Talking American: Cultural Discourses on DonahueThis study explores cultural features in communication and examines language in use by studying the talk within a prominent cultural event, the DONAHUE show. First, the study provides a detailed reading of America today, showing the importance of the individual in American society, the prominence of choice, and the role of the self as an antagonist to traditional social roles and the institutions of society more generally. Similarly, the study explores common ways of speaking such as being honest about who one is, sharing one's thoughts and feelings, and really communicating with others. By unraveling how these words give shape to American means and meanings, the study demonstrates how routine communication creates powerful motives in contemporary American life. Second, the study provides a way of seeing and hearing ordinary communication as a resource to develop a cultural perspective on ordinary communicative action. |
Contents
Discourse on Personhood | 15 |
A Political Code of Respect | 21 |
Straddling Political and Personal | 41 |
Copyright | |
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actions aligned American discourse assertions audience member awareness boys Carbaugh categories about speaking choice common meanings common purposes constraints context create cultural category cultural communication cultural discourses cultural symbols David Schneider described discourse of personhood discussed display Donahue enactments environment ethnographic evaluate example exploring expressed feelings focal concerns folk taxonomies force freedom functions Geertz guest Gumperz heard honest human Hymes identified identity Ilongot individual interaction interlocutors interpersonal relationships interpretation involves labeled male prostitutes Marilyn Monroe marriage metaphorical speech Michelle Rosaldo motives munication native genres norm notion one's open adoption opinions participants patterns Phil Donahue polemical code polysemic premise problems prominent reference relations relationship respect responsibility rhetoric ritual Rosaldo Schneider semantic dimensions sense sharing society speakers spoken statement suggest symbolic forms symbolic system symmetrical relations system of symbols talk Toughlove traditional social roles utterances valued verbal Victor Turner vidual woman