Created by Cheris Kramarae, the muted group theory states that language is “literally a man-made construction.” According to Kramarae, a muted group is a group of people who belong to low-power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often overlooked. A recurring example of a muted group used by Kramarae is women. According to her and other feminist theorists, women’s words are discounted in our society and their thoughts are devalued. This is apparent everyday in the daily life of some. As I scroll through the feeds on social networks, there are examples of women’s opinions not even being took into consideration by some men in conversation.

The standpoint theory, created by Sandra Harding and Julia T. Wood, basically states “where you sit is where you stand.” Standpoint is defined as a place from which to critically view the world around us. Depending on where you are socially, geographically, etc., your view on the world may be different from someone who is at a different vantage point. An example of this is present in everyday life between parents and children, police and civilians, teachers and students, etc.

A speech code is defined as a historically enacted socially constructed system of terms, meanings, premises, an rules pertaining to communicative conduct. The theory, created by Gerry Philipsen, claims that wherever there is a distinctive culture, there is to be found a distinctive speech code. An example of this is present in groups of friends that hang around each other for long amounts of time. I have numerous sayings and inside jokes with my friends that no one who was outside of the circle would understand what we were talking about if they heard our conversation.

The Genderlect Styles concept, by Deborah Tannen, suggests that masculine and feminine style of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects. Rapport talk, used more by women, is the typical style of conversation which seeks to establish connection with others. Report talk, used more by men, is the typical style of conversation which seeks to command attention, convey information, and win arguments. One example of the differences between these style of conversation is when telling a story. When men tell a story, they tend to tell jokes or try to make themselves the hero in the story while women would rather tell stories about others. An example of this is present in numerous movies when women are gossiping about someone else in the neighborhood or community without telling anything about themselves.

George Gerbner, who came up with the Cultivation Theory, claimed that because television contains so much violence, people who spend the most time in front of the television set develop an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. Gerbner defined dramatic violence as “the overt expression of physical force as part of the plot.” This “dramatic violence” rules out verbal abuse and idle threats but includes the physical abuse present in cartoons. The exposure of these heavy amounts of violence on the television can cause people to create an abstract world where the victim of similar violence in real life would be fine. I have seen numerous videos on YouTube of teenagers and young adults doing numerous wrestling moves in an unsafe environment, clearly not concerned with the danger of the various maneuvers they were performing.

http://youtu.be/vilSpSoJ44s

Semiotics is defined as the study of the social production of meaning from sign systems; the analysis of anything that can stand for something else. A sign is the combination of its signifier and signified. The signifier of the sign is defined as the physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses or an image. Basically it’s what the person sees. While the signified is the meaning associated with the sign. For example an example of a sign would be the Batman symbol. The signifier of this sign is the bat that shines up in the sky and is on Batman’s costume. The signified for this sign would be the Batman himself.

Rhetoric, by Aristotle, is defined as the discovery in each case of “the available means of persuasion.” According to Aristotle, there are four different proofs that are the available means of persuasion. There are external proofs that the speaker does not create and there are the three internal proofs created by the speaker. These internal proofs are logical, ethical, and emotional, also known as logos, ethos, and pathos, respectively. Emotional proof, or pathos, is defined as the feeling the speech draws out of the hearers. This proof, along with the others, is apparent in some way, shape, or form in every public speech. An example of this proof being used in a speech is in the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 when the main character is giving a speech to some of the food animals to attempt to persuade them into helping him with his task.

http://youtu.be/-j1-05Mf8XI

Cognitive dissonance is a theory by Leon Festinger defined as “the distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action.” Along with this theory, Festinger created three hypotheses. The second of these hypothesis is postdecision dissonance. This hypothesis states that close-call decisions can generate inner feelings of tension. This feeling of tension raises with importance of the issue, how long it took the individual to make a decision, and the level of difficulty necessary to reverse the decision. This hypothesis is present in everyday life and decisions. A very common example of this is when a person chooses a cell phone to buy. One can decide on a certain brand or model but when one of their friends or family has the other phone, there can be some features on it that they wish they had selected when they picked their phone.

Functional perspective is defined as “a prescriptive approach that describes and predicts task-group performance when four communication functions are fulfilled.” In short, this approach, created by Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran, explains that a group making a decision together is better that a singular mind trying to reach a goal. An example of this approach is present in the movie Set It Off. The group of ladies come together and have a meeting about robbing a bank. They establish the goal and they start thinking of ways to achieve that goal using all of the four functions of effective decision making.

One aspect of the coordinated management of meaning theory is logical force. Logical force is defined in the textbook as the sense of obligation felt by a person to respond a certain way to another person’s actions or words. For my example of this I used a scene from the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. In the scene, one of the inmates felt disrespected by the main character and logical force was telling her to react to this disrespect by attempting to kill the main character.