Page 241 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

TEXT/TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

determinism is contradicted by Marxism, political economy and other
such movements, which award the determining role to the economy.
Communication and media studies have a bet each way in this
context, since it is clear that technological development, whilst driven
by economic forces, nevertheless opens up possibilities not predicted
by them. A simple example is the use of mobile phones for text-
messaging, a ‘cultural form’ that was not predicted by the inventors of
that technology, but which secured its commercial viability. Here the
technology itself was significant (it could do things not intended). But
equally, the example indicates that technology by itself is inert – it has
to be taken up by users. Thus, it seems that determination is multiple:
economic direction by business and government, combined with the
potentiality and capacity of technological inventions themselves,
combined with their success or otherwise in the public arena, are all
‘determining’ forces.

TEXT/TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

A text traditionally refers to a sequence of writing, bounded by the
medium on which it is written – page, scroll, stone. The term is
inherited from Judeo-Christian traditions of textual exegesis, whereby
scholars would take sections of holy or religious texts and explain
them, either verbally (sermons) or in writing (concordances). The skill
of explication of difficult passages of significant texts was secularised in
the form of literary criticism, which began to take hold in the
eighteenth century, when religious texts tended to be supplanted by
national literatures. But the technique of study and commentary
remained the same, and so therefore did the concept of ‘text’.
In the contemporary era, three developments have coincided to
extend enormously what might be encompassed by the term ‘text’.

. mass education brought a universal, not merely an elite, readership
to texts of all kinds, and thus increased both the need and the
opportunity for exegesis;
. continental philosophy, especially that associated with Derrida and
the deconstruction movement in the US, contended that humans
only knowanything by textualising the world, and that therefore
there is nothing ‘beyond’ the text;
. contemporary audio-visual media extended verbal textuality into
visual, aural, and sequential forms – you could buy a video as easily
as a book.

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