Page 217 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

REPRESENTATION

terms and classifications that we can use to see how sense is made, not
by reference to imponderables such as authorial intentions or ‘truth to
life’ but by reference to actual discourses.
Second, if rhetoric did not already exist it would no doubt have to
be invented, since so many of the various forms of cultural production
with which we are surrounded are by themselves highly rhetorical.
Publicity, advertising, newspapers, television, academic books, gov-
ernment statements and so on, all exploit rhetorical figures to tempt us
to see things their way. If we have available a means to unpick these
strategies we can begin to take a more critical and less intimidated
stance towards them.

Further reading: Dyer (1982: chs 1 and 8) for a modern application of rhetorical
analysis to advertising; Ong (1982: 108–112) for an account of its history

REPRESENTATION

In politics, representation means that a chosen fewstand for the people
as a whole as their ‘representatives’ in Congress or parliament.
Similarly, in language, media and communication, representations are
words, pictures, sounds, sequences, stories, etc., that ‘stand for’ ideas,
emotions, facts, etc. Representations rely on existing and culturally
understood signs and images, on the learnt reciprocity of language and
various signifying or textual systems. It is through this ‘stand in’
function of the sign that we know and learn reality.
Representations are the concrete form (signifiers) taken by abstract
concepts. Some are banal or uncontroversial – for example, howrain is
represented in the movies, since real rain is both hard to see on camera
and hard to produce on cue. But some representations go to the heart
of cultural and political life – for example, gender, nation, age, class,
etc. Since representations inevitably involve a process of selection in
which certain signs are privileged over others, it matters how such
concepts are represented in news media, movies, or even in ordinary
conversation. In fact, Dyer (1993: 1) claims how‘we are seen
determines in part howwe are treated; how we treat others is based on
howwe see them [and] such seeing comes from representation’. It
should come as no surprise then that the way representations are
regulated through various media, genres and within various discourses,
has been given considerable attention.
Race and gender are examples of howanalysis has sought to subvert
traditions that were seen to involve an inaccurate representation.

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