CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF MEDIADISCOURSE This article is about the conceptual analysis of mediadiscourse of the western and Kazakhstani’s mediadiscourse. In the article is given the key points of mediadiscourse by M. G.M. McLuhan. McLuhan’s undiluted media determinism results in an image of society as entirely defined by its means of communication. The medial space of Kazakhstan in recent years, especially official media, demonstrates the obvious Kazakhstani’s media is described by magazine “Expert Kazakhstan”.
Keywords: media discourse, the medial space, cognitive space, medial theory, theory of discourse, media discourse analysis
Nowadays, at least two approaches to the definition of a media discourse are existed. According to the first approach , the media discourse is a specific type of speech-activity, which is characteristic of exclusively for the information field of the mass media. In this sense, it is necessary to distinguish between a media discourse and other independent types of discourse, such as political, religious, scientific, etc. Differences between them are determined by modifications of various parameters of discourse — different language practices, different communicative situations of their realization, although the statements of these discourses can refer to a common thematic field. According to the second approach, the media discourse is conceived as any kind of discourse, realized in the field of mass communication, made by the media. So, we can talk about the political, religious, educational and other media discourse, meaning that for the realization these types of institutional discourse assume a relatively stable set of production practices, translation and interpretation of the media. We tend to stick to the last view, interpreting the media discourse as a thematically focused, due to sociocultural activity in the mass media space. The principal difference of this type of discourse is that, in addition to producing certain knowledge, evaluating objects and their images as a result of speech-activity, it creates an idea of how knowledge is complicated. In other words, the central subject of the media discourse is not so much political processes as, for example, how to describe and transfer knowledge about them. In this respect, the media discourse is highly mediocre activity. In the media discourse, information is converted into meaning (the construction of knowledge), the transfer of knowledge from one level (for example, institutional) to another (for example, everyday), the fusion of information of various types (for example, political and entertainment, event and advertising) or creating special knowledge , Which relates only to media reality. Let us note the relative nature of this kind of knowledge: its «truthfulness» or «significance» is determined by the linguo-social, sociocultural and — more broadly — historical and civilizational contexts, which are also necessary for the description of the media discourse [1, 12].
The analysis of the media discourse is most often based on the following assumptions: knowledge and ideas about the world are the result of classifying reality through categories; «The picture of the world» and the ways of its creation are conditioned by the historical and cultural context; Knowledge arises not only in the process of «pure» perception and logical cognition, but also in the process of social interaction (which in the modern information world is the dominant condition for the «production of knowledge»); Social interaction has a discursive character and involves real social and cultural consequences [2, 4].
Media professionals in general are able to write or speak in authoritative ways about the world, making claims to know what other people feel or what is really happening which few others in society could get away with. They do so to the extent that they drawn the authoritative discourses
of journalism and other media practices. Discourse analysts also propose that these kinds of powerful ideas do not precede particular media texts, but are made and renewed through each
instance of language use. Each text is potentially important and valuable to study. Media discourse analysis is not alone in making claims about the centrality of language in social life. There is a large and rapidly expanding body of research on discourse across the academic disciplines, which is drawn upon throughout the book. Discourse analysis is often an interdisciplinary activity, so that we find important analyses of media language tucked inside arguments about quite different problems. For example, van Dijk’s [3.60] persuasive model of how the news works by calling up mental models arises partly out of a project on racism in society. This is both discourse analysis’s strength – it allows us to study media discourse in ways that show the media’s connection to other parts of social and cultural life – but it also makes discourse analysis sometimes appear a ‘large and rather messy’ hotchpotch [4, 35].
It is known that the United States occupies one of the leading places in the world to popularize media education. Since the development of media competence, of course, involves studying and developing the skills of assessing media content, the relationship between the media and their audience, it seems relevant to consider the possibilities of synthesizing media education and media criticism in the United States.
A new line of conceptualization is associated with the works of the Canadian school — G. Innis, G.M. McLuhan. Ideas of GM. McLuhan, thanks to the popularity of the presentation, demonstrate a key vector in the evolution of the theory and methodology of scientific humanitarian knowledge of the 20th century. The scientist, having connected the stages of the development of society with the peculiarities of the technical means of communication serving him, practically exalted the role of information to the absolute communication [5, 45].
The fundamental shift from McLuhan’s original perspective on mass media to that of his later, more central, work results from a rejection of question of content and value, in favour of a structural analysis. That is, from McLuhan’s perspective, media create technological environments – the nature and extent of which should override any concern with the apparent effect of their specific content, or particular message. While the McLuhan of The Mechanical Bride evaluated the impact of media technologies from the surety of accumulated cultural values, the later McLuhan sees such values as entirely determined by media technologies. This raises an immediate question as to the suitability and appropriateness of interrogating the nature of media-induced cultural shifts with approaches and perspectives that have been undermined and made outdated by those same media. In the face of this situation, McLuhan turned his attention to the history of such shifts in perspective. He investigated the relationship between the cultural superstructure, and its technomedial infrastructure.
McLuhan argued that the predominant medium or media defined the nature of knowledge in any given epoch, and that these mediatically determined cultures in turn dictated the form that ‘man’ would take within them. Thus, according to McLuhan, preliterate tribal cultures were characterized by an ‘acoustic’ space, within which the human mouth and ear were the main organs of communication, serving as transmitter and receiver respectively. This acoustic space is continuous – in it, individual elements and their background are never truly separate; they rise out of and return to a single aural dimension from which they are only partially differentiated. Moreover, the designation of this space of communication as aural/oral is largely for convenience, in truth, mouth and ear are mere points within a multi-sensory field of discourse in which gesture, intonation and location constituted integral components in communication. The preliterate word was ‘signifying’ – a co-participant in a complex ‘speech’ act in which the body was as articulate as the voice. Its tactility, immediate sensuousness, and omnipresence meant that acoustic space was effectively coterminous with the collective space of tribal life. The nature of the individual was in turn prescribed by the primary medium of communication; indeed McLuhan argues that acoustic space did not support the kind of individuated subject that we now take for granted. In preliterate culture the individual and collective are intertwined to such a degree as to be effectively interchangeable. There is minimal distance between the responses of the individual and those of the
collective, and McLuhan depicts the affective life of the oral society in terms that recall the fearful tremulousness of a flock of birds and a herd of gazelles: ‘Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time2 ’[5, 32].
Understanding Media begins programmatically. ‘The medium is the message’ announces McLuhan’s best-known slogan, and the basic principle of his media theory. As noted previously, McLuhan’s thesis is that the real import of media technology is not their apparent content (the narratives, stories, genres, cultural forms and personalities they present for our consumption), but rather their material presence, as discrete technologies, and more importantly, the reticulated networks of production and consumption they create. McLuhan’s undiluted media determinism results in an image of society as entirely defined by its means of communication.
In modern Kazakhstan Media discourse, as well as in the last century, relative to all of its manifestations the most in the following cognitive model is obvious — anthropocentrism of interpretation, which in many respects ensure fast acceptance ,solutions, memories and reconstruction, evaluation.
The medial space of Kazakhstan in recent years, especially official media, demonstrates the obvious. This is best described as the consequence of manipulating public opinion. I have analyzed editorial block of articles of the magazine «Expert of Kazakhstan» (January 2016- January 2017).This magazine is considered as one of the important magazines in the press of Kazakhstan. It includes the following parts : Politics and economics , Business and Finance, Science and technology, People and events. This magazine includes the following rubrics and in the diagram we can see the results of analyses of editorial block articles.
1.Rubric- Economics and finance- 71% 2.Rubric- Kazakhstani business- 25% 3.Rubric-Culture- 4%
4.International business- 0%
The table with the titles of articles:
№ of the
magazine The title of the editorial block article Rubric
1 1.Nation-building
In the RK, a nation is built of ethnic and civilian components Kazakhstani business
2 Status of households Economics and finance
3 President’s Message. Time to make a technical review Why is the new presidential message formed mainly from
old theses? Kazakhstani business
4 Corruption. Under the anti-corruption flag Kazakhstani business
As the transit of power approaches, it is more difficult to distinguish the anti-corruption campaign from the clash of
political groups
5. On the way to poverty Economics and finance
6. Pension assets by increasing their volume are not subject to
economic and political decision-making Economics and finance
7. 7.Export
The threat in the middlegame Economics and finance
8 Culture in market conditions Culture
9. Land reform Economics and finance
10 Fintech
Blok chain crept unnoticed Economics and finance
11 The economy needs new investment incentives Economics and finance
12 The model of relations between the center and the regions,
formed in the years of abundance, has exhausted itself Economics and finance
13 Cleaning mechanism
Effective work with stressful assets in banks is not yet possible. Including because of the reluctance of the latter to
sacrifice their income Economics and finance
14 Symbiosis is preferable The best option for the development of the financial market
will be joining efforts of the IFC and KASE Economics and finance
15 The National Trust is not spent on the development of the
national economy, and for patching holes in the budget and the replacement of bank loans Economics and finance
16 Education Reforms. Kazakhstan’s education has lost its humanistic significance, but to say that it is regulated by
the market is also difficult Economics and finance
17 Transformation of Samruk-Kazyna Economics and finance
18 Economic policy. The government will sooner or later have
to make radical changes in the economy Economics and finance
19 Compensation for deposits. The program of compensation of exchange rate differences on household deposits went
past the economy Economics and finance
20 Law enforcement authorities
The trajectory of police service reforms is properly built, but it does not give results Kazakhstani business
21 Productivity of labor. The growth of labor productivity is the main goal, around which it would be possible to build a program for the
growth of the national economy Economics and finance
22 Local government The political system of the RK does not
allow the creation of independent public authorities Kazakhstani business
23 25th Anniversary of Independence of Kazakhstan. The
results and key trends of 1991-2016, which will affect Kazakhstan in 2017-2041 y Kazakhstani business
24 Five years after the December events of 2011, we have to admit that the main problems of the single-industry city
could not be solved Economics and finance
As the results of analyses the most of the articles are devoted to economics than politics and culture. Journalists are aware of economical events than political and international issues.
In conclusion I would like to say media professionals in general are able to write or speak in authoritative ways about the world, making claims to know what other people feel or what is really happening which few others in society could get away with. Ideology of solidarity, present in the Kazakh media discourse. The medial space of Kazakhstan reflects the real speech and social
situation of our time. Everything mixed up in it was very mosaic: from archaic and Soviet stereotypes to modern postmodern examples. To date, one can assume that the post-Soviet mythological reconstructions of the distant and relatively recent past have an effective and not always positive impact on the consciousness of the emerging Kazakhstani society.
Reference:
1 Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now. Paul A. Taylor and Jan LI. Harris Open University Press, 208
2 Matheson D., Media discourses . 2005.Open University Press,McGraw-Hill Education 3 van Dijk, T. News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1988
4 Cook, G. The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge. 1992
5 McLuhan M. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge, 1995. 6 Expert of Kazakhstan .(magazine, 2016)
Бұл мақала Қазақстандық және батыс медиадискурс концептуалды талдауына арналған. Аталған мақалада Г.М. Маклюэннің медиадискур жайлы қағидалары берілген. Г.М. Маклюэннің теориясы бойынша БАҚы қоғамның айқын бейнесін анықтайды. Соңғы жылдардағы Қазақстандағы медиалық кеңістік, әсіресе ресми ақпараттық құралдары, отандық ақпараттық құралдарының ерекшеліктерін көрсетеді. «Қазақстан Эксперт Казахстан» журналында ұсынылған мағалаларға талдау жасалады.
Эта статья посвящена концептуальному анализу западного и казахстанского медиадискурса. В статье приводятся основные моменты медиадискурса М. Г.М. Маклюэн. Детерминизм средств массовой информации Маклюэна приводит к тому, что образ общества полностью определяется его средствами коммуникации. Медиальное пространство Казахстана в последние годы, особенно официальные СМИ, демонстрирует особенности казахстанского СМИ. В статье дается анализ журнала «Эксперт Казахстан».