Critique On chapter 5 based on hand out - Essay Example

Critique on Chapter 5 [Human-Symbol Interaction This chapter is very readable apart from the long section about the “Knowledge Gap” (pp. 7-8). Thesentence structure of this section was simple enough, but the author constantly added quotations from different sources. This obscured the main line of argument. A further problem was the frequent mention to “SES” with no indication of what this acronym means. Only after several re-readings of the whole section was it clear that “SES” means “Socio-Economic Status.

The phrase is mentioned on page 7 but not connected with the acronym.The text did not take for granted very much technical knowledge, but there was frequent mention of commercial products and advertising from an American cultural context. This is fine for readers who are familiar with this culture, but it could pose problems for readers who cannot visualise a Taco Bell advertisement, and hear its sound. 2 There was not very much in the way of new ideas in this chapter, but there was a range of technical vocabulary such as haptic, and affordance.

Reference to different branches of linguistics were too brief, and more could have been done to explain Saussure’s work and the discipline of semiotics. I am still not quite sure how this fits in with media studies work and so it is difficult to judge how relevant this topic is. The analogy of a horse walking, trotting and galloping was a very good way of explaining the difference between objects, representations and symbols, highlighting how they were in some ways similar, but in other ways very different.

3 I would like to have seen a separate section on the linguistics aspect of this subject. The text concentrated on the way humans process objects, representations and symbols but there must be a significant role played by language and it was not clear what this role is.4 There is clearly a range of possibilities in the use of symbols, and we discussed in class the Apple Mac symbol. One of the interesting things about such common symbols is that they have many layers of meaning, from the connotations with fruit of the tree of knowledge, to the nutritional value, and the pleasure of eating it, and this is tied to the culture of the people making the symbol and those using it.

This is something that could be a problem in marketing, as for example in the United States a pig can be a symbol of wealth, since children save coins in a piggy bank, but in Muslim countries the pig is unclean. This shows that symbols gather their effect from the beliefs of those who use them.5 The chapter is very relevant to media, and it homes in on how messages are conveyed, and how some methods are more efficient thanks to the weight of meaning conveyed instantly in symbols. Some illustrations would have made this chapter so much better because it was all about different levels of conveying meaning, and images are highly relevant for this.

6 This chapter was a good fit with other chapters, and it was perhaps the most interesting so far in the book, because it gave so many good and clear examples to illustrate the main points and it remained close to the topic in hand. The previous chapter seemed to wander off topic at times and so it was much better to see a tightly structured discussion of one main point this time.4