deviant by moral entrepreneurs (individuals who push their moralities in institutions and in the media). The label tends to intensify the behaviour. Main person: Howard S. Becker.

[] Laissez faire


Adam Smith the Scottish political economist proposed that there was an invisible hand where a market left to its own devices organises itself efficiently. The original message has been adopted by monetarists and economic liberals today (not all monetarists have been economic liberals). In contemporary times it means an approach of mimimum government interference in an economy which maintains its own markets - because of the need for a market referee no economy is truly laissez faire because it becomes criminal. It needs a high degree of small businesses and easy entryism into corporate run markets, and state/ IGO insitutions strong enough to prevent monopolistic objectives of transnational companies. The state has to organise a currency and keep its stable for business planning purposes.

[] LAN

Local Area Network: networked computers in a locality able to share programs, information and communication.

[] Langue/ Parole

Langue is the language structure fundamental to languages. Parole is the expression of language. Main person: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).

[] Latitude/ Longitude

Latitude is the angular distance north or south of the equator. 90 degrees are given between the equator and the poles, with each degree divided into 60 minutes. Historically latitude presented little problem for travellers. Longitude, or slowly passing between time zones, and a shift in time, needed an accurate clock, provided by John Harrison (who lived his formative years in Barrow-on-Humber, in northern Lincolnshire). Longitude is the angular distance east or west of the meridian line, with 180 degrees going around the earth subdivided into 60 minutes and 60 seconds. The International Date Line is based around 180 degrees (it moves somewhat for regional, national and island purposes). The western side is one day ahead of the eastern side. When the new millennium started in 2001 (most celebrated a year early!) the place to go was at the date line on its western side, to pop over to the eastern side 23 hours later to celebrate it again as that day dawned again! There are 24 time zones with Standard Time/ Universal Time based on Greenwich Mean Time, though most countries have one form of Daylight Saving Time or another.

[] Law of minimum effects

The view that the media has little effect in changing attitudes and beliefs.

[] Law of total situtation

The successful communicating of its message and all its meanings depends on getting the whole context of a message.

[] Leakages/ Linkages

Importing into the national or local economy or saving when it should be unnecessary (so that the multplier effect of any investment is rapidly diminished). An alternative is linkages, where an economy draws upon a wide range of its own output. One reason local authories like tourism is because it has a high level of linkages with other sectors of the economy, although leakages remain a problem. A small or less well developed economy will leak more and link less, this being the problem with underdeveloped countries.

[] Leaks

Deniable issues of information by government through informal channels which can be denied and therefore withdrawn if necessary. This is used for kite flying (testing the reaction to policy). Sometimes a leak does come from a disgruntled official or someone who wants to make key information public.

[] Leg

Between two scheduled stops on a flight.

[] Legal tender

Currency that cannot be refused when any payment debt is to be honoured (eg paying for some goods in a shop).

[] Linguistic turn

This has a huge influence on many disciplines, blurring the distinction between them through the common means of discourse narrative. It is post-structuralism. Language produces reality and reality-effects.

[] Linguistics

Diachronic linguistics looks at how language has changed in history. Synchronic linguistics studies the language at one point in time, usually now. General linguistics investigates the common principles of language. Descriptive linguistics looks at particular languages and describes their characteristics. Comparative lingustics looks at the similarities between languages. Contrastive lingustics looks at the differences between languages or groups of languages. For the sociological and general approaches, see discourse.

[] Lord Chamberlain

From James I and in statute fom 1737 to 1968, the Lord Chamberlain had powers to censor what took place in theatres by the fact that he vetted their scripts before granting a licence. The 1968 theatres act connected theatre into laws of taste and decency and libel laws and a few other establisnhment preferring provisions.

[] Logocentrism

This is where Jacques Derrida (1930-) and others lose any notion of reality within the shifting nature of language. There is nothing beyond that escapes language, especially speech.

[] McDonaldisation

This is where the principles of the McDonalds fast food network are seen to be pervasive throughout contemporary trends in society. Everything is becoming bite size and easy to consume. It is a somewhat awkward typology in that on the one hand it suggests modernism in the extreme (Weberian standardisation, predictability and uniformity) and on the other postmodern (pick 'n' mix and a value-uncertain surface life). Main person: George Ritzer.

[] Magic realism

American version of surrealism most active in the 1930s using photography and the juxtaposition of subject matter.

[] Male as norm

This is the pervasive effect of using "he" all the time in English, where the basis of the language that follows is patriarchal.

[] Management

The people who plan, organise, co-ordinate and run businesses and organisations, who take the decisions for the shareholders or institutional superiors. Some managers are the high level of the boardroom, others are middle managers erceiving as many instructions as they deliver for the operating/ business units and low level managers generally carry out instructions as given for control purposes. However, specialised knowledge means that management is much more complex that a simple hierarchy, with low level managers being key information suppliers and knowing what is possible, passing this to middle managers, with high level managers having to work within the constraints of what is possible. Some management is by contractbetween outsiders, as in franchising.

[] Market

A collection of intended and actual purchasers of one line of product or service however defined. They may know one another to various extents or not, and may be specialoised or a mass market of huge similar consumption patterns, but the market nevertheless is a setting of information passed around about the supplying of the product or service and the prices available. A perfect market is where everything relevant is known and rational decisions are taken, but most markets are imperfect at best. It is more dynamic for an economy is the market controls the suppliers rather than the supplier/s control the market. Businesses find out about a market and their best strategies through market research on the customers, using sampling questionnaires, focus groups and direct contact with the purchase. Advertising is an attempt to nudge the market in the advertiser's favour.

[] Marketing

A broad range of activities to find out market information and target the identified market in order to prepare the groundwork for and in fact carry out an increase in sales.

[] Marketing mix

Adjusting the nature and level of the product, price, promotion and place (of purchase) is one combination that measures a marketing mix.

[] Mass Observation/ Mass Observation Unit

This has been the Mass Observation Unit keeping diaries by large numbers of people on themselves and those they came into contact with. Mass Observation was established by Charles Madge and Tom Harrison in 1937 and thus was able to create a valuable archive of ordinary life in the Second World War. Archives of diaries like these are kept at the Tom Harrison Mass Observation Archives in the University of Sussex. Mass Observation continues in the present day, with people writing on themes and depositing diaries: see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/massobs/writers_needed.html.

[] Mass society

Researchers and theorists who take blocks of people focussing on their similarity. This mass market, labour movement, Fordist, approach has somewhat been broken down in the more diverse post-Fordist economy, where just in time (delivery) and IT facilitates specialisation and micro-marketing, where styles become various. Mass communication (complex in production across a range of types) suits mass society. Massification is where mass society is regarded as somewhat thick, and needs educating with simple approaches for their artistic and moral benefit.

[] Mass tourism

Made possible with higher incomes and package deals, this was the development of later industrial capitalism and an indicator of modernism, where an identifiable working class with certain lines in cultural taste went on mass tourist packages abroad. In postmodern times, when a working class is not so identifiable, mass tourism is not quite what it was. Tastes differ. So something like mass tourism, for example to certain resorts, has instead become tourism of one age group based on pursuing dance music. It is more dynamic and profitable to identify what people actually seek rather than lump them as a mass.

[] Materialist cinema

Celebrates the "physical fact" or the material of the production of cinema itself within the final film.

[] Meaning

Meaning comes about where language or symbolic activity (eg art) is engaged in a discourse according to codes employed, and meaning is acquired and gained through sharing common and not so common cultural assumptions that inform the codes. If the codes are not understood, any message is rendered meaningless. These codes are constantly changing as are the arrangements of discourses and these have to be constantly presented, learnt and re-iterated.

[] Medium

Acts of communication take place with a representational medium, like the face, the voice, though gestures are the communication as well as the communicator. Works of communication are the books, photographs, paintings, etc. presentable to the reader. Mechanical media are broadcasters who present these. Main person: John Fiske.

[] Medium is the message

This is the first chapter in McLuhan, M. (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge and Kega Paul, and it is his best known saying or McLuhanisms. The shaping of a message for a particular medium is so thorough that the meaning is altered - and therefore the medium becomes the message. The charismatic McLuhan (1911-1980) was very influential in understanding the media and remains its greatest spokesperson. He understood the media so well in terms of soundbites long before others, and these are known as McLuhanisms. He was the creator of the Centre for Media Studies in Toronto, Canada and a professor. He believed that the electronic word would replace the printed word.

[] Message

The content of a communication stream. All communication is about transmitting messages. It may be interfered with by noise. The message is what people want to get to the other side, the receiver, though in practice aspects of the medium and the ambiguity of cultural codes and not knowing them changes the message to some degree small or large. Also a message is affected in its meaning by its relationship with surrounding messages, just as the editing of a film can affect one scene by juxtaposing with others in a montage. The context is equally important, such as where and in what circumstances a message is transmitted. No message is therefore isolated or self-referential.

[] Metaphor

Using one area of life to add meaning to another, thus giving visual and verbal added value to what is conveyed in a message. The metaphor happens in visual and verbal media, and the medium will determine the kind of metaphor device used. The phrase "this argument uses a straw man" uses a metaphor in which the metaphor is a short cut to saying that the argument is false in its application and with an inappropriate example where better is available to produce a stronger argument. The metaphor draws on agricultural roots, something that burnt easily and was made to burn, and is flimsy, easy to knock down, worthless and leftover in material, and futhermore there are hints of "going fo the man and not the ball" (another metaphor) but obviously the code of the straw man has specific use that needs to be learnt. Metaphors are powerful but can stereotype and descend into cliché. Mixing metaphors also lose the power of the metaphor because the receiver needs to understand the meaning of one by the meaning of another, and the images conjoured rarely match.

[] Metanarrative

This is the narrative of narratives and is related to ideology. Metanarratives govern how we think and act and do, being a grand guiding story. The enlightenment had its metanarrative. The question is whether postmodernism qualifies as the end of metanarratives (as is its central implications), qualifies as a new metanarrative (an outsider's view if it is powerful enough) or is just high modernism and so a continuation of a metanarrative already established. Instead of metanarratives each group or person develops their own story of meaning none of which can have objective reference. Relates to Jean-François Lyotard (1924-).

[] Metasignals and signals

Whilst a signal is a direct transmitter incorporating a sign, a metasignal is an iconic object which carries an additional and broader sweep level of meaning. It can be a commentary on another signal, for example the body language that supports or clashes with a verbal signal. A type of metasignal is a uniform. Another is the genre codes that make something fiction and not fact, for example in the "who done it" setting. Equally, filming a fictious story in the manner of news footage is intended to give a metasignal that this is real, though usually some other metasignal shows it is not (for example, the script, the voices of actors, the story narrative contained therein...). The boundary between artifical and real, the edge of the stage, remains in people's minds. Main person: Desmond Morris.

[] Metonymy

A part of something that is used as a figure of speech for the whole. The best example is "the press" which means the whole newspaper media, not just the press. In TV news editing an image of a story is used as an illustrative metonymy. As such, metonymies have power to distort.

[] Microfiche/ PDF

An increasingly outdated form of information storage in reduced form. 105mm film in 148 mm lengths contains photographed data reduced between 18 and 48 times to be seen on special viewers. Microforms use 16 or 35 mm film. Nowadays computer memory stores the same data electronically (CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, hard disks) and the data can be seen on any computer screen. Adobe Acrobat .PDF files retain the appearance and arrangement of the data, sometimes the text being text but otherwise the whole being a pure scanned image. Archival data is image only for sheer speed of scanning, as with the Xerox Digipath method.

[] Minimalism/ Minimal cinema

Architecture and any art form including cinema that uses the simplest forms and no embellishment on the principle of the imagination filling in the gaps, or "less is more" or Quakerish contemplation.

[] Mixed economy

A collection of private enterprises and those owned by the state, with state regulation. All economies are to some extent mixed, but the balance has shifted towards the market end, due to pressures on government finances and a dislike of taxation. There are very few planned economies left with the collapse of the Soviet Union and even China, still with a Communist Party in government, operates increasingly a market economy.

[] Model

A model is an entity which represents. In one case it is a description that serves the function of an hypothesis and insight, and is an alternative to or is produced ahead of a verbal hypothesis or a theory. The model allows a construction to be made of a situation, and allows some work to be done of predictive value. Celebrities are also iconic for followers, and people model themselves on these other people. Models are, of course, people who are visually recorded as usually some sort of perfect or near perfect hanger of clothes or portrayers of their flesh and appearance.

[] Monopolistic competition

Often a confusing term because there are a large number of products which would be substitutes for one another, but heavy marketing and branding loses the effect of substitution and therefore builds in the effect of greater imperfection in the market and allows more profit (because the market runs less efficiently). The question is how much people "see through" branding, for example in buying supermarket brands of cereals instead of national brands and pulling down the added price of the national brands, or do they prefer the national brand with its reputation, certainties and promotional material?

[] Monopoly

Classically this is where there is one seller of a product, usually with control of the market. Some state firms were monopolies. The term is often more loosely used, either where there is in fact oligopoly, or there is one large firm and a few small competitors which continue in perhaps some regions or remain tolerated by the large firm. It could, for example, dump goods and services (probably illegal) using its resources to cripple the smaller firm, or use its economies of scale ruthlessly against all competition. There are other strategies of control and exclusion too, for example Microsoft might be called a monopoly in its 90% dominance of the computer graphic user interface operating system, and follows practices regarding integrating and excluding competitors, or even from one perspective "allowing" competitors. Microsoft often claims its good intentions by pointing to the competition. It also innovates in such a way to create a necessity of upgrading, which is classic monopoly type power where its production actions intend to shift the whole market. Yet Microsoft the monopoly could come tumbling down not by court action as was instituted in the Unite States but the day that a system like the open source Linux operating system can become as user friendly as well as cheap, with access to all the programs that currently only work to the Windows platform. Linux has made great inroads into servers, for example.

[] Montage

Juxtaposing one shot against another to create added meaning in a film. One purpose of montage is to bring the narrative along, but a sharper creative use is expressive to draw on symbols and metaphors.

[] Mores

Like taboos, these are the unofficial, unwritten, or collctively accepted official and written customs and rules that should not be broken, for which society has legal and extra-legal sanctions. Those who break these wide ranging rules will often be labelled as deviants.

[] Morse Code

Combinations of one to four dots/dashes for letters, five for numbers, and six for punctuation. Created by Samuel Morse (1791-1872). The famous "Help" is SOS, Save Our Soles (. . . - - - . . .).

[] Mosaic model of communication

Messages within communication come not just from immediate information but layers of information, from earlier in life, fleeting impressions, conversations, television, films. Some of these come back readily and some are suppressed or lost at the time. So communication has an internal and ever changing nature which should be realised particularly in generating speech communication. Mian person: S. L. Becker (1968).

[] 

Modernism and modernist

Modernism is the Enlightenment project epoch of ideas and understanding, developing from rationality in method and objectivity regarding science and technology and spreading far into the arts and social sciences and affecting basic ideas.

[] Multi-actuality

Signs in language which are open to various interpretations. That one meaning is dominant may be due to reasons of power and so the struggle for alternative meaning is often political. Main person: Valentin Volosinov, who, writing in the late 1920's argued that signs are the arena for class struggle. A more contemporary example is how words change their meaning when we know they have a variety of meanings, eg "gay".

[] Multiplier effect

In economics this is the reality that one person's spending becomes several people's spending by the fact that money earnt is money spent, and so the impact of additional money supply and/ or reduced saving is more spending and therefore earning and spending again. Depending on the availability of factors of production (labour, capital, land), this input will be less or more inflationary.

In culture it is where a media product sold abroad is itself an advertisement for its cultural and national source, adding to media imperialism or hegemony. So exposure to the culture reinforces that culture.

[] Musique concrète

Musical sounds distorted electronically. Main person: Pierre Schaeffer, 1948.

[] Myth

Myth is either something not true (common use) or something that illustrates a truth (theological and - lesser so - a linguistics use). A written or orally recalled drama, often with the supernatural (but not necessarily), suggests fundamental or at least greatly added significance. Myth inevitably relates to ideology or a belief system and provides a world view or metanarrative. In communication, myth gives form and shape to constructing and understanding discourses. Myth has the power to simplify and overrule complexity and ambiguity, by providing an in-place explanation, but also provides its own complexites and ambiguities (which may become a specific myth's downfall or source of external attack). Politically, Barthes (1915-1980) associates myth with the bourgeosie, with reducing alternative meanings, and providing simplfied meanings which keep them in power.

[] Myth of abundance

This is the view that more and more choice of satellite TV simply delivers a vast amount of the same pap. The very few minority interest channels might just survive but on restricted buydgets. Subsidy or licence may also be needed to maintain public service broadcasting but this needs a reasonable size of viewing figures and a general appeal.

[] Narcoticising Dysfunction

The sheer proliferation of the news media now, and its constant exposure, leads not to active informed citizens but chasers of too much information, much of it trivial, with resultant armchair passivity as far as citizen action is concerned. Narcoticising dysfunction is almost drugged absence of citizenship. Main people: R. Merton and P. H. Lazarsfield.

[] Narrative

The structure and process of the story being told. It is a crucial part of post-structuralism and narrative here is seen as having no objective reference. In a modernist understanding, a narrative tries to get as near to the external truth as possible, but this is problematic.

[] Narrowcasting

Specialist interest television and radio channels. This is the trend of the proliferation of channels and postmodernism in broadcasting.

[] National Film Archive

This intends to keep a selection of likely valuable material screened or broadcast in Britain, especially British made items. It was founded in 1935.

[] Naturalistic illusion

Arguably viewers are becoming more sohisticated today and aware of television's production methods and even tricks, but television has considerable editing skill to produce a narrative on video that looks natural. Partly because of the obvious ownership bias of newspapers and the history and rules of "balance" on television, people are more likely to believe television, especially the news, and become unaware of the constructed nature of its product.

[] Neologism

Creating a new word from old word, or giving an old word new and additional meanings.

[] Neon-realism

The neon light of night as a metaphor for heightened disturbance within the familiar urban landscape. Main people: Neil Sinyard (concept creator), Paul Schrader (films director).

[] Non-realism

In religion, a post-structuralist approach to the meaning of religious texts. God ceases to have objective reality but becomes trapped in text (dies into the text - Christianity) and is the equivalent of the highest ideals. Also religious doctrine becomes purely myth and nothing more than guidelines for worship (worthship), personal redirection and social action. Religion is essentially cultural, so that by this account Jesus or any other prophetic figure took the linguistic and cultural nomrs of his day and advanced them along, to be subsequently advanced in the new tradition, it changing in interpretation (even if becoming more credally fixed) as culture changed. Main people: Don Cupitt, Lloyd Geering.

[] New Historicism

The placing of literary texts within their historical textual contexts. Whilst it is not possible within post-structural understanding to objectively check history against a real world, it can be said that historical context produces its own kind of texts, given the texts of the time, and this is what New Historicism is all about.

[] New Journalism

In the 1960's novel writing dramatising forms were entered into journalistic pieces with a greater stress on the author, a revolution of style over neutral objectivity. This combination relates to faction and docudrama and real life soaps in other media. Important person: Tom Wolfe (1931 -).

[] New Objectivity

In painting and photography these were intended windows on the world to give a true likeness. Still life and landscape paintings exhibited in Mannheim in 1925 showed realism of the kind found in straightforward photography, although the movement for this in photography was independent and was a rejection of experimental and less realistic styles in photography, leaving these to paintings! Naming paintings person: G. F. Hartlub; photographers: Albert Rencher-Patzsch (1897-1966), Paul Strand (1890-1976) and Edward Weston (1887-1958).

New Wave

Cheap, somewhat experimental, radical, hand-held location based films that started in France in 1959. Their breaking into ordinary film conventions influenced mainstream cinema for jarring effects. Some main directors: François Truffaut, Jean Luc Goddard, Eric Rohmer, Louis Malle.

[] New World Order

For the right wing, this is a conspiracy of elite groups whose task is to remove the nation state and replace it with international power focussed around the UN and to erode individualist liberties. This is influential in the United States amongst right wind groups and private militias who are suspicious of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an arm of this transformation particularly after the violent intervention in the sige at Waco, Texas, with the Davidian sect led by David Koresh.

The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, spoke of a New World Order in terms of a security arrangement that would have either encompassed NATO and a reformed Warsaw Pact, or replaced them. However the coup, the coming to power of Boris Yeltsin and the ending of the Soviet Union, brought that policy to a close. The Waswaw Pact ended too and NATO expanded.

The left speaks of a New World Order only inasmuch as the elite is becoming more concentrated in multinationals, the nation state is declining in its inability to control multinationals and international finance, and that international institutions like the World Trade Organisation, which force through free trade (with the power of the United States behind it), lack democratic accountability and ignore local wishes and certainly the needs and concerns of the developing world. The closest transnational body to be an embryonic State, the European Union, is seen as lacking democratic accountability because elected members of the Executive branch of member states form the principle decision making body, the Council of Ministers, and they meet in private. The extent of the veto of one state over all others is diminishing with enlargement. Their decisions are carried out by the European Commission against all member states, and the Commission also proposes legislation to the Councils. The European Parliament elected by all the citizens of the Union is the weakest link of the three, with some scrutinising powers and powers over the make up of the Commission, but generally lacks teeth. Whilst the European Union seeks out to control competition policy and is developing its own currency, the major multinationals are much bigger than it, and there is some friction of influence particularly with the United States.

[] News framework

Shared asuumptions that lead to the same news content. A good example is the heavy Westminster bias and reporting done from a clique of reporters and editors of what is often the trivia of machinations amongst politicians.

[] News values

These are attributes which make an item more likely to appear as news. The best example is "man bites dog" - the unusual. Conflict makes better news than harmony. "No news is good news" does mean that good news is no news. Good news needs surprise, otherwise it is no news. Good news has a better chance of getting in if there is a lot of bad news about. Scandal is always a bit of fun, just as is the utter trivia of celebrity lives. Flesh also gets into the tabloids. Something closer to home is reported more than far away - the far away story must be disastrous to compete with a nearby relatively important story. Equally important is cultural familiarity, linked to the fact that easy stories that require little explanation get more news coverage. A TV story will get transmitted if there are good pictures, or some more pictures, and many a verbal report will require obvious illustrative pictures.

The point is that all these choices bare little relationship to the story itself but rather relate to news handling.

[] Noise

Noise can be a fuzzing of the original message, externally perhaps, but it can also be from the anbiguity of codes. Main people: C. E. Shannon and W. Weaverwho wrote in 1949 about the difference between engineering noise and semantic noise.

[] Nomadic thought

Authority in institutions is territorial and to deterritorialise such authority nomadic thought wanders across their boundaries. This also relates to intellectual thought and not respecting long held disciplinary boundaries, and so undermines their special interests. After Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

[] Non price competition

Differentiation of products and services so that these become a way of competiing, for example services competiting yet between different tourism areas.

Non Governmental Organisation (NGO)

This is a voluntary body created for international intentions and may receive some recognition for its work but has no status in law other than given in individual states. An example is the World Wildlife Fund for Nature.

[] Norms

Norms are negotiated expectations of behaviour of a group or society upon its members, and they carry sanctions when transgressed. People are educated and otherwise socialised into understanding and accepting norms, but some norms are much more evolved with social interaction and might be in conflict with overt social rules. The media either consciously or unconsciously reinforce norms, as according to Marxist analysis does the superstructure of the state in transmitting the norms of the bourgeoisie.

[] Nouveau réalisme

Junk converted into collage and structures particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. Naming person: Pierre Restany.

[] Nouveau roman

The anti-novel which tried to remove plot, character development, action, etc, mainly in France, Germany, UK, US. Example French writer: Alain Robbe-Grillet.

[] Obsolescence

In media terms, when behaviour declines relating to some once supported cultural activity leaving its institutions obsolescent. This happened with the small cinema.

[] Occupancy

Bed, guest or sleeper occupancy relates occupied beds to those available, and single or double room occupancy does the same for rooms.

[] Official Secrets Act

This started in 1911 with a spy scare in Agadir, and was developed with the Irish Problem in the 1920s and then for the Second World War. It is now built into the ordinary workings of government, for example it was used during the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001 as the then officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foods went around farms deciding on animals to slaughter.

[] Oligopoly

Perfect oligopoly is where the produces are the same but there are very few providers, but imperfect otherwise.

[] Onomatopoeia

Words which sound like that which they signify. One questionable theory is that early language was onomatopoeic.

[] Openness

A feature of language is that something new can be said and other speakers can understand it. Main person: Charles Hockett in 1960.

Operational research or Operations research (OR)

Quantitative research process of a multidiscplinary nature into business and administration problems so that solutions are generated.

[] Opinion leader

A member of "the great and the good" being a person of trusted taste whilst exposure to raw information, or just happens to be anyone of made celebrity employed in a broadcasting or newspaper slot, the opinion leader attempts to use the position occupied to form national opinions, norms and values. They probably think they are more important than they are. In a postmodern society opinions, norms and values are far more fluid and specialised, and opinion leaders cannot have the impact they once had: even those who specialised their opinion (monomorphic) around areas of expertise have lost "power" to the specialised group as the relativity of values and absence of objective knowledge on a wider plain becomes doubted.

[] Opinion Poll

Using random or deliberately representational techniques, a poll of 1000 to 2000 is said to bring down the error rate to around 3% either way. The sample has to rise much further to significantly reduce the error rate further. Outcomes depend on the question asked, and the repeating of the question, and the built in assumptions. Polls don't just record, they give information and so alter behaviour themselves.

[] Opportunity cost

The cost of something not done. Making a decision one way has to be balanced against the benefits of having done something the other way, especially costly in the light of failure and yet seeing others benefit from the alternative strategy. Opportunity cost is all about scarcity and not having a cake and eating it.

Optical Character Reading (OCR)

The scanner takes a large image of text though in less consuming black and white. It then scans the text for tell-tale curves and lines as joined into wholes according to its records of the alphabet and punctuation. It then produces the letters and punctuation, and an additional character if it finds no match, in a text form. This includes interpretation as italics and underlining. In addition, many OCR packages will also attempt to interpret the governing layout of the text, such as tables and indentations, particularly for highly formatted word processing packages. The result inevitable needs editing. This is not the same as picture scanning text and it being left as a picture. Whilst, for examples, some web pages look like formatted text, if they were image scanned only (eg Digipath) then they cannot be used except photographically - text cannot be copied and pasted elsewhere for example. This does need OCR work.

[] Opus

Latin for "work" and used to classify musical works except Mozart who used K or KV after classification by Ludwig van Köchel, the botanist and mineralogist.

[] Oral culture

The middle east in biblical times was an oral culture, where people could remember in detail and tell stories to one another about great events and the past. Christianity grew by an oral culture before the gospels were written, Jesus and his followers and others were remembered orally - for example, there is little reference to Jesus historically in written material except a slight mention by the Roman historian Josephus of a small movement and his death.

[] Organic architecture

The building's parts must be harmonious to the whole, the whole must be harmonious to the function, and the building must fit within and be a part of its setting. Example person: Frank Lloyd Wright (1867/ 1869-1959).

[] Organisation culture

These are the norms and values of the business organisation. One approach sees three tendencies: the power culture (who is in charge and how the person is in charge in terns of communicating), the role culture (people working within the organisation and how communication passes along), and the person culture where the organisation serves the individuals. Main person: Handy, Charles. (1976), Understanding Organisations, London: Penguin.

[] Overhearing

Below complete self-awareness, humans overhear what they want to hear. Main people: Georg Simmel, K. H. Wolff.

[] Ownership

A sole trader has unlimited libaility, trading for the oneself, even if with employees. The person is self-employed. In a partnership two or more share the risks and the benefits with each having unlimited liability but with a legislative background. In a company liability of its owners is limited. The company may have privately held shares or be publically quoted.

[] Package

In tourism this is where two or more elements are put together to be sold at a single inclusive price. It is obviously popular in tourism because people who want a place to stay need to travel to get there, or people who want to travel need a place to stay.

IT definitions include software that is integrated together and also in ICT the secure units of data that come through the Internet and produce emails, web pages and FTP downloads on to computers.

Digital television can be bought in packages. The customer chooses which bundle to buy according to packages offered, preference and budget.

[] Packaging

Not unlike in the shop packaging around a product, this is the overall presentation of a media message: the editing, style, selected content and presenters.

[] Papparazzi

The group of freelance photographers whose earnings depend on the pictures they can sell and go out to capture perhaps reclusive celebrities and likely embarassing situations. The reputation of the papparazi took a nose-dive with the death of Princess Diana in 1997 in a chauffeur driven car, pursued by them on motorbikes at speed.

[] Para-linguistics

The study of the voice beyond words as conveying meaning.

[] Para-proxemics

Proximity handling of a person featured on television, using camera shots and framing to present an emotional relationship with the viewer. So it's about representing and passing into personal space. Main person: Joshua Meyowitz in Gumpert, G., Cathcart, R. (1979), Inter/Media: Interpersonal Communication in a Meia World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[] Para-social interaction

The illusion that soap stars and others have a real relationship with viewers. Examples are Princess Diana, Jill Dando (one killed, one murdered - which heightens feelings of attachment and loss) and soap stars/ characters. The government has started taking an interest by "approving" story lines that get across its perceived beneficial social messages because people identify with soap characters rather than with politicians or impersonal messages.

[] Paradigm

T. S. Kuhn used the term paradigm to indicate a period of a metanarrative over how facts are sought out, understood and processed. A paradigm shift occurs when the metanarrative that we all assume to work by changes.

In language it is the relationnship between a unit of use and others. Vocabulary is paradigmic (words relating to one another) and a sentence is syntagmic because it is a collection of these in meaningful form that follows on from the paradigmic rules. A paradigm should contain its parts that share characteristics to make up that paradigm, and look distinctive.

[] Participant Observation

A researcher is both a participant and an observer amongst a group of people being studied. It produces rich diary-like data overquite a peeriod of time for later reducing into a narrative. The ethical research issue is how much and who should be told of the research intention of the participant observer. It is most effective to tell no one, because the idea is to become unnoticed in the everyday activies of a group. However, this could be deemed unethical, and it is possible to tell some or all people of the research intention, but to let them "forget" this as absorption into the group takes place. However, in times of group stress, the researcher may be an influence on events and may even be excluded.

[] Passengers

People who are carried by someone else going to their destination. The through passenger goes with the provider all the way. The tranfer passenger moves probably to another provider to finish the journey with a connecting service. The transit passenger just pauses in between a journey.

[] Passivity

Unreflective audiences, which rarely exist as all people have ways of responding to the media, and in a multi-channel age they determine what they watch in the first place.

[] Pavlovian response

Pavolov's dogs were rewarded for an action, and as dogs do they salivated when they saw the meat. Through repetition, they salivated with the repetitive action even when there was no meat. So a pavlovian response is where people respond with anticipation through repetitive stimulous even without reward. It is translated as a psychological condition of meaningless response.

[] Pay television

Some of it is one payment for any length of watching in that period, and others is pay-per-view, requiring additional payment. These still (usually) carry advertisements). Satellite and cable technology led to this method of income generation and is an increasing part of narrowcasting digital telvision. Now main channels (eg Channel 4 and E4) will put expensive programmes first on to the pay channel and then on to the public service channel that remains free to view.

[] Pedagogy

Teaching and how it is done. Closed or conservative pedagogy has an approach which sees teachers as experts imparting a fixed body of knowledge to students whose job is to absorb this new information for recall in assessment. Open or progessive pedagogy is student centred whose own experience contributes to the learning process, a two-way communication exercise between the teacher as faciliator and the student as learner. The result in terms of learning may have to be evaluated over a wide area rather than narrowly assessed. The constant need for recruitment and results in a corporate and comeptitive setting for learning tranlates into a conservative pedagogy based on behaviourist principles of input and output.

[] Perfect competition

Full market knowledge, price competition, very many suppliers with many coming into and leaving the market without hindrance, a situation results where firms must operate at the most efficient point in order to receive normal profit, the amount needed to continue in business. This is more a theoretical construct than practical reality anywhere.

[] Periodicity

The turn around period of news organisations - which with 24 hour news channels becomes virutally instant. The attraction of live coverage, first shown extensively on CNN during the 1997 Gulf War, is said to be a victory of content over analysis, giving a narcotic dysfunction effect.

[] Phonemics/ Phonology

Phonemics is the study of language sounds. Phonology is about the distinctive sounds produced by a specific language. A phoneme is the smallest sound in a language and the range is from 15 to about 50.

[] Photography

1727 was when Johann Heinrich Schulze, professor of Anatomy, University of Altdorf, first stated that silver salts darken due to light and not heat. Joseph Niépce (1765-1833) (with brother Claude) fixed camera obscura images in 1793 and he went on in 1826 to fix a roof top scene on pewter plate. He met Louis Daguerre (1789-1851) in 1830 but his death meant that Daguerre alone went on to create a more practical photography where less than half an hour was needed to with mercury vapour to fix and image and this was taken up by the French government in 1839. Photography was introduced to Britain by the astronomer Sir John Herschel and introduced terms like to photograph and photographic, negative and positive (in 1840) and snap-shot (in 1860). William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) allowed photographs to be reproduced using the negative with the Calotype (1841). He also invented photogravure, to print via photographic engraving, in 1852. Sensitivity in ordinary photography rose with the collodian or wet plate process from Frederick Scott Archer (1851), which was replaced by silver bromide by Richard Leach Maddox (1871), and improved upon by others, allowing factory produced photographic plates. Alexander Parkes invented celluloid in 1861 and this was made by Eastman in the US from 1889 which as the century turned this Kodak soon had an overwhelming monopoly. This industrialisation of ease of use products allowed photography to develop. At that time the Lumière brothers had the panchromatic emulsion available to patent colour plates but exposure was 40 times greater than black and white. Flash was invented in 1931 by Harold Eagerton. In 1935 Kodak and in 1936 Agfa brought out colour photography, Kodachrome invented by amateurs Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes, and Agfacolor respectively, based on multiple layer film and coupling components. Whilst colour photography became cheaper and more mass market than black and white, the computer age threatens film with digitised images and image compression in computers. The camera receives the image and scans the picture digitally. The result can be put directly into a computer. Digital photography is weakened by the pixels having a number, and storage capacity problems, whre compression also threatens image quality, whereas photographs are continuous, and thus many home users prefer to scan photographs using a flat bed scanner and image editing software for better results. Alternatively 35mm negatives produced can be scanned and journalists have sent the scans down telephone lines to receivers, avoiding the need to process the positive photograph and yet keeping the benefits of the image.

[] Photomontage

Superimposing one photograph image over another or more. Called photo-plastics by surrealists and Dadaists.

[] Phototypesetting

Removes the need for hot metal in newspaper production. The proof comes from the Desk Top Publishing display, and the whole production process can be automated.

[] Pied-à-terre

A temporary and transitional place to stay.

[] Pictorial photography

The attempt to copy paintings through photography. Main person: Henry Peach Robinson (1830 - 1901).

[] Pidgin English

"Pidgen" is a Chinese corruption of "business" and this crude form of workable English grew in South East Asia due to the impact of trade with the British. Pidgen English is a collective term for English forms which use home grown grammar and English words, often mispronounced compared with International English. International English should swamp the various examples of Pidgen English, but these are local languages which absorb influences and change just like any language does.

[] Pilot study

A study before a study, in which methods are tried out on sample sizes too small for the subject under study but large enough to evaluate the methods and indeed to discover is the project is viable.

[] Pirate radio

These set the pattern for commercial radio when operating in the 1960's just outside or well outside British terratorial waters. Te flexibility of equipment and enthusiasm for narrowcasting meant pirate radio continued with the rather bland commercial radio, and again radio has followed the pirate's lead by specialising more.

[] Plagiarism

Plagiarism means presenting the intellectual work of others as one's own. It is one of academia's highest crimes because of the stress on originality and producing new ideas. As most ideas are not new, the skill is to write to demonstrate understanding of the subject on one's own words and then to use referenced materials from others to give support and show knowledge of the academic tradition and occupying a space within it (which makes original thinking harder!). Plagiarus is Latin for kidnapper.

[] Play theory of mass communication

This theory or approach is not as such what happens but what should happen. The media should provide audiences with "play-experiences", meaning "communication-pleasure", according to William Stephenson (1967), in The Play Theory of Mass Communication, Chicago: Chicago Univeristy Press, as well as giving people autonomy. We might think of soap operas, like Eastenders, which, apparently, "everybody is talking about" according to the publicity and which allow people to reflect upon their own lives. The question is whether this soap opera land or the news as entertaining is at all an enhancing experience, or if it is more like Baudrillard's simulacra.

[] Pluralist

A diversity of choices, and a variety of meanings available, for discussion and action (pluralism is not simply a ghettoising of unmet differences). Pluralist is a liberal stance and one which considers that the discussion that takes place between alternatives is beneficial, either in a Habermas objective sense or a Rortian pragmatic postmodern sense of the advantages of freedom.

[] Politics of accommodation

In the media this means a nip and tuck adjustment in some cases in order to bolster defences in other cases, especially between broadcasters and the government, but it is also seen in how a newspaper of a certain bias reads the public mood and responds to it.

[] Pop Music

It has long roots in folk and jazz, but came to the fore in the 1950s and has continued with more specialist offshoots ever since. Once a vehicle of two way communication of a generation with music producers, including protest and threatening mores and norms, pop music has become highly commercial and manufactured, and the weakened singles market (where the electronic and laser music technology now makes a mockery of two pieces of music as was logical with a smaller short play record) has become an easy arena for marketing and promotion. The pop industry with its culture of increasingly uncreative and unthreatening fashion, dance sex has appealed to younger and younger age groups with ever blander undemanding music and assisted in reducing the length of childhood.

[] Populist

This is where ostensibly a political leader follows the masses, though it can be only that the political leader follows the prejudices of the masses, and does so in order to gain power elsewhere. The example of William Hague is interesting. Elected as Conservative Party leader in 1997 following its huge defeat at the polls he started as a multiculturalist. This was one kind of populism, epitomised by the wearing of a baseball cap back to front American style and meme-like, and coming down a water splash. When this failed to have political impact, he turned to a right wing populism of his own party, believing that these were the natural prejudices of the British. At each turn the New Labour government took in enough of his policies to neutralise any possible impact (regarding asylum seekers and the Euro, for example). In the end he suffered a second heavy defeat and the Conservative Party discussed the need not to be populist. Margaret Thatcher combined elements of populism and absence of populism which added to her reputation of being resolute and in charge, until she so lost the popular touch that she was removed by her own party hierarchy.

[] Pornography

Pornography is sexual imagery and writing that takes erotica to repetitive stereotypical (and often discriminatory) codes of response. According to whichever critique, it either creates a dependency on a climbing scale (rather like drug abuse) or provides a release valve away from sexual violence in society and also manifests itself anyway in any culture. Others say that its production involves for its models, and therefore transmits, oppression, sexual violence and is deviant in behaviour, and that the contractual nature of its prostitution is not adequate consent. Explicit violence exists in some pornography. Soft pornography is a variant of hard pornography in that it simulates sexual action in a bland unreal manner but according to the same set sterotypes. Erotica is intended to avoid stereotypes and be more meaningful, but erotica is ambiguous regarding instant sexual excitement and response (for which it observes the same codes as generated by pornography). Pornography was readily available on the Internet from its early days (indeed pornography drove profitable Internet development and the means of credit card payment) and has created the need for filtering software and policies to exclude its appearance in public places where it offends general morals and codes. Also its stereotypes clash with equality of opportunity intentions of workplaces as well as being simply inappropriate. The availability of this material on video and Internet means that more story based meaningful (and sometimes mainstream) films with erotic content have become progressively less censored in the usually well censored UK. The consensus seems to be emerging in the UK general media that consensual sexual content is more acceptable than violent content, though this is not the case in the USA (which has a more individualist and violent culture and yet where non-marital sex is seen as sinful according to still influential evangelical Christianity). The word pornography means "Harlots' writing" in Greek.

[] Positivism

This is the influence of science on sociology, in the formation of sociology as a subject. It is based on verifiable or empirical measurement and predictability of the relationship between discrete phenomena. Social human behaviour is regular and can be studied scientifically. Positivism is against interpretation and in favour of objectivity, and this affects other disciplines such as history. Main person (founder): Auguste Comte ( 1798-1857).

[] Posters

Made possible by colour lithographic printing, posters are used in advertising and propoganda. Some have become very famous and are forever repeated or adapted for ironic twists.

[] Post-industrial society

This is the economic and social structure of postmodernism. All mass elements are gone, from mass production to a mass working class, to mass taste. Culture is fragmented and so is identity. Its people are specialist educated (and many poor become part of the underclass, a lumpen unemployed or semi-employed part timers drifting in and out of work and training). Also known as post-Fordist (Ford being the epitomy of the factory line mass output) the post-industrial society is more high value and specialist in its manufactures and is anyway predominantly service orientated.

[] Postmodernism

This is a term which sweeps across so many areas of intellectual and artistic life. In that it presents the same sorts of issues across intellectual areas, it blurs the once clear distinctions between subject areas. It has impact in history, painting, literature, architecture (double coding), fashion and music. It is postmodernism, and therefore is discontinuous from the modernist or enlightenment project. It rejects those ideologies and metanarratives that said there was real, scientific, linear progress. It means goodbye to transcendental realities, fixed meanings, facts and the correspondence theory of truth. It takes pluralism, which was liberal but still objective and a method of rationally finding the truth, over a precipice into a world of meanings within each group, or individual, none of which can be challenged by an objective other, and so a state of relativism exists between them. This is the basis behind the tendency for style or presentation over substance. Ritual play is its own entity. God dies into the text and becomes expressed aspirations. Philosophy becomes pessimistic or pragmatic (Rorty), and liberal space for conversation is for conversation itself and its benefit of including the other. Unlike critical realism, there is no beyond for anything to be. The linguistic turn takes place in understanding texts that were once assumed to be objective. The reality-effect is what is left in the realist style of narrative after the realism has gone. Deconstruction is postmodernism's method of opening texts up to multiple contrasting meaning. Postmodernism has radical (challenges every given) and conservative (no ultimate ethical basis of challenge to extremities; or within capitalist narrative with no alternatives) implications.

[] Post-structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) had privileged the underlying system of rules of language over their use. Post-structuralism is more interested in the use of language, the secondary and implied meanings as in discourse.

There is no outside language, and the language we use is itself the described of description. Language thus becomes the primary matter of study because there is no beyond the linguistic condition. The linguistic turn means that texts are based on the relationship between signifiers and not between signifier and the referent (reality). Post-structuralism starts itself with structuralism (and may be continuous rather than discontinuous with it - both see it as a primary matter of study), the view that at the heart of reality was a fundamental of deep language structures (Saussure (1857-1913)) whereas this in post-structuralism falls into a level postmodern approach about the workings of language. The real appears to change only through changed textual simulations in different historical settings (Baudrillard), and in that the simulation becomes the real. It is text which is historicised, sociologised, economised and so on -these categories know from their textual make-up (as with New Historicism). Inevitably, power relationships take place within the performance of language (and thus language comes under constant challenge and changes to be inclusive). Names include Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Hans-Georg Gadamer {1900-), Jacques Derrida (1934-), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Julia Kristeva (1941-) and Jean-François Lyotard (1924-).

[] Pragmatics

Part of semiotics. The users of text (expressions) and their social context shape their meanings, and these texts depend on them for their meaning.

[] Price competition

With little or no branding or marketing on alternative goods, competition is through price.

[] Price discrimination

This is charging different customers different prices for the same product. This is often because of varied incomes, or because of different methods of payment.

[] Price elasticity of demand

The expansion and contraction of demand (not increase or decrease - these are external and result in shifts in the curve, not movements along the deamnd curve) caused by price changes, elastic when a small change in price results in a big change and inelastic when vice versa. Incidentally, price is average revenue (in diagrams, the average revenue curve), but the imact of price on expansion or contraction of supply or demand is always at the margin (marginal utility).

[] Price pegging

Keeping a price the same while absorbing higher costs. This is a price to stay outwardly competitive in terms of cash flow and assumes a temporary situation with resources to match any losses. Pegging also happens when costs fall. Petrol prices are often pegged due to the political nature of petrol sales, an area of great taxation controversy to which oligopoly petrol suppliers are sensitive.

[] Primary group

Where there is face to face communication. Norms, mores and roles are created in this close setting to which people feel they belong. A secondary group is larger and more impersonal, like social class. The smaller group has the ability to filter out contrary messages and bind its members, though the individual's role depends upon the position within its hierarchy (and inequality can rise with the size of the group). The secondary group affects communication through the construction of the meaning of language. Concepts inventor: Charles H. Cooley writing in 1909. Other names: R. F. Bales, Shils, Janovitz, Giglioli.

[] Primary industries

The extraction of raw materials and materials processing before movement to be manufactured in some process into goods.

[] Problems and Communication

Too much communication can be harmful to getting simple tasks done so restriction is more efficient (H. Leavitt), but for a complicated problem less restriction leads to more discussion and feedback with the contributory generation of creative alternatives (Marvin Shaw).

[] Productivity

The output achieved for given input units of capital, labour or land.

[] Printing

John of Gutenberg (15th century) invented relief printing where a raised surface is applied to paper and ink. In intaglio printing the opposite happens: the print is cut into the plate. In planographic printing the design and background are on a flat surface. Lithographic printing is ink absorption and removal according to treated areas, and colour lithography started around 1870. These days Lithography is carried out by preparing photographic process on to zinc or lauminium sheets. Off-set lithography uses a roller rather than a plate. Computers also print, making common the multiple pins of the dot matrix printer though some used typewriter-like daisy wheels to raise quality (but for word processing only). Inkjets and deskjets were quiet bottled printers and the Laser printer adds more speed. Colour printing in computers is usually through light secondary colours (not artists') of cyan, yellow, magenta and then black, which reflect the fact that screens produce all their colours through the primary colour dots of red, green and blue (artists' misnamed primary colours are red, blue and yellow), though transmitted according to variations of up to 16 million colours.

[] Product life cycle

First of all investment is made and losses occur, as the new product needs to come to come to public attention through strategies of marketing. If successful there follows a period of take off and then maturity. This is where the profits come in. However, products become "old". How a product becomes old depends on competition, technological change, and changing taste. In the case of little other than over familiarity and changing taste, marketing efforts have to be made to demonstrate something new and different to rejuvenate the product. It is often better to withdraw the product and start with something new. Producing new products keeps a business fresh, innovative and likely to grow, one based on mature products is likely to stagnate.

[] Propoganda

A deliberate manipulative use of symbols of communication to gain a positive, sympathetic and loyal response.

[] Proxemics

The use of space as non-verbal communication or meaning in use of spaces. For the English a yard or less is inimate, up to eight feet is personal, and then the space is public. Other cultures vary this distance with their implied meanings. Television and film deals with these issues through papa-proxemics, for example in the framing of a person in shot, from intimacy to the impersonal.
Defensible space is a concept in architecture for the amount of personal space by physical barriers.

Public relations (PR)

Public relations is related to but not the same as marketing. It is more to do with the organisation and generating goodwill about the organisation and its activities. Public relations, unlike a marketiing campaign, never stops, and sometimes has to rapidly counter adverse publicity. Sometimes PR has to be paid for but sometimes it is generated through publicity. Good works helps an organisation's reputation, so it is thought to be worth some expenditure in order to develop a good name. The Internet has become a key area for public relations. Researchers always have to be aware that organisations are concerned with public relations and that information is always coloured by this concern.

[] Publicity

This differs from advertising in that it is editorial space not advertising space, free and seen to be filtered through the opinion of a third party which is believed to be more neutral than from the organisation. However, these days, some newspapers and especially free newspapers are in cohorts, writing what looks like editorial but isn't. Also a good PR department (say of a large charity) is clever at putting out a press release, arranging all the potential interviewees and filming locations, and lazy journalists like nothing better than a story off the peg to demonstrate some human interest story. Dressed up as news, it may as well be advertising.

[] Purpose of trip

The principal reason a journey is made, even if there are supplementary reasons that of themselves would not justify the trip.

[] Push-pull theory

A theory of migration where people leave an area where conditions are poor and are attracted to areas where conditions are good. The theory is useful in understanding the large flows of people on the move from places with a deteriorating economy or political instability and oppression to areas of reasonable living standards, toleration and space. It explains why, since the ending of the Iron Curtain, the European Union is slowly if selectively moving towards a position of restricting non-EU citizens from entering except through limited processes of economic necessity or familial ties. Push-pull has a use in tourism where it asks who frmo where would visit somewhere else.

[] Rack rate

The published price of a hotel room, whereas prices will be discounted with people turning up at times that are not busy or with cash up front etc. The average room rate reflects what actually is paid.

[] Radio

At the end of the First World War "cats whiskers" crystal radio sets were the first receivers of bradcasting, with the valve soon replacing the crystal. The Post Office (part of the government Civil Service) was resistant to broadcasting and banned it after Marconi broadcast from near Chelmsford in 1920, resuming in 1922 with the station 2LO. The Post Office in effect laid out the grounds for the British Broadcasting Company, later Corporation, starting by Royal Charter in 1927, which regulated broadcasting through its monopoly of radio which lasted all the way until until 1972, when the impact of pirate radio led to the start of IBA regulated commercial broadcasting. Early BBC radio was elitist and high minded, as set out by John Reith (educate and enlighten) up to 1937, and politically ducked and weaved to retain independence of decision making though with continuous compromises against government pressure. In 1967 BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4 replaced the Light, Third and Home services, being the first impact of pirate radio and general social modernisation. The commercial stations have merged their programmes into seemless presentation with advertisting and sponsorship and with the advent of "Gold" stations started to specialise more. Regulation became lighter after the end of the IBA and licences have been awarded for specialist radio stations, though these specialities have been broadly interpreted. In the 1990's BBC Radio 1 had itself become "an institution" and sacked its old guard of presenters and moved to a deliberate youth audience. In the late 1990's and 2000 on BBC Radio 2 has occupied the space Radio 1 vacated as well as maintained its other areas. BBC Radio 3 has shifted slightly towards more popularity with the success of Classic FM (BBC Radio 3 mainly continues to play whole works and Classic FM movements of works) and Radio 4 has stayed the same. BBC Radio 5 started as a mixture of education and sport but became BBC Radio 5 Live, a speech station of news and sport that attempts to be more informal than BBC Radio 4's news.

[] Rate of exchange

The exchange rate between one currency and another.

[] Rate-of-return pricing

The price is set to gain a return on investment, with major problems if that price is uncompetitive within the market place.

[] Ratings

Television and radio use ratings to extrapolate, obviously, how many people are receiving their programmes. For radio, audience is measured by numbers and contact time, and TV measures peaks and troughts within programmes. However, advertisers are as much interested in the appreciation of the programme and what categories of people are watching. Thus programmes with lower audiences can be more successful for advertising, and this partly explains the sucess of Channel 4 since it has sold its own advertising and the shift of Channel 4 to a safer more middle class presentation of programmes away from its more creative radicalism when its advertising revenue went to regional ITV companies and it was paid by them to exist.

[] Readership

The number of people who actually read rather than just buy a newspaper or periodical (the circulation). Some women's magazines have a readership many times the circulation, whreas daily newspapers have much less. An advertiser is interested in readership (over a certain period of time - five years later in a doctor's surgery may be of little use).

[] Reality-effect

This is where we carry on, because of language use, assuming a correspondence theory of truth and thus see "facts" even where a post-structural understanding states otherwise. Historial evidence may suggest facts, beut there is the need to be more sophisticated. Concept inventor: Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

[] Reality television

Reality television is where the game show is extended over several weeks to examine behaviour in confined settings according to certain ground rules. The most obvious examples are Big Brother and Survivor. Psychologists may pontificate but they are somewhat artificial and edited. The ironic point is that they are not reality. What they do is set up a symbiotic relationship between the press and TV. The press coverage is free publicity for the ongoing TV event and where it is at, and the press increase sales each time it refers to popular reality television. The event is usually around basic human emotions of love, sex, trust and betrayal, with actual human faces; the fact that reality TV is minimalist - very little happens -is part of its bizarre attraction The best reality TV is where it is live or happening live but condensed into easy to watch summaries.

Received Pronounciation (RP)

This is also known as BBC English, as practised during Reithian days. It is often wrongly stated that it is regionless in accent. In fact it is a London (beyond an isolated cockney - cockney though influenced the braod Australian accent) to Oxford accent which represented the class structure of England and the development of this region of influence, and it was also this accent which was transferred into Scotland by the changes in its aristocracy, which is why it is said that certain Scots speak the purest English.

[] Reconstructionism

This is where the "reality-effect" remains reality! This is where the commonsense approach is reliable. A fact presenting itself through text is a fact beyond text. It is either conservative or pragmatic in approach. Contrast with deconstruction. See constructionism.

[] Reconfirmation

Some airlines require that if a break takes place on an international journey above a certain distance in time then reconfirmation is necessary so that a seat remains reserved and is not resold.

[] Redundancy

This is excess to requirements. Half of English as a language is redundant. The other related meaning of redundancy for communication is being conventional (correct and socially acceptable) and well understood by frequent use. The opposite of this is entropy, where meanings decay and change but have more creative impact.

[] References

Within the text bracketed (Harvard) convention of author, date, page number (or a superscripted number to notes showing at least author, date, page number) that indicates a source consulted for this work which is given according to the convention in the bibliography (notes may double as the bibliography if a thorough reference).

[] Referral

A person or organisation recommending another one. It happens with bed and breakfast and other accommodation. Sometimes there is a referral system, where one hotel always passes on to another.

[] Referentiality

Connecting a reality (event, person, thing, process) to its textual expression. Referentiality cannot be assumed due to the nature of interpretation over and above bare description ofthe simplest things. Referentiality is often assumed by common use but more critically it is restricted it to basic descriptions.

[] Regression analysis

A simple regression analysis is a statistical model which asks that if the independent variable changes then what happens to the dependent variable, according to past performance. For more than two variables, a multivariate model is used.

[] Relativism

Whilst something may be compared against something else, and against something else, this comparison has no general agreement and there is no fixed position by which to judge it or anything else. Relativism means loss of truth or the basis for finding it. There are a variety of positions held and radical uncertainty, and this is one step from postmodernism.

[] Representation

In language this is where one action, discourse, picture, sentence, sign, sound or word intends to depict or characterise another. It is more slavish and accurate than metaphor. Representation allows empiricism to work, for example in history. Language is seen as capable of this objective referencing. Therefore this approach rejects the literary turn and postructuralism.

Another meaning is in politics or electoral systems, where people who represent their constituents (groups, nation states) as representatives have the right to make up their own mind in votes whilst taking into account their constituents' thoughts. Most democracies are like this. Delegates, however, are bound to do as their constituents have laid down.

[] Resident alien

A purson who is not a national of the country of residence yet is counted as a resident in statistics of domestic and international travel.

[] Resort

A place which may be specialised to a small or large extent which is a destination for rest and relaxation and other leisure pursuits. This definition does include anything that qualifies, including capital cities.

Resort representative ("Rep")

The tour company's employee a tourist client can see to gain all information needed in the otherwise strange foreign resort.

[] Response rate

Either the percentage response to a survey carried out or in advertising the number of responses to an advert as a way of showing its reach. For surveys, responses less than half are deemed to show a weak survey, so it is improtant to persist with those chosen to get a response.

[] Rhetoric

Rhetoric is language chosen and stylistically used for persuasive purposes. Rhetoric absorbs and transmits values, ideology and beliefs, and adds skillful elequent colour to an otherwise dull argument.

[] Rhizomatic structures

These are flat, non-hierarchical and creative connections. Their creativity can be contrasted with the Body without organs. An example is the Internet. There is a sexual link with this creativity because we are desiring machines. After Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and compares with Umberto Eco's net and labyrinth and after Ludwig Wittgenstein.

[] Riley and Riley model of mass communication

Both communicator and receiver are part of their primary group, the larger but immedate social, cultural and economic (etc.) communities, and the social system. Relationships and interaction pattern these the transmission and reception of these communications, including from the mass media. Main people: John W. Riley Jnr. and Matilda White Riley, 'Mass Communication in the Social System' in Merton, R. K., Broom, L., Cottrell, L. S. (1959), Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects, Basic Books.

[] Role

Role is a social behaviour of the individual as negotiated with those around. Role is affected by the density of interaction with others, so that in the relative anonymity of the contemporary urban setting different faces can be shown according to the role played, but where different roles are played out in front of the same people, less freedom and more disciplined integration of the person is required. Role strain is where role demands conflict with their diiferent demands. Main person: Erving Goffman for whom roles were understood in a similar way to dramas.

[] Rounding

Numbers can be rounded up or down, either to whole numbers or to tens. In the case of rounding up from 5, or down from below 5, and then adding totals, there can be rounding errors, and tables may have to note this as to why figures do not add up. An integer number always has its fraction removed and is thus reduced.

[] Rumour

This has other descriptives such as "jungle telegraph". It is gossip or unsubstantiated hearsay that travels quickly between those interested in the activities of the other. It is usually destructive and unofficial and travels where communication is less open.

[] Rural tourism

A locality serves the tourist with walks, nature trails, picnic sites, interpretation centres with access, thus producing places to go and relax, and giving assistance to farm tourism for example.

[] Rushes or Dailies

Produced at a rush from negatives, they enable a quick overview of the progress of film making.

[] Safari

Once a hunting expedition, now tourist wildlife observation.

[] Salience

Messages received that are taken as more relevant and therefore given attention: of obvious important to politicians and news media who would like to select salience.

[] Salutation display

Showing individuals by an understood gesture that they are wished well.

[] Samizdat/ Tamizdat

From the communist era, "self-publishing" by simple means that is distributed privately at great personal risk in a situation of censorship. The most recent and effective example was the Polish trade union Solidarity during martial law in the 1980s before it swept away the old regime. Tamizdat was published in the West. The Internet is a rather open form of Samizdat and Tamizdat, and how the mainland Chinese regime requires official approval of its own servers and content is interesting as it fights the flow of alternative information and values to its own.

[] Sampling

A representative sample intends to mirror the make up of the population. A random sample means anyone has equal chance of being chosen where there are no significant population categories to represent in population proportion. When a random sample has been chosen, it is important that those selected are persuaded to join in.

Another meaning is in marketing where a sample is given free in order to inform customers exactly what the product is like and therefore gain better product information for this brand and generate future sales. Samples should never be big enough that they replace sales but bigger samples can create goodwill amongst customers towards the product and firm.

[] STEAM (originally Scarborough Tourism Economic Analysis Model)

Developed by Global Tourism Solutions (UK), a small Scarborough headquarters firm, and owned by David James, STEAM is a supply side economic model that works through interconnected spreadsheets. It demonstrates from supply side statistics (accommodation, visitor attractions) the tourist economic activity of an area, but is not predictive, and thus provides reports of use to various kinds of authorities. The model is applied in the UK and abroad for those who buy the information reports.

[] Scheduled ancient monument

British site of historical importance given a listing and protection.

[] Scheduled transport

Timetabled regular service.

[] Scheduling (in TV and radio)

In general this is where clear defined times are made for an activity or presentation. There is a stress on maximising either efficiency or use by timing.

This is the art of grouping programmes together to maintain interest and serve audiences, either a mass audience of an identified interest. Scheduling takes place within the rules of what can and should be transmitted, so that those with the greatest audience mass or interest delivery are given slots where most viewers can see them. As popular soap operas are given ever more slots, broadcasters dodge around them or, occasionally, use another soap to try and take on the opposition head on. Scheduling often results in a lack of choice for the viewer, and manpilative scheduling often annoys and has the opposite effect. Scheduling often involves lack of innovation in programmes for peak times, and sins of omission, leaving innovation and analysis to minority times. Sport which takes up much time per event often results in rescheduling other programmes, especially news and current affairs.

[] Schramm's models of communication

There are three using encode and decoder. There is the linear model based on a previous one by Shannon, Weaver, in 1949, who produced a process-centred model of mainly technical engineering use but which gave rise to communcation studes in general (because of the semantic and reception efficiency concerns), where beyond the source it encodes a message into a signalal and is decoded before the destination. The second model has this but within overlapping fields of experience that surround the signal, being more interactive, and the third level has a decoder and encoder within each destination and source as a feedback loop, interpretation lying between decoder and encoder in each case. Main people: early model by C. E. Shannon and W. Weaver, Wilbur Schramm, 'How Communication Works' in Schramm, ed. (1954), The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

[] Seat pitch

The distance between the front edges of two upright seats (in aircraft). Constrained leg room is obviously less than this by the width of the seat.

[] Secondary industries

Manufacturing part of the production chain producing tangible goods.

[] Sector

In economics it is a distinctive area of ownership or activity. In travel and tourism it means a portion of a flight, which can be more than a leg or a segment.

[] Segment

In travel and tourism it is a portion of a flight between the passenger getting on and getting off. In marketing it is a group of a market with shared characteristics as predefined, and the process of identifying these boundaries is segmentation. People identified with these markets are likely to be targetted for niche marketing.

[] Semantics

A part of semiotics. The study of meaning in language and how it changes. The negative word "awful" used to be a positive term equivalent to "awesome" today as imported in meaning from Americans.

[] Semiotics

The study of signs and analysing communication: the science of sign systems. This is heavily text based (though calls other kinds of communication forms of text) and prefers the notion of reader to receiver (in broader communication models). This suggests more activity on the receiver and the text as a container of ideological assumptions. There is the signifier, signified and sign. The signifier can be a word, a picture or some object. The signified is a mental creation dereived from the signifier. The association together of these two is the sign, and this can be direct (as in a photograph) and called iconic or indirect (as in some logos) built on cultural knowledge which are called arbitrary. The sign's meaning depends on the context of its generation, and the interpretation in the mind (the mental concept interpretant, according to Charles Peirce). Signs relate to one another in generating meaning (valeur) and produce signification. The process of signification, or realising meaning (which is culturally dependent) may go from a simple iconic level through a series of levels of arbitrary signified results all from the same signifier. Complex myths and intricate feelings are generated. Also the sign, the connection, associates with other signs according to codes, some of which are obvious but some of which are submerged, and these form culture. It leaves ambiguity in language and allows post-structuralism to take its place. Important figures: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Charles Peirce (1834-1914); also Edward Leach (signs contrast in cultural settings), Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes.

[] Sensitisation

The opposite of desensitisation, where matters of low attention receive greater media attention due to a recent story receiving attention and generating interest. Main person: Stanley Cohen in 'Sensitization: the Case of the Mods and Rockers' in Cohen, S., Young, J. (eds.) (1973), The Manufacture of News: Deviance, Social Problems and the Mass Media, London: Constable).

[] Service charge

This is added instead of having tips, and usually exists at 10 to 15%. Service compris is when it is built in to the price and this should be explicit.

[] Services

Tertiary industries of distribution, retailing and finances. They are also stopping off points for motorists on trunk roads and especially motorways. Originally intended to be every 25 miles, iit was hoped to double these. Once with tied entyrances and exits to a particular motorway, many new ones now appear off roundabouts of major road junctions and add to congestion. To be an approved service area the area cannot be advertised as destinations in themselves, must provide free parking for up to two hours rest, fuel and toilets. This accounts for the higher prices of goods in shops and also in the petrol stations, the latter assisted where there is a captive market. However, when a car has a service it means it is receiving an oil change and other physical checks and interventions to keep it running smoothly.

Services is a shortcut word for scheduled transport and again scheduled radio.

Services in religion are the settings for the combining of elements of worship in groups.

[] The Seven seas

Oceans as follows:
The Arctic
The Antarctic
The North Atlantic
The South Atlantic
The North Pacific
The South Pacific
The Indian

The Seven Wonders of the World

The Pyramids (Giza, near Cairo)
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (near Baghdad)
The Tomb of Mausolus (at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor)
The Temple of Artemis (at Ephesus, Greece)
The Colossus of Rhodes
The Statue of Zeus (at Olympia, Greece)
The Pharos of Alexandria (lighthouse, island of Pharos)

[] Shore excursion

Usually a separately paid for tour at a stop on a cruise's journey.

[] Shorthand

A method of rapid writing using symbols for word sounds. It allows writing at the speed of speech and so was adopted by journalists and secretaries in the main. IT in general, the decline of the typist/ secretary and voice recognition software has dented its appeal. Main person: Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-97) who lived in Barton-on-Humber for four years, at a time when he was developing his system which he was to teach later.

[] Shoulder period

The transitional time between peak and off peak periods in the tourist calendar when prices are adjusted accordingly.

[] Shuttle

Rapid and frequent scheduled service where reservation is unnecessary. They usually compete with rail services in the UK.

[] Sign

Part of semiotics. The sign connects the signifier and the object signified and has meaning. This meaning is cultural, and connects the individual to society.

[] Significant others

The most immediate groups and people to which anyone relates, as opposed to the generalised other.

[] Significant symbolisers

A regular pattern of signs existing so that individuals define themselves in terms of the wider culture, achieving personal and social stability. This is an example of how language is central in interpretive sociology. Main person: Mead, C. H. (1934), Mind, Self and Society, Chicago: Unieristy of Chicago Press.

[] Signification

Part of semiotics. It is when the sign realises meaning in relationship with other signs.

[] Signification spiral

The media connects up disparate events and makes a meaningful narrative connection out of them, but which is arbitrary. Main person: Stuart Hall and others in (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, London: Macmillan.

[] Single supplement

Because charges for rooms are often based on someone shairing, or single occupancy takes up a whole room perhaps with a double bed, and extra charge is made to the single person.

[] Sins of Omission

Bland programmes which go for the lowest common denominator in trying to achieve high audiences.

Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)

Over 5600 listed areas of special flora and fauna or other natural features that have protection from development, although not total protection as some have been lost to road building after government consideration.

[] Soap opera or Soap

Soaps are so named because in the United States they were sponsored by soap firms who wanted to reach housewives. Soaps are either escapist (American wealth) or "realistic" (British grittiness). Whilst they can be full of the ridiculous pastiche or interweaving plot lines of love, money and betrayal (Brazilian and other south American soaps) some can also be outlets of acting and drama that replaces the variety of drama that used to exist (on British TV). The 1980's and 1990's drift towards explosive events to raise viewing figures (in early Autumn when viewing numbers rose in general!) seems to have reduced in favour of emotional issue driven events. Soap operas gain their appeal by connection with the characters' personalities and interconnections. Soaps used to provide moral endings in the final analysis, but this has been given up (as so many viewer puling charcters would have to be caught and put in prison). Soaps involve distortion of space and time: people interact amongst each other and interbreed like they never do in reality, and time shrinks so that pregnancies and court cases take place in record time (attempts at real time never being successful as the audience gets bored - real time stories have to be temporarily dropped).

[] Social realism

A movement which came out of the American depression to be a protest, yet also is applied after Soviet realism to mean art which intends to generate positive feelings about society and its activities.

[] Social tourism

Usually subsidised tourism for those of few economic means, age or disability. The YMCA has carried out these services, for example at the now closed Bonskeid House, Scotland. Also trade unions in the Soviet Union paid a subsidy to allow workers to have rest and relaxation holidays in specific resorts.

[] Socialism

Socialism is an umbrella word stretched to mean many things. There are several kinds of centralised and decentralised socialisms. In Marxist theory socialism is an intermediate stage before communism, the not quite there situation in Marxism-Leninism of policies and leadership by the Dictatorship of the Proloteriat (workers and intellectuals in an alliance of true interests). In democractic socialism there is a striving for equality of opportunity with the greater stress on equality (because with equality of opportunity alone many languish in poverty) using redistribution of income. The collapse of the authoritarian and Soviet maintained socialism of the East and its rejection in all but name by the Chinese has undermined socialism as an ideology and stance everywhere, though its aims appear in pressure groups. The place of ideology was lost.

[] Sociodrama

Role play where the drama is evaluated in terms of its process as well as its outcome.

[] Sociology

Something is sociological when an aspect of society has been studied for socially causal connections or relationships. The analytical study of society and its engagement with individuals. It looks at social structure, systems and and action, generating categories and hypotheses which may be realisable in research. Sociology stretches into political economy and psychology, and in fact invades any other discipline where there is a social and therefore sociological aspect. Sociology can be top-down in either conflict or consensus modes, or bottom up in symbolic interaction (groups generating meaning) or phenomenological (mind-meaning into the collective) modes.

[] Sociometrics

Small group study in relation to social membership connections, their integration and the nature of communications within. Groups reflect and generate values and overlap, creating centres of values and power. This is important in the media where power is exercised and values are generated through the interlocking communications containing ideology.

[] Soft loan

Very low or no rate of interest loans, usually seen granted to underedeveloped countries for development reasons.

[] Software

Computer program often provided on a CD or floppy disk or downloaded from the Internet. It cannot run without a compatible and sufficient operating system and hardware. Many people confuse Microsoft Word, a program, with Windows, an operating system.

[] Solarise

Where light and dark areas join, a strong outline is created, but contrast elsewhere is reduced. Man Ray (1890-1976) did this by exposing developing field to instantaneous light, but today it is done mostly by edge detection computer effect.

[] Sole trader

Unlimited liability trader with no legal separation between the self and the business.

[] Spa

Tourism resorts with a health and beauty twist popular before mass tourism, where mineral/ thermal water is used for drinking and bathing with associated services.

[] Special Protected Areas

Places where the managing authority has powers similar to National Park authorities and where planning is restricted.

[] Special Protection Areas

Rare bird conservation areas designated by the European Union.

[] Splurchase

A psychologiclly effective condition where a consumer buys more than intended due to conditions generated within the shop and marketing. Term maker: Vance Packard (1981), The Hidden Persuaders, London: Penguin.

[] Spoiler

A newspaper gets wind of an exclusive in another newspaper and so finds out more and other sources within the time constraints and publishes on it anyway. Magazines also run spoilers - when there is an exclusive society wedding protected and paid for by one magazine, another will get papparazi photographs and run a story, in part to protect itself against its readers transferring to the other magazine for that story. Spoiler stories can also be negative about those in the other magazine and newspaper, to damage their reputation and reduce the impact of coverage.

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)/ Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)

The SIC is the official classification of businesses according to type and nature for the purposes of statistical work. The UN produces an International Standard Industrial Classification. The SOC is the official classification of occupations according to type and nature for the purposes of statistical work. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) produces The International Standard Classification of Occupaions. Other countires have their own similar classifications to SIC and SOC.

[] Standard of Living

The Gross Domestic Product/ Gross National Product per capita. It can also be measured by goods owned. Assessments of poverty ask what is required as essential for living in this day and age and such itsems are one meansure of poverty.

[] Standby

Someone who waits without a reservation in the hope that there is a spare seat.

[] statusquo">Status quo or Status quo ante

Keeping things as they were. This is a play-safe tendency in politics and communications, and an favour entertainment over investigation (Hoogart, R. (1970), Speaking to Each Other, London: Chatto and Windus).

[] Stereo

The true approach to stereoscopy is to take a photograph with a camera where the lenses are the left and right eye distance apart and viewed by both eyes. The elements repeated in the resultant two perspective reflecting images differ by the same horizontal measurements as they do with each eye, and so the brain interprets these variations as positioning and depth. Special glasses using green and red colour differences have been used to seperate out images generated on one screen, and so has polarisation. Stereo images have rarely caught on in cinema and have been tried less on television.

Stereo sound became standard place, but true stereo sound is binaural. Microphones are placed either side of a barrier, perhaps a dummy head, and should be heard through headphones. It gives a good sense of depth and direction left and right, but not necessarily direction front and back as the visual clues are not there. Stereo sound is generally manufactured for heaaring through speakers in a room, and quadrophonic speakers tried to make the experience more varied but with much less success.

[] Stereotype

Lazy or deliberate instant recognition by over simplified and distorted labelling. Where it is deliberate, it is for reasons of prejudice.

[] Stopover

A scheduled break in a journey by air.

[] Storyboard

Sketches (generally) scene by scene to help pln the narrative of a film or television programme.

[] Stream of Consciousness

A representation of a continuous somewhat "unedited" stream of thoughts that draw on different levels of conscious and subconscious thinking. Concept inventor: William James (1842-1910); used in literature by James Joyce (1882-1941) in Ulysses (1922) where Molly Bloom's outpoured thoughts are streamed out using extreme length without punctuation.

[] Street culture/ Youth culture

Socially marginal males get esteem through an aggressive subculture on the streets.

[] Stretching

Every second frame of a 16 frames per second movie is repeated twice so that modern 24 frames per second film projection is less jerky to the eye.

[] Striping

Magnetic strip added to the side of film to give better quality sound. Stereo sound has two strips either side of a 70mm film strip.

[] Structuralism

Structuralism is an umbrella term originally and mainly of linguistics which has been applied to many academic areas. The core of this is the hard wired human brain able to acquire and learn language with development, and yet language is social in developing and transmitting meaning. Through this understanding of lingustics and structures, sociology and social anthropology (social meaning) get directly connected to psychology. So whilst Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) developed structural linguistics, Claude Lévi-Strauss went back a step and stated that linguistics relates to categories of the mind whose ideas relate to geology, psychoanalysis and Marxism. The link is the meaning in brain and society of conceptual organisation through binary opposites; the contrasts within inherent binary opposites at the deep level of human consciousness are mirrored in the political economy, culture, gender relationships and some historical analysis. Just as language is collective in meaning, structuralism is social. This approach also is saying that individuals result from structural relationships (on a Durkheimian model) rather than themselves creating social reality. There is therefore a consistency from social structures through to the nature of human beings themselves. This is not empiricist as such, but requires prior conceptual understanding first: an understanding that is objectively based, being located in fundamental realities. It is also saying that whatever cultural and social variation or change takes place, the underlying basis (structure) remains the same.

[] Style

In clothing and cultural or sub-cultural terms building identity and cultural or subcultural belonging expressed through appearance.

Otherwise it means being distinctive according to a pattern perhaps recognised within a tradition, eg literary. Style always relates to the appearance of something, and may support or deflect from the substance of the matter where a distinction can be made. In postmodern terms, style and substance are indistinct because there is no objective substance.

[] Sub-culture

Keeping a mini-culture within a group set against the mores, values and codes of the dominant culture. Deviance is a label given to some subcultures, especially where these relate to criminality as represented in the dominant culture. Pluralism aims to reduce the number of deviant labelled subcultures, because of the intended engaging nature of the dominant culture. Theoretically, postmodernism ends subcultures because any group can make up its own rules for living as well as any other group, no drama of life can reach out to an objective source for its truth, but practicallyn societies limit the range of acceptable practices and behaviours. Sometimes a strong effort is made to bring in versions of a subculture to re-establish social harmony, which involves a mass media role, but of course otherwise the media can be used to send a subculture underground.

[] Sunlust

Not just seeking the sun but pleasure away from home, though not necessarily abroad. Main person: H. P. Gray.

[] Sunrise/ Sunset

Sunrise is when moment when the upper edge of the sun appears above the apparent horizon, and sunset is when the upper edge goes below the apparent horizon. It can stay light after sunset and come light before sunrise for varied time lengths depending on latitude and time of year.

[] Superstructure

The superstructure is the institutions which make up the capitalist state and society (including family, law, ideology), following on from the base which is ownership of the economy. A question is whether law and its definitions determines understanding of the base! This is Marxist economic determinism, and the system poduces an ideology of false consiousness, yet some Marxists are not so dominated by this false consiousness and able to see through this!

In tourism, superstructure means the physical presence that provides for and supports an activity. So hotels, guest houses and bed and breakfast are the superstructure for tourism and hospitality. Infrastructure has a broader meaning of support thought constructed facilities as, say, expected in a developed tourist area.

[] Suprematism

Feeling achieved through colour. Movement's founder: Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) who in 1913 exhibited a black square on a white ground and claimed its feeling was the basis of art.

[] Surcharge

An added charge because costs increase between booking and going on a holiday. This may be exchange rate generated.

[] Surrealism

Followed on from fading Dadaism and absorbed its people. The founder André Breton (1896-1966) along with Hans Arp (1887-1966), Paul Eluard (1895-1952) and Max Ernst (1891-1976) produced a manifesto to state that the movement was "pure psychic automatism" to be creative away from reason, moral and aesthetic concerns. Breton, a poet, wanted to produce spontaneous writing. He coined the term vertignous descent to mean the whirling journey into the subsconscious mind. Others used art (Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Paul Delvaux, Kurt Schwitters) and film (Luis Bunuel) to bring to artistic expression Freud's (1856-1939) ideas on the subconscious. There seems to be always a place for dream like expression in creative art.

[] Sustainable tourism

Tourism, in harmony with its environment and social and cultural setting over the long term and which considers future generations and their needs as well as the present. Much tourism is seen as destructive to the character of a place. The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (Bruntland Report) of 1987 addressed sustainable tourism in these terms.

[] SWOT

Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In general strengths considers advantages and weaknesses disadvantages in religion to competitors, whereas opportunites and threats look at the positive and negative aspects of the operating environment with future orientation. SWOT is often used (perhaps more by students) but can be unsystematic (which is why businesses may not use it)

[] Symbol

Part of semiotics. A symbol has a shared meaning within a cultural setting.

This is extended for sociology, as in symbolic interactionism (see impression management, and for where other disciplines overlap with transmitting and receiving meaning in art and linguistics.

[] Synchronous sound/ Talkies

In 1926 Don Juan was the first film with synchronous sound but in 1927 the Jazz Singer had huge impact and started the Talkies. Sound was attached optically to the film to retain its synchronisation with the picture.

[] Syndicated survey

A number of organisations pay towards and include their own questions in one survey that seeks consumer information. These often come through the door or with a product or publication.

[] Synergy

Co-operation in a consortium that becomes co-ordinated, smooth and beneficial beyond what could have been achieved individually.

[] Syntactics

Part of semiotics. How texts (expressions) relate to one another.

[] Syntax

Grammatical sentences.

[] Table tent

Printed and folded card put on a table for direct marketing. In a restaurant and hotel it may suggest extra sales and services beyond the main purchases.

[] Taboo

All cultures have rules of what is out of bounds for ordinary conversation and activity. The word is Polynesian in origin.

[] Tabloid

Tabloid means concentration. In the newspaper world it means a reduced size easy to handle newspaper, a low reading age by avoidance of technical terms and words of too many syllables, an abundance of word-play and puns, a concentration on human interest stories and trivia, a focus on celebrities and soaps, the relegation of serious especially foreign news, exposure of individuals' wrongdoings according to certain moral norms, pictures of semi-naked or bikini clad females, and political bias.

[] Tender

This is a boat that takes crew, stores and passenger from an anchored ship to the shore. It is also the term for submitting for a job with a price, as others may be doing (competitive tender).

[] Telegraph

The circuit was linked and current flowed when the key was pressed, and wires, especially along railways, carried Morse Code and more. Samuel Morse (1791-1872) demonstrated his telegraph in 1837 and the first was built in 1843 by public funds from Baltimore to Washington. It was patented in Britain by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in 1837 and rapidly came into service, gaining publicity and worth when at Slough a suspected murderer was spotted on a train and due to telegraphy he was arrested at Paddington (and later hanged). In 1850 Britain and Europe and in 1858 Britain and America were connected. Soon multiple messages could be carried, and pictures in 1881. Very convenient, the Telex to the teleprinter extended the life of the telegraph to modern times, using unattended but swtiched on receiving machines. This has been superseded by email, where servers hold messages until the computer or mobile phone or TV is switched on and the messages are received and deleted from the server.

[] Telemarketing

Telephone marketing which may be information seeking or cold calling selling. They ring when they think people are in, often at meal times or peak TV viewing for everyone, or earlier for people with housework.

[] Television

Transmission of pictures and sound by aerial, cable or satellite signal to a picture and sound output device, a cathode ray tube but could soon be Liquid Crystal Display (as with some computer screens). Television started pre-war (due to the research work of Isaac Schoenberg from 1931 who knew of Soviety developments) in 1936, and this was discontinued during the Second World War and receiving a huge boost at the Coronation of the Elizabeth I in 1952. The BBC had a television monopoly until the Television Act was passed in 1954 which gave commercial television public service and impartiality obligations as well as checked the influence of advertisers.

[] Terminal

Where pasengers disembark and embark. Also computer output equipment (monitor, printer etc.).

[] Terms of trade

The ratio of index of export prices to index of import prices. The terms of trade improve when this ratio rises (export prices rising over import prices). So it is a real measure of income from trade. Also the terms of trade are the conduct and back up rules agreed and in law, in carrying out a purchase between seller and buyer.

[] Tertiary industries

These are services, and can be the retail sector, the financial secotor, transport, indeed all the elements that facilitate selling goods to the consumer and facilitating their sale.

[] Theatre-in-the-nude

1960s and 1970s movement of naked theatre, especially Oh Calcutta!, (Oh! quel cul t'as' - revue with music - a ballet of striptease and American wife swapping).

[] Theatre-in-the-round

The audience sit around the circular theatre in the middle, changing the dynamics of the theatre to more intimacy. It is a concept copied by some churches in as part of liturgical renewal, for a less imperial view of God.

[] Theatre of cruelty

Involve the audience in sharing the suffering of characters to learn about themselves. Founder: Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), a surrealist actor.

Theatre of disturbance

Reflects the disturbance of the two world wars and the choices characters face. Main person: peter Brook (b. 1925).

[] Theatre of mirrors

Exploring contradictions and contrasts using reality, illusion and confrontation. Main person: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), a Sicilian dramatist.

[] Theatre of panic or Théâtre Panique

Actually about the god Pan (vitality, macabre, sinister, erotic), so that the plays are about contrasting and juxtaposing opposites like the crude and poetic or the sacred and sacriligious. Originator: Fernando Arrebal (b. 1932).

[] Theatre of silence

Thoughts and emotions are transmitted by absence of expression. Main experimenter: Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), a Sicilian dramatist.

[] Theatre of the absurd

Anguish and humour clash in plays with a surrealist touch giving dislocated characters, dialogue and psychological states . Main people include: Samuel Beckett, Jean Gennet, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter (b. 1930).

[] Theme park

Recreation, entertainment and thrills usually around a theme inside a confined area with controlled entry.

[] Thesis journalism

A longer piece on TV, radio, or newsprint which shapes an argument to demonstrate a thesis.

[] Third Age

Retirement. The University of the Third Age is a voluntary grouping of discussion groups who present their own papers to one another. This age group sees some extremes in wealth and income, and they tend to view their leisure time as productive for their own wellbeing and skills. There are implications for tourism.

[] Third World

It was those parts not in he capitalist West or Communist East, but given that they were undeveloped it now means undeveloped countries. See developing countries. Main person for classification: Alfred Savry.

[] Threshold

The minimum required level of demand for an economic activity to sustain itself.

[] Throwaway

The discarded element of an inclusive package because buying everything else separately would prove more expensive.

[] Ticket Point Mileage (TPM)

The sum of flown miles between all points in a route.

[] Tied house

Public house that is managed or contractually attached to a brewery, to sell only the beers it decides. Some allow a guest beer.

[] Time series analysis

Looking at data in the past to predict trends, in how a variable changes, with breaking down and categorising time periods. It is used in travel and tourism, being better in the short term than the long term.

[] Time Shift Viewing

An example is BBC 2 Learning Zone which broadcasts through the night and is meant to be watched at some future time by video recorder.

[] Timeshare

A house occupied for a period of a year and then occupied by others for their periods. The right over the property may be no more than this.

[] Tonnage

Deadweight tonnage (long ton=2240 pounds) a ship can carry legally. Gross tonnage is the volume of enclosed spaces (one ton=100 cubic feet). Net tonnage deducts space for the crew's accommodation, machinery and fuel.

[] Total theatre

A spectacle of theatre using all kinds of varied and involving devices, even film. English person: Joan Littlewood.

[] Tour operator

The business that buys in services from the providing units (hotels, transport) and turns them into a meaningful package or tourist product that can be purchased by the public, possibly through intermediaries.

[] Tourism

Travel was once quite restricted to the wealthy, especially abroad with the Grand Tours of the aristocracy. Tourism as an activity expanded noticably with the middle class from Victorian times, and became a mass activity for the working class in the twentieth century, including package travel abroad from the 1960s. It is the activity of visiting and/ or staying away for leisure purposes and other purposes not associated with paid work. Today it is important for the economy, and many a region will explore its potential as a travel generating area for boosting local employment itself (being mainly labour intensive) and through tourism's multiplier effect. It is considered a sector of the economy, and yet is found as an element in other sectors (eg retailing, airlines). It also has a spin off in study at various levels, though struggles for academic respectability (in as much as it deals with critical concepts and advances knowledge). Tourism does engage as a method of understanding meaning, for example in why people visit one area rather than another and the memorable significance it has in their lives. For example, the filming location of television can generate tourism because viewers identify with the programme.

[] Tourism balance

The difference between international tourist spending in a country (exports) and international tourist spending abraod (imports) and so gives the contribution of the sector to the balance of payments. Of course such spending can be a leakage straight out of the country again, but this isn't recorded.

[] Tourism multiplier/ Tourist expenditure impacts

The impact throughout the local economy starting with initial spending by tourists that is then spent by those who received their business. So one spending tourism has a multiplier imact, or starts with a primary direct impact and becomes a secondary induced impact from then on. The attraction of tourism to any locality is that it brings in outside cash, though it can be an illusory benefit as some goes straight out again.

[] Tourist

A person who stays at least one night for leisure and holidays, business and profession, or other tourist reasons. So the business person staying is also counted for statistical purposes.

[] Tourist ghetto or tourist enclave

Often by design, though may be simply the workings out of urban development, an area populated by tourists and not the locals.

Tourist Information Centre (TIC)

There are around 900 in the UK. As well as providing information and same/ next day accommodation booking for tourists and travellers, they also provide statistical information (eg to STEAM).

Tourist attraction or Visitor attraction

There are site attractions (natural, built) and event attractions, sometimes combined (eg Civil War Society displays). The number and variety of such attractions makes a tourist area developed, as well as having the superstructure for accommodation and services.

[] Trade Association

A voluntary grouping of businesses from a sector of the economy, giving support to one another and setting standards to reassure the consumeer and benefit the legitimate businesses.

[] Trade Union

An association in a trade of industry, or collection, as developed through history and amalgamations. So there is the general union, that covers a variety of workers, a craft union which specialises in one skill area and an industrial union which serves anyone in an industry no matter what they do. Unions are part of the Labour movement and developed with industrialisation and a struggle for political and economic rights, and have enjoyed and endured periods of militancy and relative harmony, strength and weakness. They provide a focus for negotiations and an expression of grievances, sometimes as useful for an employer as the workers for getting over problems and building business success.

[] Trading down/ Trading up

Trading down is producing more of a no-frills service to cut costs, prices and get more customers, if a better service was inappropriate to a setting and failed to be sufficiently profitable. Trading up is the opposite and often requires much investment and training.

[] Traditional transmission

Humans have the capacity to learn language but the actual specific language is passsed on from one generation to the next. Main person: Charles Hockett.

[] Trail

A walking, cycling or horseriding route that is itself a visitor attraction, an a way to manage traffic through an area sensitive to tourism.

[] Transfer

The short journey of going from the transport (air, mainly) destination to the hotel.

[] Transit traveller

Someone passing through or stopping at a point before the destination. In the airport it means someone who does not go through customs because they stay in a designated area.

[] Travellers cheque

These are normally convertible into the currencies of the places where they are used, signed at issue and countersigned on use. Banks, large travel firms and specialists issue them.

[] Tronc

Pooling and sharing tips on a regular and merit/ working time calculated basis amongst employees.

[] Trope/ Figuration

These terms refer to using metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, simile, litotes, periphrasis and hyperbole that create a sophisticated layered and transformatory effect on meaning. Tropes do go further regarding theories of linguistics and notions of deep binary based language structres. The use of tropes goes therefore into cultural meaning and modes of expression with this sense of foundation.

[] Typage

People who look the part playing characters instead of professional actors. Main original person: Sergei Eisenstein (1894-1948).

[] U and non U

U is words and also behaviours used by the Upper Class whereas non U are words used by the riff raff. Originator: Alan Ross, also Nancy Mitford his editor in (1959) Noblesse Oblige London: Penguin.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The marketing highlighted characteristic of a product or service which attempts to differentiate it from others. Main person: Rosser Reeves.

[] United Kingdom Tourism Survey

A monthly demand based survey (as opposed to a supply side model, see STEAM) commissioned by the national tourist boards in the UK, to measure tourist activity.

[] Up market/ Upgrade

Moving up to a situation of paying higher prices for an apparently higher quality product or service. This means upgrading if it starts with a lower grade service.

An upgrade happens to a computer when its operating system is made more up to date, when memory is expanded and/ or when hardware is added.

[] Urbanisation

Historically the change that takes place with the release of the rural workforce to living in towns, or the greater urban quality of living wherever we live along with development.

[] Uses and gratifications theory

People use the media according to needs, eg compensating for lack of education, for company, for escape, to know who you are, to understand the world around, to generate conversation. The media understands all this and seeks to provide, even manipulate. The needs are both cognitive and affective. Main people: D. McQuail, Jay G. Blumler, J. R. Brown, E. Katz.

[] Value added

The result of a firm making something or producing a service over and above the value of the inputs. It is meant to show the real benefit of economic activity.

Value Added Tax (VAT)

A tax added at each selling stage of the production and distribution process, where firms can however pay the ex-VAT price in the invoice.

[] Values

Guiding principles of worth. Individuals have them and so do groups and societies, either by consensus or norms and taboos. Values get transmitted overtly and covertly, obviously and subconsciously in the media.

[] Values and codes: dominant, subordinate/ negotiated, radical/ oppositional

This is about reception of the general culture and its media messages. The dominant system of response/ dominant code is the acceptance of dominant values; the subordinate system of response/ negotiated code is acceptance of these values but is critical and wants action in respect of certain groups (eg ethnic minorities) and the radical system of response/ oppositional code attacks the dominant culture throughout. Main people: Frank Parkin, Stuart Hall (the codes).

[] Vertical integration

Vertical integration is where one firm controls different stages in the production and distribution and services process. It's often achieved when firms merge with other firms at higher or lower levels of the production and distribution process of the product.

[] Video nasties

Term for violent and extreme dark subject movies in the pre-regulation days of video tapes, many subsequently banned by censors after the comprehensive Video Recording Act of 1984 but now some can be seen on television.

[] Violence

The debate is unresolved whether violence shown in cinema and TV leads to copycat responses in the real world or whether it is recognised by people as fantasy. A minority of people already disturbed may be so motivated, and then the question is whether the whole of the media should be so regulated to take account of them. In the UK censorship is becoming relatively harder on violence than sex, whereas in the US it has been the other way around.

[] Visa

Access document of varying types and durations. A few countries had or have exit visas.

[] Visitor

A person who goes to another place for purposes other than earning money for a period no longer than a year.

[] Wanderlust

The desire for something different away from home, usually international, usually more than one country, usually short stay in any one place. Main person: H. P. Gray.

[] Waterpark

Watersports and visual water features visitor attraction.

[] Wesley and MacLean's model of communication

To Newcomb's ABX model they added C, or the editorial process of choosing what to transmit. C mediates A's transmission of X to B (audience) and B is more remote regarding X. There is feedback through f. C as editor can be purposive (set up message) or non-purposive (unplanned events). So B ends up depending on A and C though other influences that work upon B are not given.

[] The West

Developed capitalist countries, with certain freedoms, once distinct from the Soviet bloc but now including those former members who have seen sufficient economic growth and stability.

[] Westminster view

The goldfish bowl of Westminster provides ready copy for journalists about news and news values instead of reporting on what concerns ordinary people. The reporting of controversiy of the Euro is a good example of where the Conservative Party believed its own obsession and took it to the country as a principle electoral promise (not to enter it for the lifetime of one parliament - a Tory party compromise) and found that it had minor impact on the concerns of the electors.

[] White collar

Non-manual employees who usually sit at an office desk.

[] Wired world

The Information Society, where everything is connected to everthing else in information rich fast and speedy communications.

Work Study/ Organisation and Methods (O&M)

Systematically looking closely at how a worker does a task in order to suggest improvements in method, and also how much time it takes to produce definable output.

[] World Heritage Site

A feature designated by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as being of major world cultural and historical importance, and requiring preservation. See heritage.

[] World Wide Web

The concept of web pages was invented by Tim Berners Lee in 1989-1990 so that scientists at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, could make documents available to each other. He wrote the first browser-editor and wrote software that defined URLs, HTTP and HTML. It was passed on to other physicists at other universities first. Then the Web was made a central part of the Internet first connected between universities and military establishments. He is overall Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which monitors standards such as HTML (and it despairs over the additions and incompatibilities of Microsoft and Netscape). He is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Tim Berners Lee's sceintific, academic, liberal and Unitarian Universalist principles helped make the web free and universal.

[] Xenophobia

An irrational hatred of the alien or foreigner, usually coupled with nationalism.

[] Yield Management

Maximising profit and resources from the total of resources in any one business setting through getting the business mix right.

[] Youth culture

A sub-culture of youth, and of interest to symbolic interactionists studying alternative norms and even language codes. Relates to street culture.

[] Zoöpraxography

This is a complex arrangement of a spinning disc of photographs which viewed through an opposite rotating device and a projecting lens produced by the mid 1880s an encyclopaedic analysis of human, animal and bird movements. Equipment inventor, photographer and analyst: Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904).

References:

Marshall, G. (ed.) (1998), Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., Turner, B. S. (1994), The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, London: Penguin.

Watson, J., Hill, A. (1984), A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies, London: Edward Arnold.

Medlik, S. (1994), A Dictionary of Travel, Tourism and Hospitality, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.