Cheris Kramarae’s Muted Group Theory is defined as “people belonging to low-power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often overlooked.” According to Kramarae, women’s words are discounted in society, women are the muted group in society, and language is literally man-made. As a result, women experience the Muted Group Theory and then sexual harassment, which is an unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal power. This is because people with the power are intimidating to the people with less power, in this case men vs women. For example, bosses in the workplace are usually sexually harassing their employees, solely because women are regularly ignored and the man is in power.

Sandra Harding and Julia T. Wood are the Standpoint theorists who claim that “the social groups within which we are located powerfully shape what we experience and know as well as how we understand and communicate with ourselves, others, and the world.” Standpoint is “a place from which to critically view the world around us” and it affects our view of the world entirely. German Philosopher George Hegel claims that whatever a person “knows” about themselves, society, and others around them are dependent on whatever group they are a part of. In the classic movie, Tarzan, it is portrayed perfectly. Tarzan has been raised in the forest by animals and only knows the ways of the wild. When he encounters humans throughout the movie he is confused and unfamiliar with human behavior and ultimately rejects it. His standpoint is of the jungle life, so he isn’t clear about the human standpoint and does not like it.

Genderlect, which was introduced by Deborah Tannen, is “a term suggesting that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects.” According to Tannen, there is a clash of two cultures when men and women communicate. Women desire for human connection, while men desire for status. This leads to Tannen’s evidence that women value rapport talk, which seeks to establish connection with others, while men value report talk, which seeks to command attention, convey information, and win arguments. Tannen then breaks up the two cultures into five different sections: 1. Private Speaking vs Public Speaking, 2. Telling a Story, 3. Listening, 4. Asking Questions, 5. Conflict. In this cartoon, the women is talking to the man and asking him ridiculous questions about his day, which he answers concisely. She then goes on to conclude that Jeremy does not listen to her anymore, which is not completely true.

Speech Codes Theory was introduced by Gerry Philipsen and is defined as “a historically enacted, socially constructed system of terms, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct.” There are six propositions set forth by Gerry Philipsen: 1. Wherever there is a distinctive culture, there is to be found a distinctive speech code. 2. In any given speech community, multiple speech codes are deployed. 3. A speech code involves a culturally distinctive psychology, sociology, and rhetoric. 4. The significance of speaking, depends on the speech codes used by speakers and listeners to create and interpret their communication. 5. The terms, rules, and premises of a speech code are inextricably woven into speaking itself. 6. The artful use of a shared speech code is a sufficient condition for predicting, explaining, and controlling the form of discourse about the intelligibility, prudence, and morality of communication conduct. Also, there is performative ethnography that is used by many researchers. Proposition Five and the steps of it are portrayed in almost any conversation between two people.

According to George Gerbner, Cultivation Theory is the belief that heavy television viewing influences society to believe what is portrayed on television, as reality. Because of their exposure to television and the reality that comes with it, people have a false sense of what the world is like. An example of the cultivation theory that I have experienced is with shows dedicated to conspiracy theories. A friend of mine, who was a heavy TV user, watched so many conspiracy theory documentaries and videos on television, that over time he began believing in them and now thinks that the majority of events in this world are all conspiracies. His world as he knows it has been shaped by television and his concept of reality is now a misrepresentation of true reality.

Semiotics is the study of the social production of meaning from sign systems; the analysis of anything that can stand for something else. Our goal is to differentiate between nonverbal and verbal signs. Everyday we use and notice plenty of signs that we know, and don’t really know why we know them. Culturally and socially these signs have been given assigned meanings and have stuck over time. There are three different signs used in semiotics: Symbolic signs, iconic signs, and indexical signs. Symbolic signs don’t show resemblance to the objects they reference; Iconic signs “have a perceived resemblance with the objects they portray”; and Indexical signs “are directly connected with their referents spatially, temporally, or by cause-and-effect. For example, an iconic sign would be a stop sign on a road. It represents stop, which is portrayed by the red of the sign and word “STOP”. The resemblance is obvious.

Rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. There are three rhetorical proofs: logos, ethos, pathos, but i will be focusing on pathos. Emotional proof or pathos is the feeling the speech draws from the listeners. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech was filled with all three rhetorical proofs, but to most people around the country or world the resonating factor was pathos. His dream portrayed an outstanding message and outlook on life that people should embrace. It brought tears of joy to some, and anger to others.

“I Have A Dream”

Functional Perspective is a prescriptive approach that describes and predicts task-group performance when four communication functions are fulfilled. One of the four functions of Functional Perspective is Evaluation of Positive and Negative Characteristics, which is testing the relative merits of each opinion against the criteria selected; weighing the benefits and costs. An example of the Evaluation of positive and negative characteristics is from the movie Hangover 2. Stu is getting married in Thailand and is inviting Phil and Doug, but not their delusional friend Alan. When Doug finds out that Stu is not inviting Alan, he continuously begs him to invite him because it is the right thing to do and because Alan is Doug’s brother-in-law. Stu tries to put his foot down and give Doug the positives of Alan not going to Thailand and tell them the disadvantages they would encounter if he came along. They were weighing the positives and negatives, but in the end Alan ends up joining them in Thailand anyway.

Cognitive Dissonance is a distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action. One mental mechanism of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory is Selective Exposure which causes people to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because it’s incompatible with their current beliefs. An example of Selective Exposure would be how wealthy people tend to only hang around other wealthy people and be members of gentleman’s clubs, yacht clubs, etc. to either avoid the sight of lesser class individuals or poverty around them, which they may choose to ignore. This helps people to avoid dissonance and turn a blind eye to what they don’t believe currently.

The coordinated management of meaning theory states that we co-construct our own realities. These realities that we create have a direct affect on our afterlife. Pearce and Cronen see the CMM theory as a practical theory that is used to communicate more effectively. Creating your own social reality today is in direct correlation with our actions and realities tomorrow. Reflexivity, which means that our actions have effects that bounce back and affect us, is an example of that correlation. In the movie “Mean Girls” the main character Regina George is the leader of a group of snobby girls. She was a liar and was deceiving all of her friends. As a consequence, she was run over by a yellow school bus. That is the process of Reflexivity.