Page 139 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

122 Peter Horsfield

Notes

1 The term media is used variously in different places now as either a singular or
plural term. When the term media is used as a singular, it is most commonly as
a collective term for all different media that together are seen as impacting on
societies. This use has the implicit ideological assumption that all media, though
different, are basically one in the combined role they play in contemporary
societies. I consider that the differences between different media are as significant
as their commonality in understanding the nuanced way in which media function
within any society. For that reason, I use the media as a plural term to preserve
that distinction. The term medium will be used when referring to an individual
medium.
2 Codes are wider systems of meaning held by a society or group that are
incorporated within language, often as a subtext of the communication,
and accessed or triggered through different verbal or visual cues. Myths
are integrated narratives that organize and interpret reality for particular
communities or groups. Along with conceptual theories, myths provide a
mechanism for constructing and carrying a world-overview that integrates
individual episodes and experiences in people’s or groups’ lives. Discourses are
characteristic patterns of statements, conventions or language use that construct
representation in a way that reinforces the power interests of particular groups
over others by enforcing particular “regimes of truth.” Genres are particular
types of structured discourse or narrative that circulate within cultures. A genre
generates particular expectations of a style of narrative or argument that become
part of the construction of meaning through the process of consumption. Inter-
textuality refers to the process of incorporating within a particular text references
or allusions to other texts that contribute to its meaning. Being able to detect
or read the inter-textual references is one of the skills of cultural literacy—
knowing how to read the culture—and can divide the audience into in-groups
and out-groups. Symbolic capital is the status or prestige ascribed to a person or
persons by a group that gives them power to name the meaning “the power to
name (activities, groups), the power to represent commonsense and above all the
power to create the ‘official’ version of the social world” (Mahar et al. 1990).