Experimentation—the observation of phenomena under controlled conditions.

In
laboratory experiments the investigator himself creates the setting for his observations,
where in field experiments he manipulates only some of the variables in an
established social setting. A third category of natural experiments is sometimes used
to refer to cases where the investigator actually controls nothing, but where events
happen to occur in a way similar to that which an investigator might wish to create
through controlled conditions. (p. 348)

- Symbols have enormous significance in our lives and play an important role in our
thinking and behavior.

1. Participant as observer, where the researcher participates with the group being observed and is
a functioning part of the group. As such, the person is an “insider” enjoying a close
understanding of the context and the process while performing the added role of an observer and
recorder.
2. Observer as participant, in which the observer is a neutral outsider who has been given
the privilege of participating for the purpose of making observations and recording them.

social anthropologist Mary Douglas (1970), this theory argues that in modern societies, there
are four mutually antagonistic lifestyles that shape people’s choices in consumption and other
areas of social and political life. Group involves the strength of the bounds in the units in which
people find themselves (strong or weak), and grid involves the number of rules that they must
obey (many or few).

The descriptive survey, as the name suggests, describes the population being studied. These
surveys seek to obtain information about demographic factors such as age, gender, marital
status, occupation, race or ethnicity, income, and religion and to relate this information to
opinions, beliefs, values, and behaviors of some group of people.

Surveying is a research method used to get information about certain groups of people
representative of some larger group of interest. For example, manufacturers of products want to
know how people feel about their products (and those of their competitors) and use surveys to
find out.

1
a well-known model for the communication process by linguist Roman Jakobson, discuss an
equally well-known model by Harold Lasswell, and tie these to one I have developed on the five
focal points in communication: the artist (creator), the work of art, the audience, the medium
used by the artist, and America (or any society). Jakobson’s model (see McQuail & Windahl,
1993) is shown here:

archetypes, exist independent of the personal unconscious of individuals.

Undeveloped writing. Undeveloped writing lacks detail and color. It tends to be vague, overly
general, and abstract.

• Ethnomethodology:
– is interested in how people think and act in everyday-life situations,
– in contrast tolaboratory experiments or focus groups or other situations (in
which people recognize that they are being studied).
– “Common sense” becomes a subject of inquiry, not just a “given” neglected
for other concerns.

Appealing to false authority. We often use authorities when supporting our arguments—
people who have expertise in certain areas—but we must be certain that the authorities we cite
can speak with legitimacy on our subject. An authority on medicine is not an authority on
education

The list that follows is a general guide to the process of coding drawn from John W. Creswell’s
Research Design: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (1994).
1. Read over the material as a whole and get an overview of it.
2. Pick one transcript and examine it carefully, looking for topics covered.
3. Do this for several transcripts and make a list of all the topics that were covered.

2
4. Make abbreviations for each topic and go through the transcripts, putting down the appropriate
abbreviation beside each example of a given topic. If your topics list doesn’t cover all the
material, see if you can think up new topics that will help you do the job.
5. Turn your topics into categories. Make sure that the categories cover all your transcripts and
don’t duplicate one another.
6. Decide on a final set of abbreviations for your categories and alphabetize them. You now have
an alphabetical list of codes in the transcripts.
7. Assemble all the material found under each category in one place and analyze it to see what
you find.
8. See whether you can refine your coding and get fewer and more descriptive categories.

Discourse analysis:
• is a qualitative methodology.
• helps us understand social interactions and how social reality is produced, through
our discourses (talk, texts, and images).
• is broader and more comprehensive than its main components:
– conversation analysis (which is about talk)
narrative analysis (which is about written texts).

Deborah Cameron, a professor of language and communication at Oxford University, has

written books on both approaches: Working with Spoken Discourse (2001) and, with Ivan
Panovic’, Working With Written Discourse (2014). In the introduction to her book on written
discourse, she explained that discourse analysis is of use to scholars in a variety of fields such
as cultural studies, law, literature, philosophy, media studies, sociology, and social
psychology. She added that she and her colleague wrote the book on written discourse because
most discourse analysts, while they recognize the importance of written discourse, tend to focus
their analyses on spoken discourse.
focuses attention not only on the content of written material but on the style that writers
use, the language they use to express themselves, and the strategies they adopt to get their ideas
across. The focus, we may say, is on the “how” not the “what.”

3
Interviews:
• enable researchers to obtain information they cannot gain by observation alone
• a conversation between:
– a researcher (someone who wishes to gain information about a subject)
– an informant (someone who presumably has information of interest on the
subject).
is a qualitative methodology.
• Face-to-face interview: mindful of nonverbal communication:
– Facial expression
Emotional states

Semistructured interviews. Here, the interviewer usually has a written list of questions to ask
the informant but tries, to the extent possible, to maintain the casual quality found in
unstructured interviews. Focus groups, which are widely used in market research, are
considered semistructured interviews.
Structured interviews. Here the researcher uses an interview schedule—a specific set of
instructions that guide those who ask respondents questions. For example, the instructions might
tell what follow-up questions to ask if a question is answered in a certain way. Self-
administered questionnaires are also classified as structured interviews. (Interviewing
techniques are also an important element of survey research,

Wildavsky slightly changed the names he used for these four political cultures over the years. I
will use the terms that offer the easiest understanding. The four political cultures form on the
basis of group boundaries (weak or strong) and prescriptions (few or numerous):

1. Fatalists: Group boundaries weak, prescriptions numerous

2. Individualists: Group boundaries weak, prescriptions few
3. Elitists: Group boundaries strong, prescriptions numerous
4. Egalitarians: Group boundaries strong, prescriptions few

4
 • content analysis is:
– a quantitative, systematic, and objective technique for describing the
manifest content of communications.
– apply to all forms of communication: personal and mass mediated.
• Many scholars add that content analysis: can tell what is in the material being
studied, not how it affects people exposed to this material.

Record what you see. Record what you see in as much detail as possible. If you have access 366
to informants, you should make an audio recording of your interviews with them (if you can do
so) so you have an accurate record of what they said. You should keep written records that are as
detailed and complete as possible and should concern yourself with what people actually say
and do and not with your impressions of things. Now, with inexpensive video cameras and cell
phones with video capabilities, it is easier to record videos.

. The control group, in a sense, was the population not involved in the experiment.

Ideological analysis argues that the media and other forms of communication are used in
capitalist nations, dominated by a bourgeois ruling class, to generate false consciousness in the
masses or, in Marxist terms, the proletariat

G. Phifer (1961) in his article “The Historical Approach” (in An Introduction to Graduate
Study in Speech and Theatre, edited by C. W. Dow), suggested seven types of historical studies.
They are listed here in slightly modified form:
1. Biographical studies, focusing on the lives and psyches of important persons
2. Movement or idea studies, tracing the development of political, social, or economic ideas
and movements
3. Regional studies, focusing on particular cities, states, nations, and regions
4. Institutional studies, concentrating on specific organizations
5. Case histories, focusing on social settings of a single event

5
6. Selected studies, identifying and paying close attention to a special element in some complex
process
7. Editorial studies, dealing with the translating or processing of documents

Gender-neutral language. Reports use gender-neutral language. This is most easily

accomplished by avoiding he and she and using the plural.

Awkwardness. Awkward passages are ungainly and stiff and not well formed, for example,
“The humanity of the death penalty is a problem that has long been a debate in many societies.”
Writing that uses the same sentence structure over and over again is also considered awkward.

Common Fallacies
1. Appealing to false authority
2. Stacking the deck (selected instances).
3. Overgeneralizing (allness).
4. Imperfect analogies and comparisons
5. Misrepresenting ideas of other people
6. Pushing arguments to absurd extremes.
7. Before, therefore because of (post hoc ergo propter hoc).
8. Misleading percentages.
9. Using seemingly impressive numbers.
10. Misleading use of the term average.
11. Incorrect assumptions
12. False conclusions.
13. Mistaking correlation and causation
14. Diversion of attention by using emotional language
15. Begging the question
16. Oversimplification.
17. Ad hominem arguments
18. Ad populum arguments.
19. Pooh-poohing arguments: Pooh-poohing involves ridiculing other people and failing
to take their ideas seriously. It is a means of avoiding logical argument and often uses
the “everyone knows” tactic to suggest that an idea is so absurd it shouldn’t even be
considered. Pooh-poohing is a common evasive technique.

6
The globalization of the media and economic institutions allows the ruling classes to spread their
bourgeois ideology and export problems to the third world. Marxists call this phenomenon
“cultural imperialism.”\

Benefits of Participant Observation Studies

• Understand what’s going on in a setting you are studying
• Determine which questions to ask informants.
• An unobtrusive way of getting information about groups and their behavior.

Styles and Written Discourse

Every word that writers use represents a choice they make and each word is used to create a
deliberate impression. It is not too much of a stretch to say that writing is a form of impression
management.

Mistaking correlation and causation. Just because there is a correlation between X and Y does
not mean that X causes Y. For example, there may be a correlation between the amount of
higher education and small families, but it does not mean that the amount of education
causes small families. There may be other factors involved, such as the age at which people
with higher education get married. We have to distinguish between some factor causing
something to happen and that factor contributing to something’s happening.

Let me suggest the difference between what might be described as pure ethnomethodological
research as practiced by sociologists (and other researchers, such as linguists and psychologists),
which focuses on everyday life routines, and the adapted or applied form of this research, which
uses films, television programs, songs, and other mediated texts.

If we apply this chart to the joke about the priest, minister, and rabbi, we find the following
techniques at work:
- Mistakes (29): The minister smells cigar smoke and thinks it comes from the priest’s
cigar.
- Reversal (35): The minister attempts to get revenge against the priest.

7
 - Exposure (18): The rabbi reveals that he’s the source of the cigar smoke.
- Facetiousness (19): The rabbi says he was innocently sitting in a refrigerator.
- Absurdity (1): The rabbi was smoking in a refrigerator
with all kinds of techniques that generate humor and laughter.

Discourse analysts use the term multimodal discourse analysis to deal with the way discourse
analysts work on texts with both written material and visual images in them. The basic
methodology that multimodal discourse analysts use in working with images is semiotics, which
I dealt with in Chapter 3 of this book.

Prepare some questions before the interviews. Even though you don’t use a prepared list of
questions in unstructured interviews, you should do some thinking about your topic and do what
you can to stay focused and avoid going off on tangents. Some researchers suggest that a
research protocol be developed to guarantee uniformity and accuracy. A typical interview
protocol contains material such as the following:
- A title or heading for the interview 287
- Instructions for the interviewer to follow
- A list of key questions to be asked
- Follow-up questions (or probes) once the key questions have been asked
- Comments and notes by the interviewer relative to the interview

The mean (the arithmetic average) is the sum of all observed data values divided by the
sample size.

The second kind of survey, the analytic survey,

- seeks to find out why people behave the way they do.
- Researchers often use data from descriptive surveys to develop hypotheses and
- use analytic surveys to test their hypotheses about what causes certain kinds of
behavior.
- Analytic surveys attempt to determine whether there are causal relationships
between certain kinds of behavior and social and demographic characteristics of
people.

8
Nominal level. Typical examples of data on this level are demographics such as sex, nationality,
and marital status. For each analyzed object, the only thing we are able to determine is to which
of a few categories it belongs. We can code these categories with numbers, but they are used
only as signs without any mathematical meaning.
For example, we can code sex as 0 for females and 1 for males, but nothing will be changed
if we use 0 for males and 1 for females. We cannot use these numbers for any mathematical
operation. We could equally well use such symbols as ►)- for males and *§& for females. From
the point of view of statistics, nominal data are the simplest kind because of the limited number
of operations that can be applied to them.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an approach that highlights the social, ideological and
political dimension of discourse. Its practitioners regard discourse in the same way as critical
social theorists like Foucault . . . as something that does not just describe a pre-existing reality,
but actively shapes our understand of reality. (p. 66)

- Heroes, according to Jung, are the most important kind of archetypes and are
manifestations of the collective unconscious.
- These hero myths vary enormously in detail, but the more closely one examines them the
more one sees that structurally they are very similar
- they survive to fight new villains, in endless succession, who keep appearing with incredible
regularity

Disadvantages of Experiments
Probably the biggest problem with experiments is that they are artificial, conducted—
generally speaking—in laboratories or in “nonnatural” situations.

Rhetoricians traditionally were interested in one element of the communication process, the
matter of persuasion

Under quantitative methodologies, I include experiments, content analysis, surveys, and

questionnaires—techniques that lend themselves to statistical manipulations to gain
information.

9
 - The Steps of the research process are:

Selection of research problem/topic;

- Review of relevant literature;
- Statement of research question or hypothesis;
- Determination of appropriate methodology and research design;
- Data collection;
- Analysis and interpretation of data;
- Presentation/publication;
- [Replication/further research] - [The start of a new research project]

For Saussure, the important thing to remember about signs is that they are made up of sounds
and images, what he called signifiers, and the concepts these sounds and images bring to mind,
what he called signifieds. As he wrote,

Overview
Round Up the Usual Suspects
These methods are at the heart of a new subject or “metadiscipline” (some people say I never
met a discipline I didn’t like, but I swear it’s not true) called cultural studies, which, as I see
things, developed out of an old one—popular culture. Cultural studies eliminates the boundaries
between elite arts and popular arts, but what it represents, I would suggest, is really a
formalization (and perhaps an elaboration) of what people who had been studying the mass
media and popular culture were already doing.
(Những phương pháp này là trung tâm của một chủ đề mới hoặc "siêu kỷ luật" (một số người nói
rằng tôi chưa bao giờ gặp một ngành học mà tôi không thích, nhưng tôi thề rằng nó không đúng)
được gọi là nghiên cứu văn hóa, như tôi thấy, phát triển từ một môn học cũ - văn hóa đại chúng.
Nghiên cứu văn hóa loại bỏ ranh giới giữa nghệ thuật ưu tú và nghệ thuật đại chúng, nhưng
những gì nó đại diện, tôi sẽ đề nghị, thực sự là một sự chính thức hóa (và có lẽ là một công phu)
về những gì những người đã nghiên cứu phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng và văn hóa đại
chúng đã làm.)

How I Became a Man Without Quantities

“Data-free?” What could that mean?

10
 Chapter 1: What Is Research?
We All Do Research, All the Time
What is research? Literally it means “to search for, to find” and comes from the Latin re (again)
and from cercier (to search). In French, the term chercher means “seek.” In the most general
sense, research means looking for information about something. (Nghiên cứu là gì? Theo nghĩa
đen, nó có nghĩa là "tìm kiếm, tìm" và xuất phát từ tiếng Latin re (một lần nữa) và từ cercier (tìm
kiếm). Trong tiếng Pháp, thuật ngữ chercher có nghĩa là "tìm kiếm". Theo nghĩa chung nhất,
nghiên cứu có nghĩa là tìm kiếm thông tin về một cái gì đó.)

Scholarly Research Is Different From Everyday Research

A number of differences between everyday research and scholarly research need to be
considered. Scholarly research is, generally speaking, more systematic, more objective, more
careful, and more concerned about correctness and truthfulness than everyday research. (Một số
khác biệt giữa nghiên cứu hàng ngày và nghiên cứu học thuật cần được xem xét. Nghiên cứu học
thuật, nói chung, có hệ thống hơn, khách quan hơn, cẩn thận hơn và quan tâm nhiều hơn đến
tính đúng đắn và trung thực hơn so với nghiên cứu hàng ngày.)

Diachronic and Synchronic Research

 In diachronic or historical studies, we focus on change over time, and
 in synchronic or comparative studies, we study change over distance, to put things in
rather simplistic terms.
In experimental research, the comparison is between a control group, to whom nothing is done,
and an experimental group, to whom something is done. The thing that is done to the
experimental group is called an independent variable.

THINKING FAST AND SLOW

Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist at Princeton University, offers a wide-ranging analysis of how
the human mind works in his book Thinking Fast and Slow (2011). In this book he argued that
there are two oppositional systems working in our minds, System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow).
He wrote,

 System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of
voluntary control.
 System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including
complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the
subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration

Quantity and Quality in Media Research

The term quality comes from the Latin word qualitas, which means “Of what kind?”

11
Quantity is a different matter. The term quantity comes from the Latin word quantitas meaning
“How great?” or, for our purposes, “How much?” or “How many?” When we think of
quantitative research in the media and communication, we think of numbers, magnitude, and
measurement. Of course, the problem that quantitative researchers often face is that they count
only certain things, not everything, and it may be the case that something that cannot be
quantified is of great importance in one’s research.
Quantitative researchers are sometimes accused of being too narrow, basing their research on
what they can count, measure, and observe and neglecting other matters.
Qualitative researchers, however, are often accused of “reading into” texts things that are not
there or of having opinions or making interpretations that seem odd, excessive, or even
idiosyncratic. (The term idios means private, and idiosyncratic interpretations of media and texts
are highly personal and not defensible.)

Media and Communication

For our purposes, we can focus on five aspects of communication:
- Intrapersonal
- Interpersonal
- Small group
- Organizational
- Mass media.

Chapter 2: The Research Process

Search Strategies
There are two general search strategies:
1. Going from the specific to the general
2. Going from the general to the specific

Sources of Information
Here are some important sources we can use:

12
 - Google Scholar, which lists articles and books on a wide range of topics
- Google, the most widely used search engine
- Bing, Microsoft’s search engine
- Wikipedia. At the end of Wikipedia articles, you’ll generally find links to the articles and
books used by the writer(s) of the Wikipedia article.
Here are some other sources of information that may be of use to you in doing your research:
- Computer-based central catalogs (formerly card catalogs)
- Bibliographic databases. Here, I have in mind resources such as the Reader’s Guide to
Periodical Literature, the National Newspaper Index, the Social Sciences Index, and the
Business Periodicals Index
- Indexes to specific periodicals.
- Abstracts collections
- Guides to research.
- Dictionaries.
- Encyclopedias.
- Yearbooks
- Statistical sources.
- The Internet.

How to Read Analytically

There is a difference between reading an article or book strictly for its content and reading that
book or article analytically; the latter involves making a critical assessment of the style and
content of the text being analyzed. Here are some suggestions that will help you read
analytically. We must recognize that scholars in every discipline often differ in their approaches
to research and their beliefs that generate this research. (Có một sự khác biệt giữa việc đọc một
bài báo hoặc cuốn sách hoàn toàn cho nội dung của nó và đọc cuốn sách hoặc bài báo đó một
cách phân tích; Sau này liên quan đến việc đánh giá quan trọng về phong cách và nội dung của
văn bản được phân tích. Dưới đây là một số gợi ý sẽ giúp bạn đọc phân tích. Chúng ta phải
nhận ra rằng các học giả trong mọi ngành thường khác nhau về cách tiếp cận nghiên cứu và
niềm tin của họ tạo ra nghiên cứu này.)
Marxist economists differ considerably from capitalist economists and focus their attention on
different matters.

Consider the style of writing.

You must also avoid awkward and unclear passages in your writing and observe the rules of
grammar.

13
Primary and Secondary Research Sources
- Primary research involves firsthand observation and study by a researcher. For
example, you survey a group of people on some topic and then see what the data
reveal.
- Secondary research uses research performed by others to come to some conclusion
about a topic or make some kind of an argument.
Primary research is the study of a subject through firsthand observation and investigation, such
as analyzing a literary or historical text, conducting a survey, or carrying out a laboratory
experiment. Primary sources include statistical data, historical documents, and works of
literature and art.
Secondary research is the examination of studies that other researchers have made of a subject.
Examples of secondary research are books and articles about political issues, historical events,
scientific debates, or literary works. (p. 2)

Chapter 3: Semiotic Analysis

The basic unit of semiotics is the sign defined conceptually as something that stands for
something else, and, more technically, as a spoken or written word, a drawn figure, or a
material object unified in the mind with a particular cultural concept.
For Saussure, the important thing to remember about signs is that they are made up of sounds
and images, what he called signifiers, and the concepts these sounds and images bring to
mind, what he called signifieds.

Peirce ’ s Trichotomy: Icon, Index, and Symbol

Icons signify by resemblance, indexes signify by cause and effect, and symbols signify on the
basis of convention

Allied Concepts
- Denotation. Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a term or object. It is basically
descriptive.
- Connotation. Connotation deals with the cultural meanings that become attached to a
term.

14
 - Metaphor. Metaphor refers to communicating by analogy. Thus, one might say, “My love
is a red rose.” A great deal of our thinking, as I shortly point out, is metaphoric.
- Simile. Simile is a weaker subcategory of metaphor, which uses like or as
- Metonymy. Metonymy deals with communicating by association
- Synecdoche. Synecdoche is a subcategory of metonymy in which a part is used to stand
for the whole or vice versa.
- Metaphor and metonymy (and their subcategories) are commonly known as
“figures of speech.”

Clotaire Rapaille on Culture Codes

Rapaille placed a great deal of importance on what he called “imprints”: combinations of
experiences and accompanying emotions.

Semiotics in Society: A Reprise

Thus, semiotics helps us understand how to decipher the messages we are sent and better
understand the messages we send about ourselves to others. We are often unaware of the
messages we’re sending and how others are interpreting them.

Syntagmatic Analysis of Texts (Phân tích cú pháp của văn bản)

Semioticians use the term syntagmatic analysis to refer to interpretation that looks at the
sequence of events that give texts meaning —in the same way that the sequence of words we use
in a sentence generates meaning. (The term syntagm means “chain.”)

(Các nhà ký hiệu học sử dụng thuật ngữ phân tích cú pháp để chỉ việc giải thích xem xét chuỗi
các sự kiện mang lại ý nghĩa cho văn bản —giống như cách mà chuỗi các từ chúng ta sử dụng
trong một câu tạo ra ý nghĩa. (Thuật ngữ syntagm có nghĩa là "chuỗi").

Another important method of analyzing narrative texts needs to be explained—paradigmatic

analysis, a search for the oppositions found in texts that help give them meaning.

(Một phương pháp quan trọng khác để phân tích các văn bản tường thuật cần được giải thích –
phân tích mô hình, tìm kiếm các đối lập được tìm thấy trong các văn bản giúp mang lại ý nghĩa
cho chúng.)

15
Paul Ekman on Facial Expression
extensive research and found that there are seven universal facial expressions and one “neutral”
state that doesn’t show any emotion (Ekman & Sejnowski, 1992)

(nghiên cứu sâu rộng và phát hiện ra rằng có bảy biểu hiện trên khuôn mặt phổ quát và một
trạng thái "trung tính" không thể hiện bất kỳ cảm xúc nào (Ekman & Sejnowski, 1992);

Ekman developed a facial action coding system, which states that there are 43 muscles in the
human face that in different combinations show our emotions. Sometimes an emotion lasts for
just a fragment of a second on our faces (what Ekman calls “microexpressions”) and we aren’t
aware of having shown it.

(Ekman đã phát triển một hệ thống mã hóa hành động trên khuôn mặt, trong đó nói rằng có 43
cơ trên khuôn mặt người mà trong các kết hợp khác nhau thể hiện cảm xúc của chúng ta. Đôi khi
một cảm xúc kéo dài chỉ trong một phần giây trên khuôn mặt của chúng ta (cái mà Ekman gọi là
"biểu hiện vi mô") và chúng ta không nhận thức được đã thể hiện nó.)

Chapter 4: Rhetorical Analysis

Aristotle on Rhetoric
Aristotle’s Rhetoric was the most influential rhetorical text for thousands of years, and he was
endlessly cited as the authority on matters rhetorical. He divided rhetoric into two general areas
—public speaking and logical discussion—and explained that although every field of thought
has its own means of persuasion, rhetoric is the term for means of persuasion useful in all
fields. He suggested three modes of persuasion in rhetoric: what he called ethos, pathos, and
logos.
16
(Hùng biện của Aristotle là văn bản hùng biện có ảnh hưởng nhất trong hàng ngàn năm, và ông
được trích dẫn không ngừng như là người có thẩm quyền về các vấn đề hùng biện. Ông chia
hùng biện thành hai lĩnh vực chung - nói trước công chúng và thảo luận logic - và giải thích
rằng mặc dù mọi lĩnh vực tư tưởng đều có phương tiện thuyết phục riêng, hùng biện là thuật
ngữ chỉ phương tiện thuyết phục hữu ích trong tất cả các lĩnh vực. Ông đề xuất ba phương
thức thuyết phục trong hùng biện: cái mà ông gọi là ethos, pathos và logo.)

A Brief Note on the Communication Process

Jakobson’s model (see McQuail & Windahl, 1993) is shown here:

I have dealt with more or less the same concerns with my five focal points—although when I
elaborated them I didn’t realize that they corresponded with Lasswell’s famous question or
dictum.

(Tôi đã giải quyết ít nhiều những mối quan tâm tương tự với năm tiêu điểm của mình - mặc dù
khi tôi giải thích chúng, tôi đã không nhận ra rằng chúng tương ứng với câu hỏi hoặc câu châm
ngôn nổi tiếng của Lasswell.)

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A Miniglossary of Common Rhetorical Devices
Alliteration. Generally, using a number of words in a passage that start with the same letter or
that repeat some vowel. Let me offer an example:

“Magazines Move Millions. One Mind at a Time.”

Alliteration has a certain playfulness to it and also helps people remember messages better. I
used alliteration in my model of the focal points of communication: artist, artwork, audience,
America (or society), and medium.

(Sự ám chỉ có một sự vui tươi nhất định với nó và cũng giúp mọi người nhớ tin nhắn tốt hơn. Tôi
đã sử dụng phép ám chỉ trong mô hình của mình về các tiêu điểm giao tiếp: nghệ sĩ, tác phẩm
nghệ thuật, khán giả, nước Mỹ (hoặc xã hội) và phương tiện.)

Definition. There are many kinds of definitions.

- There are lexical or dictionary definitions, which refer to the way words are
conventionally used. (Có các định nghĩa từ vựng hoặc từ điển, đề cập đến cách các từ
được sử dụng thông thường.)
- There are also stipulative definitions, which refer to a definition given for the purpose of
argument. (ra còn có các định nghĩa quy định, trong đó đề cập đến một định nghĩa được
đưa ra cho mục đích tranh luận)
- There are operational 149 definitions, which do not rely on words but offer a list of
operations to perform that will lead to an understanding of what is being defined. (có 149
định nghĩa hoạt động, không dựa vào từ ngữ mà cung cấp một danh sách các hoạt động
để thực hiện sẽ dẫn đến sự hiểu biết về những gì đang được xác định.)

Rhetorical Analysis of the Visual Image

Defining a visual image isn’t easy, but let me suggest that images found, for example, in
photographs, paintings, drawings, television shows, films, and advertisements have the following
attributes: (Xác định một hình ảnh trực quan không phải là dễ dàng, nhưng hãy để tôi đề nghị
rằng hình ảnh được tìm thấy, ví dụ, trong ảnh, tranh vẽ, bản vẽ, chương trình truyền hình, phim
và quảng cáo có các thuộc tính sau:)

- They are composed of visual signs (signifiers and signifieds, symbols, icons, indexes).

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 - They represent something real or imagined.
- They generally contain objects and people in various places and sometimes also words.
- They generate meaning in those who see them.

- They have a denotational and connotational significance. 😉

- They often generate emotional responses.

Images in Narrative Texts

The famous Macintosh “1984” commercial. There are a number of levels of analysis we can
consider in dealing with this image:

- The literal level. A blonde woman with a sledgehammer run into a large auditorium.
(Cấp độ nghĩa đen. Một người phụ nữ tóc vàng với búa tạ chạy vào một khán phòng lớn.)
- The textual level. This image is part of the “1984” commercial, and the meaning of the
image is connected to the events in the commercial. (Cấp độ văn bản. Hình ảnh này là
một phần của quảng cáo "1984" và ý nghĩa của hình ảnh được kết nối với các sự kiện
trong quảng cáo.)
- The intertextual level. The commercial calls to mind George Orwell’s dystopian novel,
1984. (Cấp độ liên văn bản. Quảng cáo gợi nhớ đến cuốn tiểu thuyết đen tối của George
Orwell, 1984.)
- The mythic level. The story of David and Goliath in the Bible. (Cấp độ thần thoại. Câu
chuyện về David và Goliath trong Kinh thánh.

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 Chapter 5: Ideological Criticism

Defining Ideology
One of the most useful explanations of ideology is found in the introduction to Meenakshi Gigi
Durham and Douglas M. Kellner’s Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works (2001):

The concept of ideology forces readers to perceive that all cultural texts have the distinct biases,
interests, and embedded values, reproducing the point of view of their producers and often the
values of the dominant social groups. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the term
“ideology” in the 1840s to describe the dominant ideas and representations in a given social
order. . . . During the capitalist era, values of individualism, profit, competition, and the market
became dominant, articulating the ideology of the new bourgeois class which was consolidating
its class power.

(Khái niệm ý thức hệ buộc người đọc phải nhận thức rằng tất cả các văn bản văn hóa đều có
những thành kiến, lợi ích và giá trị nhúng riêng biệt, tái tạo quan điểm của những người sản
xuất chúng và thường là các giá trị của các nhóm xã hội thống trị. Karl Marx và Friedrich
Engels đã đặt ra thuật ngữ "ý thức hệ" vào những năm 1840 để mô tả những ý tưởng và đại diện
thống trị trong một trật tự xã hội nhất định. Trong thời kỳ tư bản chủ nghĩa, các giá trị của chủ
nghĩa cá nhân, lợi nhuận, cạnh tranh và thị trường trở nên thống trị, thể hiện rõ hệ tư tưởng của
giai cấp tư sản mới đang củng cố quyền lực giai cấp của nó.)

Ideological analysis argues that the media and other forms of communication are used in
capitalist nations, dominated by a bourgeois ruling class, to generate false consciousness in the
masses or, in Marxist terms, the proletariat. (Phân tích ý thức hệ lập luận rằng các phương tiện
truyền thông và các hình thức truyền thông khác được sử dụng ở các quốc gia tư bản, bị chi phối
bởi một giai cấp thống trị tư sản, để tạo ra ý thức sai lầm trong quần chúng hoặc, theo thuật ngữ
Marxist, giai cấp vô sản.)

Marxist Criticism
It is the mode of production in society that ultimately shapes our thinking, though the
relationship between our thoughts and society is complicated. Marxist thought is materialistic,
arguing that economic relations and our “social being” are fundamental in shaping

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consciousness. (Đó là phương thức sản xuất trong xã hội cuối cùng định hình suy nghĩ của
chúng ta, mặc dù mối quan hệ giữa suy nghĩ của chúng ta và xã hội rất phức tạp. Tư tưởng
Marxist là duy vật, cho rằng quan hệ kinh tế và "bản thể xã hội" của chúng ta là nền tảng trong
việc định hình ý thức.)

Roland Barthes on Mythologies

The book has two parts. The first part of the book consists of 28 short essays in which Barthes
deals with topics such as “The World of Wrestling,” “The Romans in Films,” “SoapPowders and
Detergents,” “Operation Margarine,” “The Face of Garbo,” “Striptease,” “The New Citroën,”
“Photography and Electoral Appeal,” and “Plastic.” The second part of the book, “Myth Today,”
deals with Barthes’s theories about myth and its relationship to bourgeois culture and society.
(Cuốn sách có hai phần. Phần đầu tiên của cuốn sách bao gồm 28 bài tiểu luận ngắn, trong đó
Barthes đề cập đến các chủ đề như "Thế giới đấu vật", "Người La Mã trong phim", "Bột xà
phòng và chất tẩy rửa", "Chiến dịch Margarine", "Khuôn mặt của Garbo", "Thoát y", "Citroën
mới", "Nhiếp ảnh và kháng cáo bầu cử" và "Nhựa". Phần thứ hai của cuốn sách, "Huyền thoại
ngày nay", đề cập đến các lý thuyết của Barthes về thần thoại và mối quan hệ của nó với văn
hóa và xã hội tư sản.)

“The World of Wrestling,” the first essay in the section on “Mythologies” and the longest one as
well, is a good example of Barthes’s writing. In it, he offered a number of insights about
wrestling as “theater,” such as the following: ("Thế giới đấu vật", bài tiểu luận đầu tiên trong
phần về "Thần thoại" và cũng là bài dài nhất, là một ví dụ điển hình về văn bản của Barthes.
Trong đó, ông đưa ra một số hiểu biết sâu sắc về đấu vật như "sân khấu", chẳng hạn như sau:)

- The quality of light in wrestling generates extreme emotions. (Chất lượng ánh sáng
trong đấu vật tạo ra những cảm xúc cực đoan.)
- Wrestling is not a sport but a spectacle. (Đấu vật không phải là một môn thể thao mà là
một cảnh tượng.)
- Wrestling is “an excessive portrayal of suffering.” (Đấu vật là "một bức chân dung quá
mức về sự đau khổ".)
- Wrestling is full of excessive gestures. (Đấu vật đầy những cử chỉ quá mức)
- Each sign in wrestling is “endowed with absolute clarity.” (Mỗi dấu hiệu trong môn đấu
vật đều được "trời phú cho sự rõ ràng tuyệt đối".)

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 - The bodies of wrestlers are signs about the way they wrestle. (Cơ thể của các đô vật là
dấu hiệu về cách họ vật lộn)
- Wrestling provides the image of passion, not passion itself. (Đấu vật cung cấp hình ảnh
của niềm đam mê, không phải bản thân niềm đam mê)
- In America, “wrestling represents a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil.”
(Ở Mỹ, "đấu vật đại diện cho một loại cuộc chiến thần thoại giữa Thiện và Ác".)

Basic Ideas in Marxist Criticism

Let me summarize the points I have made about Marxist ideological criticism:
- In all countries, the base, or mode of economic relations, shapes the superstructure—
institutions such as art, religion, and education that shape people’s consciousness. (Ở tất
cả các quốc gia, cơ sở, hoặc phương thức quan hệ kinh tế, định hình kiến trúc thượng
tầng - các thể chế như nghệ thuật, tôn giáo và giáo dục hình thành ý thức của mọi
người.)
- There are different classes in bourgeois societies. The bourgeoisie are the ruling class; the
proletariat is the working class. The petite bourgeoisie run the factories, make the
television shows, and do other tasks for the bourgeoisie. For Marxists, class conflict is a
basic force in history. (Có nhiều giai cấp khác nhau trong xã hội tư sản. Giai cấp tư sản
là giai cấp thống trị; Giai cấp vô sản là giai cấp công nhân. Giai cấp tiểu tư sản điều
hành các nhà máy, làm các chương trình truyền hình và làm các nhiệm vụ khác cho giai
cấp tư sản. Đối với những người theo chủ nghĩa Marx, xung đột giai cấp là một lực
lượng cơ bản trong lịch sử.)
- The bourgeoisie maintains its dominance over the proletarian class by generating in
it a false consciousness manifest in the ideas that the relationships in society are
natural, that success is a function of willpower (and those who are successful deserve
their success), and that those who fail have only themselves to blame. When necessary,
the ruling classes use force. (Giai cấp tư sản duy trì sự thống trị của mình đối với giai cấp
vô sản bằng cách tạo ra trong đó một ý thức sai lầm thể hiện trong các ý tưởng rằng các
mối quan hệ trong xã hội là tự nhiên, rằng thành công là một chức năng của ý chí (và
những người thành công xứng đáng với thành công của họ), và những người thất bại chỉ
có chính họ để đổ lỗi. Khi cần thiết, giai cấp thống trị sử dụng vũ lực.)
- Bourgeois societies generate alienation, which is assuaged by consumer lust or
commodity fetishism but only partially and temporarily. All classes in bourgeois societies
suffer from alienation, which means, literally, the absence of connections or ties with
others. (Xã hội tư sản tạo ra sự tha hóa, được xoa dịu bởi ham muốn tiêu dùng hoặc tôn
sùng hàng hóa nhưng chỉ một phần và tạm thời. Tất cả các giai cấp trong xã hội tư sản
đều phải chịu sự tha hóa, điều đó có nghĩa là, theo nghĩa đen, không có kết nối hoặc quan
hệ với người khác.)

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 - Consumer cultures reinforce privatism and the sense that community and social classes
are not important. The focus is on personal expenditures instead of social expenditures
(for things like schools, public health, the infrastructure, etc.). (Văn hóa tiêu dùng củng
cố chủ nghĩa tư nhân và ý thức rằng cộng đồng và các tầng lớp xã hội không quan trọng.
Trọng tâm là chi tiêu cá nhân thay vì chi tiêu xã hội (cho những thứ như trường học, y tế
công cộng, cơ sở hạ tầng, v.v.).)
- The globalization of the media and economic institutions allows the ruling classes to
spread their bourgeois ideology and export problems to the third world. Marxists call this
phenomenon “cultural imperialism.” (Toàn cầu hóa các phương tiện truyền thông và các
thể chế kinh tế cho phép các giai cấp thống trị truyền bá ý thức hệ tư sản của họ và xuất
khẩu các vấn đề sang thế giới thứ ba. Những người theo chủ nghĩa Marx gọi hiện tượng
này là "chủ nghĩa đế quốc văn hóa".)

John Berger on Glamour

British Marxist writer John Berger has offered some interesting insights into the nature of
glamour. In his book Ways of Seeing (1972), he dealt with the role of advertising (he used the
term publicity to stand for advertising) in creating a sense of glamour (Nhà văn Marxist người
Anh John Berger đã đưa ra một số hiểu biết thú vị về bản chất của sự quyến rũ. Trong cuốn sách
Ways of Seeing (1972), ông đã đề cập đến vai trò của quảng cáo (ông đã sử dụng thuật ngữ

công khai để đại diện cho quảng cáo) trong việc tạo ra cảm giác quyến rũ 😊

Feminist Criticism of Media and Communication

Butler (1999) raised issues about the nature of gender and critiqued the way it has been dealt
with by many feminist thinkers. We will see, shortly, that this issue and others have led to
conflicts within feminist criticism about politics and the media, but most feminist theory shares
concerns about the following: (Butler (1999) đã nêu ra các vấn đề về bản chất của giới tính và
phê phán cách nó được xử lý bởi nhiều nhà tư tưởng nữ quyền. Chúng ta sẽ thấy, trong thời gian
ngắn, rằng vấn đề này và những vấn đề khác đã dẫn đến xung đột trong những lời chỉ trích nữ
quyền về chính trị và truyền thông, nhưng hầu hết các lý thuyết nữ quyền đều chia sẻ mối quan
tâm về những điều sau đây)
- The roles women are given in texts, the business world, and everyday life (Vai trò của
phụ nữ được đưa ra trong các văn bản, thế giới kinh doanh và cuộc sống hàng ngày)
- The exploitation (some would say “sexploitation”) of women in the media and everyday
life as sexual objects—objects of male desire and lust (Sự bóc lột (một số người sẽ nói là
"bóc lột") phụ nữ trên các phương tiện truyền thông và cuộc sống hàng ngày như những
đối tượng tình dục - đối tượng của ham muốn và ham muốn của đàn ông)
- The exploitation of women in the workplace and the domination of women in life,
including sexual relationships, which legitimate male supremacy (Sự bóc lột phụ nữ tại

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 nơi làm việc và sự thống trị của phụ nữ trong cuộc sống, bao gồm cả các mối quan hệ
tình dục, hợp pháp hóa quyền tối cao của nam giới)
- The need for women to develop consciousness of their situation and to do something
about it politically (Sự cần thiết của phụ nữ để phát triển ý thức về tình hình của họ và
làm một cái gì đó về nó về mặt chính trị)

Political Cultures, the Media, and Communication

This analysis draws on the work of Mary Douglas, an English social anthropologist, and Aaron
Wildavsky, an American political scientist. Douglas developed what she called gridgroup theory.
Her theory is described in Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky’s Cultural
Theory (1990): (Phân tích này dựa trên công trình của Mary Douglas, một nhà nhân chủng học
xã hội người Anh và Aaron Wildavsky, một nhà khoa học chính trị người Mỹ. Douglas đã phát
triển cái mà bà gọi là lý thuyết nhóm lưới. Lý thuyết của bà được mô tả trong Lý thuyết văn hóa

của Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis và Aaron Wildavsky (1990)😊

[Douglas] argues that the variability of an individual’s involvement in social life can be
adequately captured by two dimensions of sociality: group and grid. Group refers to the
extent to which an individual is incorporated into bounded units. The greater the
incorporation, the more individual choice is subject to group determination. Grid denotes
the degree to which an individual’s life is circumscribed by externally imposed
prescriptions. The more binding and extensive the scope of prescriptions, the less of life
is open to individual negotiation. (p. 5) ([Douglas] lập luận rằng sự thay đổi của sự tham
gia của một cá nhân vào đời sống xã hội có thể được nắm bắt đầy đủ bởi hai khía cạnh
của xã hội: nhóm và lưới. Nhóm đề cập đến mức độ mà một cá nhân được kết hợp vào
các đơn vị bị giới hạn. Sự kết hợp càng lớn, càng có nhiều lựa chọn cá nhân tùy thuộc
vào quyết định của nhóm. Lưới biểu thị mức độ mà cuộc sống của một cá nhân bị giới
hạn bởi các đơn thuốc áp đặt bên ngoài. Phạm vi quy định càng ràng buộc và mở rộng,
cuộc sống càng ít mở ra cho đàm phán cá nhân. (trang 5))
Wildavsky argued that focusing on interest groups in politics was not useful because these
groups can’t determine where their interests lie. He suggested that the best way to understand
politics is to recognize the importance of political cultures, which are tied to people’s values and
shape a great deal of the decision making and voting by people who often know little about the
issues they vote on. (Wildavsky lập luận rằng việc tập trung vào các nhóm lợi ích trong chính trị
là không hữu ích vì các nhóm này không thể xác định lợi ích của họ nằm ở đâu. Ông gợi ý rằng
cách tốt nhất để hiểu chính trị là nhận ra tầm quan trọng của văn hóa chính trị, gắn liền với các
giá trị của mọi người và định hình rất nhiều việc ra quyết định và bỏ phiếu bởi những người
thường biết rất ít về các vấn đề họ bỏ phiếu.)
As Wildavsky wrote in Conditions for a Pluralist Democracy, or Cultural Pluralism Means More
Than One Political Culture in a Country (1982) (Như Wildavsky đã viết trong Điều kiện cho một

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nền dân chủ đa nguyên, hoặc đa nguyên văn hóa có nghĩa là nhiều hơn một nền văn hóa chính trị
ở một quốc gia (1982))

Wildavsky slightly changed the names he used for these four political cultures over the years. I
will use the terms that offer the easiest understanding. The four political cultures form on the
basis of group boundaries (weak or strong) and prescriptions (few or numerous):
1. Fatalists: Group boundaries weak, prescriptions numerous
2. Individualists: Group boundaries weak, prescriptions few
3. Elitists: Group boundaries strong, prescriptions numerous
4. Egalitarians: Group boundaries strong, prescriptions few
I should add that people (except for fatalists, that is) can move from one political culture to
another if they are not getting what they consider to be “payoff” from the political culture they
identify with. Let me offer an example. A neighbor of mine who was a pilot for a major airline
was what Wildavsky would describe as a competitive individualist. (Tôi nên nói thêm rằng mọi
người (ngoại trừ những người theo chủ nghĩa định mệnh) có thể chuyển từ văn hóa chính trị này
sang văn hóa chính trị khác nếu họ không nhận được những gì họ coi là "phần thưởng" từ văn
hóa chính trị mà họ xác định. Hãy để tôi đưa ra một ví dụ. Một người hàng xóm của tôi từng là
phi công cho một hãng hàng không lớn là những gì Wildavsky mô tả là một người theo chủ
nghĩa cá nhân cạnh tranh.)

Pop Cultural and Media Preferences of the Four Political Cultures

These four political cultures relate to popular culture and the mass media. Let us assume two
things:
1. People wish to reinforce their beliefs and thus tend to choose films, television programs,
songs, books, and other similar materials that are congruent with their beliefs and support their
values. (Mọi người muốn củng cố niềm tin của họ và do đó có xu hướng chọn phim, chương
trình truyền hình, bài hát, sách và các tài liệu tương tự khác phù hợp với niềm tin của họ và hỗ
trợ các giá trị của họ)
2. People wish to avoid cognitive dissonance and thus tend to avoid films, television shows, and
other forms of mass-mediated culture that challenge their belief systems. (Mọi người muốn tránh

25
sự bất hòa về nhận thức và do đó có xu hướng tránh các bộ phim, chương trình truyền hình và
các hình thức văn hóa qua trung gian đại chúng khác thách thức hệ thống niềm tin của họ.)

Marxist Perspectives on Social Media

Marxists have interesting things to say about social media. While some communication scholars
are very positive about social media, emphasizing their role in our so-called “participatory
culture,” Marxist scholars focus on the exploitative aspects of social media and their role in
helping maintain capitalism. For example, Christian Fuchs wrote in Social Media: A Critical
Introduction (2014) that the social media should be seen as a means of exploiting people (Những
người theo chủ nghĩa Marx có những điều thú vị để nói về phương tiện truyền thông xã hội.
Trong khi một số học giả truyền thông rất tích cực về phương tiện truyền thông xã hội, nhấn
mạnh vai trò của họ trong cái gọi là "văn hóa có sự tham gia" của chúng ta, các học giả Marxist
tập trung vào các khía cạnh bóc lột của phương tiện truyền thông xã hội và vai trò của họ trong
việc giúp duy trì chủ nghĩa tư bản. Ví dụ, Christian Fuchs đã viết trong Social Media: A Critical
Introduction (2014) rằng phương tiện truyền thông xã hội nên được xem như một phương tiện
bóc lột con người)
The people who post messages on social media are, according to Marxist critics, unaware of
the degree to which they are being exploited, since they have what Marx described as “false
consciousness.” (Những người đăng thông điệp trên phương tiện truyền thông xã hội, theo các
nhà phê bình Marxist, không nhận thức được mức độ mà họ đang bị khai thác, vì họ có những gì
Marx mô tả là "ý thức sai lầm".)

26
 Chapter 6: Psychoanalytic Criticism
Psychoanalytic theory applies the insights of Sigmund Freud and other thinkers, such as Carl
Jung, to texts of all kinds—works of serious literature as well as mass-mediated texts.

The Unconscious
Psychoanalytic theory tells us that the human psyche is divided into three spheres: the conscious,
the preconscious, and the unconscious. (Lý thuyết phân tâm học cho chúng ta biết rằng tâm lý
con người được chia thành ba lĩnh vực: ý thức, vô thức và vô thức.)

The Id, Ego, and Superego

Freud developed a second theory about the psyche as his thought evolved. This theory, known as
Freud’s “structural” hypothesis, suggests that the psyche has three parts: the id, the ego, and the
superego. Freud suggested that an unconscious conflict goes on in all people between the id and
superego aspects of their personalities. Freud described the id as “chaos, a cauldron of seething
excitement” and said it is characterized by impulse and the desire for gratification. When we
think of the id, we should focus on matters such as sexual desire, lust, passion, and desire.
Opposed to the id we find the superego, which represents parental influence, conscience, and
restraint.
(Freud đã phát triển một lý thuyết thứ hai về tâm lý khi suy nghĩ của ông phát triển. Lý thuyết
này, được gọi là giả thuyết "cấu trúc" của Freud, cho rằng tâm lý có ba phần: id, bản ngã và
siêu ngã. Freud cho rằng một cuộc xung đột vô thức diễn ra trong tất cả mọi người giữa các
khía cạnh id và superego trong tính cách của họ. Freud mô tả id là "hỗn loạn, một cái vạc của
sự phấn khích sôi sục" và nói rằng nó được đặc trưng bởi sự thúc đẩy và mong muốn hài lòng.
Khi chúng ta nghĩ về id, chúng ta nên tập trung vào các vấn đề như ham muốn tình dục, ham
muốn, đam mê và ham muốn. Trái ngược với id, chúng tôi tìm thấy siêu ngã, đại diện cho ảnh
hưởng, lương tâm và sự kiềm chế của cha mẹ.)

27
Defense Mechanisms (Cơ chế phòng thủ)
The following are a number of the more important defense mechanisms:
1. Ambivalence: A simultaneous feeling of opposite emotions, such as love and hate,
toward the same person or object. (Mâu thuẫn: Một cảm giác đồng thời của những cảm
xúc trái ngược, chẳng hạn như yêu và ghét, đối với cùng một người hoặc đối tượng.)
2. Avoidance: Refusing to deal with subjects that distress or perturb us because they are
connected to our unconscious aggressive or sexual impulses. (Từ chối đối phó với các đối
tượng làm chúng ta đau khổ hoặc xáo trộn vì chúng có liên quan đến các xung động tình
dục hoặc hung hăng vô thức của chúng ta.)
3. Denial: Unwillingness to recognize the reality of subjects that distress and generate
anxiety in us by blocking them from consciousness or becoming involved in a wish
fulfilling fantasy. (Không sẵn sàng nhận ra thực tế của các đối tượng làm đau khổ và tạo
ra sự lo lắng trong chúng ta bằng cách ngăn chặn họ khỏi ý thức hoặc tham gia vào một
tưởng tượng mơ ước.)
4. Fixation: An obsessive attachment or preoccupation with something or someone, usually
as the result of a traumatic experience. (Một sự gắn bó ám ảnh hoặc mối bận tâm với một
cái gì đó hoặc ai đó, thường là kết quả của một trải nghiệm đau thương.)
5. Identification: The strong desire to be like someone or something in some aspect of
thought or behavior. (Mong muốn mạnh mẽ được giống như ai đó hoặc một cái gì đó
trong một số khía cạnh của suy nghĩ hoặc hành vi.)
6. Projection: Denying some negative or hostile feelings by attributing them to someone
else. (Từ chối một số cảm xúc tiêu cực hoặc thù địch bằng cách gán chúng cho người
khác.)

28
 7. Rationalization: Offering seemingly rational reasons or excuses for behavior generated
by unconscious and irrational forces. (The term rationalization was introduced to
psychoanalytic theory by Ernest Jones [1908].) (Đưa ra những lý do hoặc lời bào chữa có
vẻ hợp lý cho hành vi được tạo ra bởi các lực lượng vô thức và phi lý. (Thuật ngữ hợp lý
hóa được giới thiệu cho lý thuyết phân tâm học bởi Ernest Jones [1908].)
8. Reaction formation: Suppressing one element of an ambivalent attitude (and keeping it
in our unconscious) and maximizing and overemphasizing the other (its opposite). (Ngăn
chặn một yếu tố của thái độ mâu thuẫn (và giữ nó trong vô thức của chúng ta) và tối đa
hóa và nhấn mạnh quá mức yếu tố kia (ngược lại).)
9. Regression: Returning to an earlier stage of development when confronted by an anxiety
producing or stressful situation or event. (Quay trở lại giai đoạn phát triển trước đó khi
phải đối mặt với một tình huống hoặc sự kiện lo lắng hoặc căng thẳng.)
10. Repression: Unconsciously barring instinctual desires from consciousness; generally
considered the most basic defense mechanism. (Vô thức ngăn cản những ham muốn bản
năng khỏi ý thức; thường được coi là cơ chế phòng thủ cơ bản nhất.)
11. Suppression: Consciously deciding to put something out of mind. This is the second
most basic defense mechanism, after repression. (Có ý thức quyết định đặt một cái gì đó
ra khỏi tâm trí. Đây là cơ chế phòng vệ cơ bản thứ hai, sau đàn áp.)

Neuropsychoanalysis: Freud and Neuroscience

This 2014 article points out that many of Freud’s most important theories are valid, though he
might have been incorrect about certain details. If Freud was correct about the importance of the
unconscious and about inner conflicts, as neuroscientists now claim, there is reason to suggest
that Freud’s contribution to our understanding of human beings remains relevant and valuable.
Freud’s ideas endure and have led to a new field, neuropsychoanalysis, which exists in the
overlap between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. (Bài báo năm 2014 này chỉ ra rằng nhiều lý
thuyết quan trọng nhất của Freud là hợp lệ, mặc dù ông có thể đã sai về một số chi tiết nhất
định. Nếu Freud đúng về tầm quan trọng của vô thức và về xung đột nội tâm, như các nhà thần
kinh học hiện nay tuyên bố, có lý do để cho rằng đóng góp của Freud cho sự hiểu biết của chúng
ta về con người vẫn có liên quan và có giá trị. Những ý tưởng của Freud tồn tại và đã dẫn đến
một lĩnh vực mới, phân tâm học thần kinh, tồn tại trong sự chồng chéo giữa phân tâm học và
khoa học thần kinh.)

The Collective Unconscious

These archetypes are found, Jung said, in what he described as the collective unconscious. Jung
(1968) made an analogy with instincts in explaining the collective unconscious (Những nguyên
mẫu này được tìm thấy, Jung nói, trong những gì ông mô tả là vô thức tập thể. Jung (1968) đã
đưa ra một sự tương tự với bản năng trong việc giải thích vô thức tập thể)
Jungians argue that myths’ instinct-like origin explains why they are universal. This also
explains why certain themes and motifs are, so Jungians assert, found in works of art all through

29
history and everywhere in the world. (Jungians cho rằng nguồn gốc giống như bản năng của
thần thoại giải thích tại sao chúng là phổ quát. Điều này cũng giải thích tại sao một số chủ đề và
họa tiết nhất định, như Jungians khẳng định, được tìm thấy trong các tác phẩm nghệ thuật xuyên
suốt lịch sử và mọi nơi trên thế giới.)

The Myth of the Hero

Henderson’s description deals with tragic heroes. Most heroes, especially those found in today’s
mass media, generally don’t succumb to the sin of pride. Instead, they survive to fight new
villains, in endless succession, who keep appearing with incredible regularity. According to
Henderson, the myth of the hero has an important role—it helps people develop their ego
consciousness. (Mô tả của Henderson đề cập đến những anh hùng bi thảm. Hầu hết các anh
hùng, đặc biệt là những người được tìm thấy trên các phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng ngày
nay, thường không chịu khuất phục trước tội kiêu ngạo. Thay vào đó, họ sống sót để chiến đấu
với những nhân vật phản diện mới, liên tiếp vô tận, những người tiếp tục xuất hiện với sự đều
đặn đáng kinh ngạc. Theo Henderson, huyền thoại về người anh hùng có một vai trò quan trọng
- nó giúp mọi người phát triển ý thức về bản ngã của họ.)
The myth of the hero is the most common and the best known myth in the world. We find it in
the classical mythology of Greece and Rome, in the Middle Ages, in the Far East, and among
contemporary primitive tribes. It also appears in our dreams. . . . (Huyền thoại về người anh
hùng là huyền thoại phổ biến nhất và được biết đến nhiều nhất trên thế giới. Chúng ta tìm thấy
nó trong thần thoại cổ điển của Hy Lạp và La Mã, vào thời Trung cổ, ở Viễn Đông và giữa các
bộ lạc nguyên thủy đương đại. Nó cũng xuất hiện trong giấc mơ của chúng ta. . .)
These hero myths vary enormously in detail, but the more closely one examines them the more
one sees that structurally they are very similar. (Những huyền thoại anh hùng này rất khác nhau
về chi tiết, nhưng càng xem xét kỹ thì người ta càng thấy rằng về mặt cấu trúc, chúng rất giống
nhau.)
Henderson’s description deals with tragic heroes. Most heroes, especially those found in today’s
mass media, generally don’t succumb to the sin of pride. Instead, they survive to fight new
villains, in endless succession, who keep appearing with incredible regularity. According to
Henderson, the myth of the hero has an important role—it helps people develop their ego
consciousness (Mô tả của Henderson đề cập đến những anh hùng bi thảm. Hầu hết các anh
hùng, đặc biệt là những người được tìm thấy trên các phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng ngày
nay, thường không chịu khuất phục trước tội kiêu ngạo. Thay vào đó, họ sống sót để chiến đấu
với những nhân vật phản diện mới, liên tiếp vô tận, những người tiếp tục xuất hiện với sự đều
đặn đáng kinh ngạc. Theo Henderson, huyền thoại về người anh hùng có một vai trò quan trọng
- nó giúp mọi người phát triển ý thức bản ngã của họ)

Chapter 7: Discourse Analysis

1. Discourse is language “above the sentence.”
30
2. Discourse is “language in use.”
3. Discourse is a form of social practice in which language plays a central role. (p. 3)
Cameron and Panovic’ described discourse analysis as being “above the sentence” to
differentiate it from traditional linguistics, which tends to focus on parts of sentences or at the
sentence level. In contrast, discourse analysis is interested in texts (spoken or written, and
including visual images), their relation to other texts, the contexts in which written language 247
is used, and the role these texts play in society. (Cameron và Panovic mô tả phân tích diễn ngôn
là "trên câu" để phân biệt nó với ngôn ngữ học truyền thống, có xu hướng tập trung vào các
phần của câu hoặc ở cấp độ câu. Ngược lại, phân tích diễn ngôn quan tâm đến các văn bản (nói
hoặc viết, và bao gồm cả hình ảnh trực quan), mối quan hệ của chúng với các văn bản khác, bối
cảnh sử dụng ngôn ngữ viết 247 và vai trò của các văn bản này trong xã hội.)

Defining Discourse Analysis

- First, discourse analysis is a qualitative methodology.
- Second, discourse analysis helps us understand social interactions and how social
reality is produced, which is through our discourses or, more specifically, through talk,
texts, and images.
- Third, it is broader and more comprehensive than its main components, namely
conversation analysis (which is about talk) and narrative analysis (which is about written
texts).

Teun A. van Dijk on Discourse Analysis

Teun A. van Dijk, one of the preeminent scholars in the field, offers other insights into discourse
analysis. A book he edited, Discourse as Structure and Process, the first of two volumes of
Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, includes a chapter titled “The Study of
Discourse.” (Teun A. van Dijk, một trong những học giả xuất sắc trong lĩnh vực này, cung cấp
những hiểu biết khác về phân tích diễn ngôn. Một cuốn sách ông biên tập, Diễn ngôn như cấu
trúc và quá trình, tập đầu tiên trong hai tập của Nghiên cứu diễn ngôn: Giới thiệu đa ngành,
bao gồm một chương có tựa đề "Nghiên cứu diễn ngôn".).This chapter describes his sense of
what discourse analysis is about and discusses the three main dimensions of the field:
(a) language use,
(b) the communication of beliefs (cognition)
(c) interaction in social situations.

Spoken and Written Discourse

Deborah Cameron, a professor of language and communication at Oxford University, has written
books on both approaches: Working with Spoken Discourse (2001) and, with Ivan Panovic’,
Working With Written Discourse (2014). In the introduction to her book on written discourse,

31
she explained that discourse analysis is of use to scholars in a variety of fields such as cultural
studies, law, literature, philosophy, media studies, sociology, and social psychology. She added
that she and her colleague wrote the book on written discourse because most discourse analysts,
while they recognize the importance of written discourse, tend to focus their analyses on spoken
discourse. (Deborah Cameron, giáo sư ngôn ngữ và giao tiếp tại Đại học Oxford, đã viết sách về
cả hai cách tiếp cận: Làm việc với diễn ngôn nói (2001) và, với Ivan Panovic ', Làm việc với
diễn ngôn bằng văn bản (2014). Trong phần giới thiệu cuốn sách của mình về diễn ngôn bằng
văn bản, cô giải thích rằng phân tích diễn ngôn được sử dụng cho các học giả trong nhiều lĩnh
vực khác nhau như nghiên cứu văn hóa, luật, văn học, triết học, nghiên cứu truyền thông, xã hội
học và tâm lý học xã hội. Cô nói thêm rằng cô và đồng nghiệp của mình đã viết cuốn sách về
diễn ngôn bằng văn bản bởi vì hầu hết các nhà phân tích diễn ngôn, trong khi họ nhận ra tầm
quan trọng của diễn ngôn bằng văn bản, có xu hướng tập trung phân tích của họ vào diễn ngôn
nói.)

Styles and Written Discourse

Every word that writers use represents a choice they make and each word is used to create a
deliberate impression. It is not too much of a stretch to say that writing is a form of impression
management. (Mỗi từ mà các nhà văn sử dụng đại diện cho một sự lựa chọn mà họ thực hiện và
mỗi từ được sử dụng để tạo ấn tượng có chủ ý. Không quá căng thẳng khi nói rằng viết là một
hình thức quản lý ấn tượng.)

Dreamy
We learn from Queneau that of the many styles we can use in our various oral and written
communications, the style we adopt in many cases depends on to whom our communication is
addressed: a dean at a university, a judge, a friend, a lover—we adopt different styles for each of
these addressees. (Chúng ta học được từ Queneau rằng trong số nhiều phong cách chúng ta có
thể sử dụng trong các giao tiếp bằng miệng và bằng văn bản khác nhau, phong cách chúng ta áp
dụng trong nhiều trường hợp phụ thuộc vào người mà giao tiếp của chúng ta được giải quyết:
một trưởng khoa tại một trường đại học, một thẩm phán, một người bạn, một người yêu — chúng
ta áp dụng các phong cách khác nhau cho mỗi người trong số những người này.)
The styles we adopt, then, are shaped by our intended audiences, the kind of texts we are writing,
the situations in which we find ourselves, and various other social factors that play a role in our
interactions with others. (Các phong cách chúng ta áp dụng, sau đó, được định hình bởi đối
tượng dự định của chúng ta, loại văn bản chúng ta đang viết 255, các tình huống mà chúng ta
thấy mình và nhiều yếu tố xã hội khác đóng vai trò trong sự tương tác của chúng ta với người
khác.)

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Political Ideologies and Discourse Analysis
Generally speaking, when social scientists investigate ideologies, they focus their attention on
the ideological content of texts. (Nói chung, khi các nhà khoa học xã hội điều tra các ý thức hệ,
họ tập trung sự chú ý của họ vào nội dung ý thức hệ của các văn bản.)

Critical Discourse Analysis

Practitioners of this new form called it critical discourse analysis (CDA) and focused attention on
the use of language by powerful groups in societies to dominate others and on the strategies of
resistance by subjugated groups

Advertising and Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an approach that highlights the social, ideological and
political dimension of discourse. Its practitioners regard discourse in the same way as critical
social theorists like Foucault . . . as something that does not just describe a pre-existing reality,
but actively shapes our understand of reality. (p. 66) (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán (CDA) là
một cách tiếp cận làm nổi bật khía cạnh xã hội, tư tưởng và chính trị của diễn ngôn. Các học
viên của nó coi diễn ngôn theo cách tương tự như các nhà lý thuyết xã hội phê phán như
Foucault. . . như một cái gì đó không chỉ mô tả một thực tế tồn tại từ trước, mà còn tích cực định
hình sự hiểu biết của chúng ta về thực tế. (trang 66))
It follows, then, that the goal of advertising and consumer capitalism is not only to sell products
but to create consumers. Consumption becomes a form of self-expression, and our purchases, in
the form of brands we favor, reflect our sense of ourselves. (Do đó, mục tiêu của quảng cáo và
chủ nghĩa tư bản tiêu dùng không chỉ là bán sản phẩm mà còn tạo ra người tiêu dùng. Tiêu dùng
trở thành một hình thức thể hiện bản thân và việc mua hàng của chúng ta, dưới hình thức
thương hiệu chúng ta ưa thích, phản ánh ý thức của chúng ta về bản thân.)

Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysts use the term multimodal discourse analysis to deal with the way discourse
analysts work on texts with both written material and visual images in them. The basic
methodology that multimodal discourse analysts use in working with images is semiotics, which
I dealt with in Chapter 3 of this book. (Các nhà phân tích diễn ngôn sử dụng thuật ngữ phân tích
diễn ngôn đa phương thức để đối phó với cách các nhà phân tích diễn ngôn làm việc trên các
văn bản với cả tài liệu bằng văn bản và hình ảnh trực quan trong đó. Phương pháp cơ bản mà
các nhà phân tích diễn ngôn đa phương thức sử dụng khi làm việc với hình ảnh là ký hiệu học,
mà tôi đã đề cập trong Chương 3 của cuốn sách này.)

33
Conclusions
Discourse analysis, with its focus on language, language use, and the role language plays in
interactions among people, offers us a multidisciplinary approach to research that combines other
kinds of research into language, language use, and the texts in which language plays an
important role. (Phân tích diễn ngôn, tập trung vào ngôn ngữ, sử dụng ngôn ngữ và vai trò của
ngôn ngữ trong tương tác giữa mọi người, cung cấp cho chúng ta một cách tiếp cận đa ngành để
nghiên cứu kết hợp các loại nghiên cứu khác về ngôn ngữ, sử dụng ngôn ngữ và các văn bản
trong đó ngôn ngữ đóng vai trò quan trọng.)

Chapter 8: Interviews
What Is an Interview?
Interviews are one of the most widely used and most fundamental research techniques—and for
very good reason. They enable researchers to obtain information they cannot gain by observation
alone. Perhaps the simplest way to describe an interview is as a conversation between a
researcher (someone who wishes to gain information about a subject) and an informant (someone
who presumably has information of interest on the subject). (Phỏng vấn là một trong những kỹ
thuật nghiên cứu cơ bản và được sử dụng rộng rãi nhất và vì lý do rất chính đáng. Chúng cho
phép các nhà nghiên cứu có được thông tin mà họ không thể có được chỉ bằng cách quan sát. Có
lẽ cách đơn giản nhất để mô tả một cuộc phỏng vấn là một cuộc trò chuyện giữa một nhà nghiên
cứu (một người muốn có được thông tin về một chủ đề) và một người cung cấp thông tin (một
người có lẽ có thông tin quan tâm về chủ đề này).

Four Kinds of Research Interviews

There are four kinds of interviews found in scholarly research.
- Informal interviews. There are few controls in these interviews; they just take place, are
not organized or focused, and are generally used to introduce researchers to their
informants.
- Unstructured interviews. In these interviews, the researcher is focused and is trying to
gain information, but he or she exercises relatively little control over the responses of the
informant.
- Semistructured interviews. Here, the interviewer usually has a written list of questions
to ask the informant but tries, to the extent possible, to maintain the casual quality found
in unstructured interviews. Focus groups, which are widely used in market research, are
considered semistructured interviews.
- Structured interviews. Here the researcher uses an interview schedule—a specific set of
instructions that guide those who ask respondents questions. Self-administered
questionnaires are also classified as structured interviews.

34
A Note on Problems With Focus Groups
Focus groups are free-form discussions by a group of people, usually from 6 to 12 individuals,
led by a moderator and designed to obtain information about some topic. Focus groups are
commonly used by advertising agencies and other organizations to get an idea of how people feel
about some product or service—or, during elections, some politician or campaign issue
Focus groups also can be skewed by matters like social dominance (some people in the
group doing most of the talking), some group members’ eagerness to please, anxiety about
privacy, and so on.

How to Interview People

- Guarantee anonymity.
- Make sure you’re accurate.
- Avoid leading questions. Don’t offer leading questions, which more or less push your
respondent toward an answer. For example, let’s imagine you are interviewing a student
about a class she’s taking, and she says her teacher is unfair. You can respond to this
statement several ways:
+ Leading question: “Is that because your teacher favors men over women?” Asking for
definitions: “What do you mean by unfair?”
This suggests our next point.
- Have your informants define terms.
- Stay focused.
- Make sure your questions are clear
- Ask for amplifications and examples.

Questions Investigative Reporters Ask

Some researchers suggest that a research protocol be developed to guarantee uniformity and
accuracy. A typical interview protocol contains material such as the following:
- A title or heading for the interview
- Instructions for the interviewer to follow
- A list of key questions to be asked
- Follow-up questions (or probes) once the key questions have been asked
- Comments and notes by the interviewer relative to the interview
Be nonjudgmental. This is absolutely imperative. You should never suggest by the questions you
ask, the tone of your voice, your facial expression, or your body language how you feel about the
information you are given by your informant. If you show any signs of judgment, either positive
or negative, they will have a profound impact on your informant and will color the information
you are given. (Hãy không phán xét. Điều này là hoàn toàn bắt buộc. Bạn không bao giờ nên gợi
ý bằng những câu hỏi bạn hỏi, giọng nói, nét mặt hoặc ngôn ngữ cơ thể của bạn về cảm giác của

35
bạn về thông tin bạn được cung cấp bởi người cung cấp thông tin. Nếu bạn có bất kỳ dấu hiệu
phán xét nào, tích cực hay tiêu cực, chúng sẽ có tác động sâu sắc đến người cung cấp thông tin
của bạn và sẽ tô màu thông tin bạn được cung cấp.)
Be a good listener. Don’t interrupt your informants or complete their sentences. Make sure your
mind doesn’t wander when you are listening and look for questions you can ask to obtain more
information from your informant. Watch Charlie Rose on television and notice how he picks up
on things his guests say and asks for more information or details. (Hãy là một người biết lắng
nghe. Đừng ngắt lời người cung cấp thông tin của bạn hoặc hoàn thành câu của họ. Hãy chắc
chắn rằng tâm trí của bạn không đi lang thang khi bạn đang lắng nghe và tìm kiếm những câu
hỏi bạn có thể hỏi để có thêm thông tin từ người cung cấp thông tin của bạn. Xem Charlie Rose
trên truyền hình và chú ý cách anh ấy tiếp thu những điều khách của anh ấy nói và hỏi thêm
thông tin hoặc chi tiết.)

Making Sense of Transcribed Interviews

we should see how our informant categorizes things. How are old and young and good and bad
defined by the informant? What kinds of groups are mentioned? How does the respondent
categorize people—by age, membership in a group, gender, occupation, status?

Coding
There are no absolute rules about how coding is done; a great deal depends on the nature of the
material being coded.
1. Read over the material as a whole and get an overview of it.
2. Pick one transcript and examine it carefully, looking for topics covered.
3. Do this for several transcripts and make a list of all the topics that were covered.
4. Make abbreviations for each topic and go through the transcripts, putting down the
appropriate abbreviation beside each example of a given topic. If your topics list doesn’t
cover all the material, see if you can think up new topics that will help you do the job.
5. Turn your topics into categories. Make sure that the categories cover all your transcripts
and don’t duplicate one another.
6. Decide on a final set of abbreviations for your categories and alphabetize them. You now
have an alphabetical list of codes in the transcripts.
7. Assemble all the material found under each category in one place and analyze it to see
what you find. 8. See whether you can refine your coding and get fewer and more
descriptive categories.
Creswell drew on the ideas of R. C. Bogdan and S. K. Biklen (1992, pp. 167–172), who
suggested using abstract coding categories as topics. They proposed that researchers look for the
following kinds of codes:
- Setting and context codes
- Perspectives held by subjects

36
 - Subjects’ ways of thinking about people and objects
- Process codes
- Activity codes
- Strategy codes
- Relationship and social structure codes
- Preassigned coding schemes

Problems With Interview Material

Let me suggest some of the problems researchers face in dealing with informants and
respondents (which apply to all other forms of research, such as focus groups, questionnaires,
and surveys).
1. People don’t always tell the truth. People want to put their best foot forward—they want
to appear nobler and better than they actually are— so they often lie or distort things.
Sometimes they actually have convinced themselves that their accounts are not lies but
are the truth.
2. People don’t always remember things accurately
3. People don’t always have useful information
4. People sometimes tell you what they think you want to hear.
5. People use language in dif erent ways.

Chapter 9: Historical Analysis

What Is History?
As Robert F. Berkhofer Jr. (1969) explained in his book A Behavioral Approach to Historical
Analysis,
Historians do not recapture or reconstruct the past when they analyze history; they interpret it
according to surviving evidence and conceptual frameworks.

History as Metadiscipline or Specialized Subject

Kinds of Historical Research

G. Phifer (1961) in his article “The Historical Approach” (in An Introduction to Graduate Study
in Speech and Theatre, edited by C. W. Dow), suggested seven types of historical studies. They
are listed here in slightly modified form:

37
 1. Biographical studies, focusing on the lives and psyches of important persons
2. Movement or idea studies, tracing the development of political, social, or economic
ideas and movements
3. Regional studies, focusing on particular cities, states, nations, and regions
4. Institutional studies, concentrating on specific organizations
5. Case histories, focusing on social settings of a single event
6. Selected studies, identifying and paying close attention to a special element in some
complex process
7. Editorial studies, dealing with the translating or processing of documents

The Problem of Writing History

Generally speaking, they take the material they have gathered— from primary sources such as
newspaper articles; records from diaries and journals; and data from governmental
agencies and from secondary sources such as statements by persons of consequence;
material from scholarly books and articles; autobiographies and biographies; and ideas
from philosophers, artists, and others—and weave a narrative

The need historians have to tell stories, to write narratives, also poses problems, for the
narrative form imposes some limits on writers.

The Problem of Meaning

There are two views about what structuralists do. One says it is all “hocus-pocus,” and the
structuralist critic imposes on the text some ingenious structure of his or her own making. The
other says it is “God’s truth,” and structuralist critics are astute at finding structures
hidden in these works. These differences are shown in the chart that follows, which is applied
to history. (Có hai quan điểm về những gì các nhà cấu trúc làm. Người ta nói rằng tất cả đều là
"hocus-pocus", và nhà phê bình theo chủ nghĩa cấu trúc áp đặt lên văn bản một số cấu trúc khéo
léo do chính họ tạo ra. Người kia nói rằng đó là "sự thật của Chúa", và các nhà phê bình theo
chủ nghĩa cấu trúc rất sắc sảo trong việc tìm kiếm các cấu trúc ẩn giấu trong các tác phẩm này.
Những khác biệt này được thể hiện trong biểu đồ tiếp theo, được áp dụng cho lịch sử.)

38
Baudrillard and Jameson on Postmodernism
For Baudrillard the models of the United States in Disneyland are more real than their
instantiations in the social world, as the USA becomes more and more like Disneyland.

The Historical and the Comparative Approach

the US Constitution and the constitution of some other country, such as the Japanese
constitution, or between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. A historical
apprach to Disneyland would deal with its evolution over the years, and a comparative
approach would deal with Disneyland in the United States and in France or Japan (or
both). (Hiến pháp Hoa Kỳ và hiến pháp của một số quốc gia khác, chẳng hạn như hiến pháp
Nhật Bản, hoặc giữa Cách mạng Mỹ và Cách mạng Pháp. Một cách tiếp cận lịch sử đối với
Disneyland sẽ đối phó với sự phát triển của nó trong những năm qua, và một cách tiếp cận so
sánh sẽ đối phó với Disneyland ở Hoa Kỳ và ở Pháp hoặc Nhật Bản (hoặc cả hai).)

Doing Historical Research

- Can you narrow your focus?
- Can you find primary and secondary sources?
- Are your sources reliable?
- Are the authorities you are citing reliable?
- What concepts or theory of history are you using?
- What does anything mean?
- What’s the impact?

Conclusions
Historians have provided researchers with some fundamental ways of searching for facts and
recording them.

39
 Chapter 10: Ethnomethodological Research
Defining Ethnomethodology
The term ethnomethodology was thought up by distinguished sociologist Harold Garfinkel. In an
article titled “The Origins of the Term ‘Ethnomethodology’” (based on a transcript of a
symposium on the subject), Garfinkel explained how he thought up the name
Garfinkel made a number of important points about ethnomethodology in this passage (and I will
add others taken from his writings and those of other ethnomethodologists):
- The focus of ethnomethodology is on people’s “commonsense” knowledge of society.
- There is an interest among ethnomethodologists in people’s “adequate grounds of
inference.”
- There is a concern among ethnomethodologists for actions people undertake in the
company of others like themselves.
- Ethnomethodologists are interested in studying everyday life, which is generally
neglected by sociologists.
- The ethnomethodologist’s concern with people’s understanding of things suggests that
ethnomethodologists do not offer their interpretations of the meanings of people’s
activities but search for the way they make sense of things and find meaning in things—
especially conversations people have and things people do.
Thus, ethnomethodology is interested in how people think and act in everyday-life situations, in
contrast to, for example, laboratory experiments or focus groups or other situations in which
people recognize that they are, one way or another, being studied. “Common sense” becomes a
subject of inquiry, not just a “given” neglected for other concerns. (Do đó, phương pháp dân tộc
học quan tâm đến cách mọi người suy nghĩ và hành động trong các tình huống cuộc sống hàng
ngày, trái ngược với, ví dụ, các thí nghiệm trong phòng thí nghiệm hoặc các nhóm tập trung
hoặc các tình huống khác mà mọi người nhận ra rằng họ, bằng cách này hay cách khác, đang
được nghiên cứu. "Lẽ thường" 335 trở thành một chủ đề của cuộc điều tra, không chỉ là một
"nhất định" bị bỏ qua cho các mối quan tâm khác.)

Garfinkel’ s Ingenious and Mischievous Research

- Clarifying comments
- Acting like boarders while at home.
- Describing a household as if one were a boarder.

Using Ethnomethodology in Media and Communication Research

The analysis of dialogue in media and the analyses ethnomethodologists make of real-world
conversations differ in that dialogue in mass-mediated texts is created by writers. In a sense,
therefore, when we do research on dialogue in a film or other mass-mediated text, we are dealing
with a writer’s perception of the world. (Việc phân tích đối thoại trên các phương tiện truyền

40
thông và các phân tích mà các nhà dân tộc học đưa ra về các cuộc trò chuyện trong thế giới
thực khác nhau ở chỗ đối thoại trong các văn bản qua trung gian đại chúng được tạo ra bởi các
nhà văn. Do đó, theo một nghĩa nào đó, khi chúng ta nghiên cứu về đối thoại trong một bộ phim
hoặc văn bản qua trung gian đại chúng khác, chúng ta đang đối phó với nhận thức của một nhà
văn về thế giới.)
Let me suggest the difference between what might be described as pure ethnomethodological
research as practiced by sociologists (and other researchers, such as linguists and psychologists),
which focuses on everyday life routines, and the adapted or applied form of this research, which
uses films, television programs, songs, and other mediated texts. (Hãy để tôi đề xuất sự khác biệt
giữa những gì có thể được mô tả là nghiên cứu dân tộc học thuần túy được thực hiện bởi các
nhà xã hội học (và các nhà nghiên cứu khác, chẳng hạn như nhà ngôn ngữ học và nhà tâm lý
học), tập trung vào các thói quen cuộc sống hàng ngày và hình thức thích nghi hoặc ứng dụng
của nghiên cứu này, sử dụng phim, chương trình truyền hình, bài hát và các văn bản trung gian
khác.)

Metaphors and Motivation

I dealt with metaphors in Chapter 3, in my discussion of semiotics. Let me return to the topic
now with a discussion of how metaphors reflect unconscious beliefs and attitudes and the role
they play in our thinking.
reveal cognitive processes beyond those shown in more literal language, they can also
surface important thoughts that literal language may underrepresent or miss completely
examining metaphors people use, or are asked to use by researchers, we can gain valuable
information about the values and beliefs they hold

Love Is a Game
One song I found particularly interesting was a ballad called “It’s All in the Game,” which states
that love is a wonderful game. In my classes, I often ask my students what the metaphor “Love is
a game” implies about love. They supply the following notions, which we might describe as
logical imperatives or common sense beliefs found in this metaphor.
1. Someone wins and someone loses
2. Sometimes you are winning, and other times you might be losing
3. Love is not serious.

41
 4. There are rules to follow in games.
5. You have to watch out for cheating
6. Games end after a while.
We can see, then, that describing love as a game means adopting certain understandings about
what love is and how to “play” the game of love. Certain logical implications and 348
expectations—not found in other notions about love—are contained in the notion that love is a
game. (Do đó, chúng ta có thể thấy rằng mô tả tình yêu như một trò chơi có nghĩa là chấp nhận
những hiểu biết nhất định về tình yêu là gì và làm thế nào để "chơi" trò chơi tình yêu. Một số
hàm ý logic và 348 kỳ vọng - không tìm thấy trong các khái niệm khác về tình yêu - được chứa
đựng trong khái niệm rằng tình yêu là một trò chơi.)

Humorists as Code Violators

Another form of applied ethnomethodological research is the study of humor. Humor is a subject
that has perplexed philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, communication theorists,
and many other kinds of scholars and thinkers for thousands of years.
Consider jokes, which are generally defined as having the following characteristics:
- They are short narratives.
- They are meant to amuse people and generate mirthful laughter.
- They have punch lines
Humor involves some kind of a play frame that states “this is not for real” or “I don’t really
mean this,”
But humor can have very negative psychological consequences, which is why the media try to
censor humor that is too insulting.

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Techniques of Humor

If we apply this chart to the joke about the priest, minister, and rabbi, we find the following
techniques at work:
- Mistakes (29): The minister smells cigar smoke and thinks it comes from the priest’s
cigar.
- Reversal (35): The minister attempts to get revenge against the priest.
- Exposure (18): The rabbi reveals that he’s the source of the cigar smoke.
- Facetiousness (19): The rabbi says he was innocently sitting in a refrigerator.
- Absurdity (1): The rabbi was smoking in a refrigerator

Ethnomethodology and the Communication Process

For example, the study of intercultural communication looks for national codes used by members
of each culture to determine why there may be problems when people from different cultures and
countries try to communicate.

Chapter 11: Participant Observation

Defining Participant Observation
Participant observation is different; it is a qualitative research technique that provides the
opportunity to study people in real-life situations. It is a form of field research in which
observations are carried out in real settings and where there is a lack of the kind of control and
structure you have in experiments

43
Researchers have to balance two roles: that of being participants and that of being observers.
Researchers also have to avoid “going native,” which means becoming so identified with the
group that they lose their objectivity.
Participant observation is typically carried out by a researcher in one of the two following roles:
1. Participant as observer, where the researcher participates with the group being observed
and is a functioning part of the group. As such, the person is an “insider” enjoying a close
understanding of the context and the process while performing the added role of an
observer and recorder
2. Observer as participant, in which the observer is a neutral outsider who has been given
the privilege of participating for the purpose of making observations and recording them
There is a difference between everyday observation and participant observation. In our everyday
lives, we are always observing people and events and trying to make sense of things.

Significant Considerations When Doing Participant Observation

Here are some important matters to focus on when doing a participant observation of your group.
1. The setting. Where are you doing your observation, and what impact does the setting have on
the behavior of the people being observed? Does the setting facilitate certain kinds of behavior
and retard other kinds of behavior? For example, at a bar, you’d expect some flirting might go on
and wouldn’t expect people to be praying.
2. The participants. Who are you observing? How many people are involved? How are they
related to one another? What is their function in the group being studied? What is the nature of
the group being studied? Record pertinent demographic data, if you can obtain this information,
about each of the participants:
3. The nature and purpose of the group. You should describe the group and explain what kind
of group it is. What is it that brings the people in the group together? Is the group tightly
organized, or can people enter and leave it in a casual manner? Is the group ongoing, or is it
based on chance events and only occasionally comes together? Does the group have many rules
that members observe, or are there few (or no) rules?
4. The behavior of people in the group. What do members of the group do? How do they do it?
Why do they do it? Who gives the group its direction? How do people in the group interact with
one another? What do they say to each other? Who is involved with decision making in the
group? Who says what to whom with what effects? We are basically interested in what people
say to one another, what they do, and the relationship between what people say and do.
5. The frequencies and durations of behavior. As an observer, you want to record whether
certain behaviors occur frequently or just take place occasionally and how long the people you
are observing spend doing certain things. Are the behaviors typical or unique? When do they
tend to take place? Is there something that tends to provoke or lead to certain behaviors?
44
6. Record what you see. Record what you see in as much detail as possible. If you have access
to informants, you should make an audio recording of your interviews with them (if you can do
so) so you have an accurate record of what they said. You should keep written records that are as
detailed and complete as possible and should concern yourself with what people actually say and
do and not with your impressions of things. Now, with inexpensive video cameras and cell
phones with video capabilities, it is easier to record videos.
7. Self photographs and videos by group members. Have group members take photographs or
make videos connected to the topic you are investigating and discuss what their photographs and
videos reveal. These photographs and videos will reveal what those who make them consider to
be important and provide additional insights into the group. You can also ask the people taking
photos and making videos to keep journals to document their activities. You might ask them to
take “selfies” with their colleagues, from time to time, to document their activities.

Problems With Participant Observation

In theory, participant observation is easy. You find a group you are interested in studying,
become connected with it (or find some way to participate in it), observe the group, record your
observations as unobtrusively as possible, and write up what you’ve found. In practice,
participant observation is much more complicated

The Problem of Observers Affecting Behavior

Observers affecting (by their presence) what goes on in a group is known as reactivity

Benefits of Participant Observation Studies

- First, it helps you understand what’s going on in a setting you are studying.
- Second, participant observation helps you determine which questions to ask informants.
Participant observers frequently make themselves known to the members of the group
they are studying and thus are free to ask people questions.
- Third, participant observation is, relatively speaking, an unobtrusive way of getting
information about groups and their behavior.

Writing Up a Participant Observation Study

Here are some suggestions for writing a report of a participant observation study.
1. Provide an introduction that gives your reader a sense of where you made your study,
what you were trying to find, and any books and articles you consulted to gain
information on participant observation methods or the topic you were investigating.
2. Tell your reader what interesting information you discovered from doing your participant
observation and any conclusions you reached from your research.
3. Make sure you define and explain any concepts you used in your research.
4. Discuss any latent—that is, hidden and unrecognized—functions to the behaviors you
observed.

45
 5. Describe any problems you faced in making your participant observation and difficulties
you faced in drawing conclusions about your research.
6. Discuss any differences in age, race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class among the
people you studied and the role these differences (if any important differences existed)
played in the group you studied.

An Ethical Dilemma
An ethical dilemma participant that observers face is whether to pretend to join the group they
are observing in order to associate with the people in it or to tell people in the group they are
doing research on them. Personally speaking, I think the ethical thing to do is to tell people you
are observing them and not pretend you aren’t. If you don’t tell people what you are doing, you
are, in a sense, using them, and you are also lying to them about your interest in the group. In
addition, you will make things more difficult for yourself because you won’t be able to record
interviews or take notes as easily as you can if people know you are conducting research on
them. I don’t believe that people will change their behavior that much —at least not over the
long run—if they know they are being observed. A great deal depends on your ability to “fade
into the woodwork,” to keep to the background, to keep your presence muted.

Chapter 12: Content Analysis

Content analysis is one of the most commonly used research methodologies among scholars
dealing with media and communication

Defining Content Analysis

The term content analysis tells us, broadly, what the methodology does: It analyzes the content
of something. But there’s much more to content analysis than that.
Let me offer an excellent definition of the term found in Charles R. Wright’s (1986) Mass
Communication:
A Sociological Perspective: Content analysis is a research technique for the systematic
classification and description of communication content according to certain usually
predetermined categories. It may involve quantitative or qualitative analysis, or both.
A number of concepts mentioned in this passage require definition and clarification —
operational definition, coding, and manifest content—which I explain in the following pages.
Then Treadwell offered the following amplifications:
- Quantitative means that we count occurrences of whatever we are interested in.
- Systematic means that we count all relevant aspects of the sample. We cannot
arbitrarily pick what aspects get analyzed.
- Objective means that we seek units for analysis and categorize them using clearly
defined criteria.
46
 - Manifest means that we count what is tangible and observable. For example, we cannot
count patriotism in consumer advertising because patriotism is ultimately an abstract or
latent (hidden) notion

Why We Make Content Analyses

First, we want to get information about a topic and believe that content analysis, rather than other
research methods, will help us get the information we’re seeking.
Also, we may have a hypothesis (essentially a guess) about some topic and want to see whether it
is correct.

Methodological Aspects of Content Analysis

Factual information—what we sometimes term factoids—by itself doesn’t tell us very much. If
one were to say, “In 2015, there were approximately 30 acts of violence per hour on American
television,” we wouldn’t know very much, because we wouldn’t know what this datum, the
“factoid,” means. What we need is some perspective, something with which to compare the 2015
factoid. Here are some ways to make this comparison.
- Determine your research question: Before you begin, you have to decide what you are
going to measure and what you hope to find out. Conduct a library search on the subject
of your proposed content research before beginning to see whether others have done
work on the same topic that might be useful to you. Also, make sure that your research
topic fits your time constraints.
- Use a historical approach when making a content analysis: “In 1985, there were
approximately 10 acts of violence per hour on television, and in 2015, we see
approximately 30 acts of violence per hour on television,” do we have information of
value. Now we know that in 2015, there is 3 times as much violence, per hour, on
American television as there was 30 years ago.
- Use a comparative approach when making a content analysis.: If we also do a
comparative study of television violence and discover that in Sweden, for example, there
were three acts of violence per hour on television in 2008, we have information that helps
us gain additional perspective on violence on American television. Assuming that the
content analysis has been done correctly, we can say that American television contains 10
times more violence than Swedish television
- Be careful about defining your terms operationally: There are several kinds of
definitions. The definitions you find in dictionaries are known as constitutive definitions
—they define words in terms of other words and concepts. They are quite general and
abstract. The definitions used in content analyses are operational definitions, which use
operations and indicators to define concepts.

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In Violence and Terror in the Mass Media: An Annotated Bibliography, George Gerbner and
Nancy Signorielli (1988), who compiled the bibliography, wrote, “Reliable observation and
systematic analysis usually require limited and objective definitions .
In the same light, your concept must deal with all the behaviors that can be studied. If your
operational definition leaves out certain kinds of violence (perhaps because they are difficult to
measure and quantify), your results may be viewed as invalid.
- Determine measurable scoring units. This means figuring out your basic or
standard unit of measurement.
- Determine how to do your coding. Coding is a process by which we classify data
obtained from material studied and give each item in a category a symbol or number.
- Measure only the manifest content. When making content analyses, examine only the
manifest content of texts—that is, what is explicitly stated—rather than the latent content,
the “hidden” material behind or between the words. If a male character in a comic strip
says, “I love you,” to a female character, you have to take that statement at face value and
use it in your content analysis

Aspects of Violence

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We can see, then, that violence is extremely complex and difficult to define—especially from an
operational point of view. Because of the complexity of the concept, many content analyses of
violence in the media have been challenged by researchers who defined violence differently.

Advantages of Content Analysis as a Research Method

The many advantages of content analysis explain why it is such a popular form of research:
- It is unobtrusive.
- It is relatively inexpensive.
- It can deal with current events and topics of present-day interest.
- It uses material that is relatively easy to obtain and work with.
- It yields data that can be quantified.

Difficulties in Making Content Analyses

Here are a few issues to add to the previous discussion:
- Finding a representative sample
- Determining measurable units
- Obtaining reliability in coding
- Defining terms operationally
- Ensuring validity and utility in your findings
The simplest (but also quite effective) way of testing reliability (“intercoding reliability” in
content analysis jargon) is to have several coders analyze identical content and then compare the
results
Typically, a reliability level of 90% or higher is considered acceptable.

49
Content Analysis Step-by-Step
1. Decide what you want to find out and offer a hypothesis—that is, an educated guess—
about what you expect to find. (For example, it is reasonable to hypothesize that as a
result of the growth of feminism and the increased power of women in government and
other aspects of society, the number of words spoken by women in comic strips will
increase as we study samples from 1960 to 2010. Whether that hypothesis is correct or
not has to be tested by making a content analysis.)
2. Explain what you’ll be investigating and tell why this research is worth doing.
3. Offer an operational definition of the topic you’ll be studying. If you’re studying
violence, tell how you define it.
4. Explain your basis for selecting the sample you’ll be analyzing. How did you determine
which examples to investigate?
5. Explain your unit of analysis.
6. Describe your classification system or system of categories for coding your material.
Remember that the categories must be mutually exclusive and that you must cover every
example of what you’re analyzing.
7. Determine your coding system.
8. Test for intercoding reliability and make any necessary adjustments, such as increased
training and practice for the coders or an adjustment of the operational definition and
code guides.
9. Using your coding system, analyze the sample you have selected.
10. Present your findings using quantified data you’ve obtained from your content analysis.
11. Interpret your results using your numerical data and other material relevant to your
research.

Chapter 13: Surveys

Surveying is a research method used to get information about certain groups of people
representative of some larger group of interest.

Defining Surveys
In their book Field Projects for Sociology Students, Jacqueline P. Wiseman and Marcia S. Aron
(1970) offered an excellent definition of surveys:
Survey research is a method for collecting and analyzing social data via highly structured
and often very detailed interviews or questionnaires in order to obtain information from
large numbers of respondents presumed to be representative of a specific population. (p.
37)
A more recent definition can be found in Donald Treadwell’s Introducing Communication
Research. He defined surveys as follows (2011):

50
 A survey is a series of formatted questions delivered to a defined sample of people
with the expectation that their responses will be returned somewhere between
immediately and in a few days. The survey process starts with theoretically derived
research questions or hypotheses and continues through question design and ordering,
delivering questions to respondents, and obtaining their answers and analyzing them. A
questionnaire is the specific set of questions that respondents answer.
These definitions call our attention to four key points about surveying:
1. It is done to collect and analyze social, economic, psychological, technical, cultural, and
other types of data.
2. It is based on finding people (respondents) and asking them for information.
3. It is done with representative samples of a population being studied.
4. It is assumed that information obtained from the sample is valid for the population being
studied.

Kinds of Surveys: Descriptive and Analytic

There are two basic kinds of surveys: descriptive and analytic (or explanatory). The descriptive
survey, as the name suggests, describes the population being studied. These surveys seek to
obtain information about demographic factors such as age, gender, marital status, occupation,
race or ethnicity, income, and religion and to relate this information to opinions, beliefs, values,
and behaviors of some group of people. (Có hai loại khảo sát cơ bản: mô tả và phân tích (hoặc
giải thích). Cuộc khảo sát mô tả, như tên cho thấy, mô tả dân số đang được nghiên cứu. Các
cuộc khảo sát này tìm cách thu thập thông tin về các yếu tố nhân khẩu học như tuổi tác, giới
tính, tình trạng hôn nhân, nghề nghiệp, chủng tộc hoặc dân tộc, thu nhập và tôn giáo và liên
quan đến thông tin này với ý kiến, niềm tin, giá trị và hành vi của một số nhóm người.)
The second kind of survey, the analytic survey, seeks to find out why people behave the way
they do. Researchers often use data from descriptive surveys to develop hypotheses and use
analytic surveys to test their hypotheses about what causes certain kinds of behavior. Analytic
surveys attempt to determine whether there are causal relationships between certain kinds of
behavior and social and demographic characteristics of people. (Loại khảo sát thứ hai, khảo sát
phân tích, tìm cách tìm hiểu lý do tại sao mọi người cư xử theo cách họ làm. Các nhà nghiên cứu
thường sử dụng dữ liệu từ các cuộc khảo sát mô tả để phát triển các giả thuyết và sử dụng các
cuộc khảo sát phân tích để kiểm tra các giả thuyết của họ về nguyên nhân gây ra một số loại
hành vi nhất định. Khảo sát phân tích cố gắng xác định xem có mối quan hệ nhân quả giữa các
loại hành vi nhất định và đặc điểm xã hội và nhân khẩu học của con người hay không.)

The VALS Typology Survey

By the term “values” we mean the entire constellation of a person’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions,
hopes, fears, prejudices, needs, desires, and aspirations that, taken together, govern how one
behaves. . . .

51
The typology argues that there are nine groups of people who share similar values that shape
their behavior, especially as consumers.
This survey had a significantly sized sample, suggesting a high degree of reliability. What is
interesting, for our purposes, is that VALS developed a short form of the survey for the
convenience of the Stanford Research Institute’s clients and discovered that it achieved an
overall level of agreement of 86%.

Methods of Data Collection

Conventionally, surveys collect data through two methods:
1. Interviews (individual or group interviews; in-person or telephone interviews)
2. Self-administered questionnaires
- Supervised administration: One-to-one or group administration
- Unsupervised administration: The questionnaire is mailed (or emailed) to people or freely
distributed via magazines, the Internet, and so on.
Survey interviews are quite different from depth interviews. Survey interviews have lists of
questions people are asked to answer and do not allow interviewers to explore subjects that
come up, by chance, as is possible in less structured depth interviews. Survey interviews are
shorter than depth interviews and more structured so information can be obtained to make
valid generalizations about the population being studied. Telephone interviews are
comparatively less expensive and possibly less intimidating than in-person interviews, but
because not everyone has phones, the sample may be biased or unrepresentative.
Questionnaires are conventionally understood to be lists of questions given or sent to people who
are asked to answer the questions and return the questionnaires to the senders. That is, they are
self-administered surveys. Questionnaires should always be accompanied by cover letters
explaining the purpose of the questionnaire and pointing out how it is in the interest of the
respondent to answer the questionnaire. They should also be attractively designed and easy to fill
out and return. It’s a good idea to provide a stamped, self-addressed envelope to respondents.
The easier you make things for your respondents, the better chance you have of getting the
questionnaire returned. (Bảng câu hỏi thường được hiểu là danh sách các câu hỏi được đưa ra
hoặc gửi cho những người được yêu cầu trả lời các câu hỏi và trả lại bảng câu hỏi cho người
gửi. Đó là, họ là các cuộc khảo sát tự quản lý. Bảng câu hỏi phải luôn được kèm theo thư xin
việc giải thích mục đích của bảng câu hỏi và chỉ ra lợi ích của người trả lời để trả lời bảng câu
hỏi. Chúng cũng nên được thiết kế hấp dẫn và dễ dàng điền và trả lại. Đó là một ý tưởng tốt để
cung cấp một phong bì đóng dấu, tự ghi địa chỉ cho người trả lời. Bạn càng dễ dàng làm mọi thứ
cho người trả lời của mình, bạn càng có cơ hội nhận được bảng câu hỏi được trả lại.)

52
Advantages of Survey Research
There are a number of advantages to conducting surveys, which explains why they are so widely
used.
- Surveys are inexpensive.
- Surveys can obtain current information.
- Surveys enable you to obtain a great deal of information at one time.
- Surveys provide quantitative or numeric data.
- Surveys are very common, and some of the information you seek may have already been
discovered in a survey.
What is particularly important is that surveys obtain information that can be quantified and
analyzed statistically and thus can reach a degree of precision about the group being studied that
other forms of research cannot duplicate. These data can be summarized so that readers are able
to see, rather quickly, what the data reveal about the population being studied (Điều đặc biệt
quan trọng là các cuộc điều tra có được thông tin có thể được định lượng và phân tích thống kê
và do đó có thể đạt đến một mức độ chính xác về nhóm đang được nghiên cứu mà các hình thức
nghiên cứu khác không thể sao chép. Những dữ liệu này có thể được tóm tắt để người đọc có thể
thấy, khá nhanh, những gì dữ liệu tiết lộ về dân số đang được nghiên cứu)

Problems With Surveys

There are a number of general problems connected with using surveys and questionnaires (and
interviewing of all kinds) that you, as a researcher, should keep in mind:

53
 - People often don’t tell the truth, especially about personal matters.
- People make mistakes about what they’ve done, even if they are trying to tell the
truth.
- Obtaining representative samples is frequently quite difficult.
- People often refuse to participate in surveys.
- Relatively small percentages of people answer and return questionnaires.
- Writing good survey questions is difficult to do.

Open-Ended and Closed-Ended Survey Questions

One can use two kinds of survey questions: open-ended and closed-ended questions (or, in other
terminology, constructed-response questions and selected-response questions). An open-ended
question asks for an answer that the respondent should construct by himself or herself, writing it
down in the space provided. Closed-ended questions ask respondents to select from lists of
answers provided by the survey designer—lists such as multiple-choice questions or Likert
scales.

Samples
The logic behind sampling is relatively simple. If you have a homogeneous population—that is,
everyone is the same—a relatively small sample of this population will provide reliable
information about the larger population you are studying. (We use the term population to cover
all the members of a group.)
But suppose the population is heterogeneous, or mixed, as shown here: General Population
XABABXAXBBXX
AXBBAABBXXAA
Sample Needed
XAB

Evaluating Survey Accuracy

54
So the size of the sample doesn’t necessarily tell you very much. Of course, you could ask
everyone in the population you wish to study and avoid sampling—this is called a census. But
that is not practical. So you have to find a representative sample of the population you are
studying. And the sampling error figure will provide you with an indication of the degree of
accuracy of your research.

Chapter 14: Experiments

Defining Experiments
For our purposes, we will understand an experiment to be a procedure or kind of test that
1. Demonstrates whether something is true,
2. Examines the validity of an hypothesis or theory, or
3. Attempts to discover new information.

The Structure of an Experiment

Let me offer an overview of the steps taken when conducting experiments—or what might be
described as the “structure” of a typical experiment.
- Your experiment will involve two groups of people: the experimental group (also known
as the treatment group, intervention group, or stimulus group) and the control group.
Something will be done to the experimental group, but it will not be done to the control
group.
- Persons must be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group.
How to do this is discussed in Chapter 13, on surveys and questionnaires, and involves
the use of tables of random numbers (see Table 13.1).
- A pretest is done. There are two kinds of variables—independent and dependent. You
measure the groups in terms of a dependent variable. (Independent variables are varied by
researchers, whereas dependent variables are presumed to be affected by independent
variables.)
- You perform the experiment and introduce one independent variable to the experimental
group. Nothing is done with the control group.
- You conduct a posttest to see if there’s a significant difference between the experimental
group and the control group relative to the variable introduced.

The Hawthorne Effect

The purpose was to find out whether lighting had an impact on worker productivity at the plant
and to discover what level of lighting was best for worker productivity. The researchers found, to
their surprise, that worker productivity increased when the lighting was made brighter and when
it was made dimmer.

55
It was concluded, then, that whenever people are being observed by researchers, they temporarily
change their behavior—a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect.

Advantages of Experiments
Experiments, if carried out carefully and correctly, provide very strong evidence that a given
independent variable (such as the exposure of the experimental group to mediated violence in
MTV videos) actually has the effect discovered. Also, experiments give strong evidence that the
discovered effect was not the result of some unrecognized phenomenon.

Disadvantages of Experiments
Probably the biggest problem with experiments is that they are artificial, conducted—
generally speaking—in laboratories or in “nonnatural” situations. When people know that
they are involved in an experiment, this information often affects their behavior.
There is also reason to believe that the design of experiments tends to overemphasize cause-
and-effect relationships between the matters being studied.

What’ s an Experiment and What Isn ’t?

Experimentation—the observation of phenomena under controlled conditions. In laboratory
experiments the investigator himself creates the setting for his observations, where in field
experiments he manipulates only some of the variables in an established social setting. A
third category of natural experiments is sometimes used to refer to cases where the investigator
actually controls nothing, but where events happen to occur in a way similar to that which an
investigator might wish to create through controlled conditions. (p. 348)
The control group, in a sense, was the population not involved in the experiment.

Ethics and the Facebook Experiment

To determine whether it could alter the emotional state of its users and prompt them to post
either more positive or negative content, the site’s data scientists enabled an algorithm, for one
week, to automatically omit content that contained words associated with either positive or
negative emotions from the central news feeds of 689,003 users.

Chapter 15: A Primer on Descriptive Statistics

Levels of Measurement
- Nominal level. Typical examples of data on this level are demographics such as sex,
nationality, and marital status.
- Ordinal level. Data belong to this level when they can be ordered according to some
criterion. Examples of such data are educational level or rank in the army.
- Interval level. Temperature is a typical example of an interval level of measurement.

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 - Ratio level. Salaries, height, weight, and number of children (or wives) are data that
belong to the ratio level of measurement, and all mathematical operations valid for real
numbers can be applied to such data.

Descriptive Statistics
There are two kinds of statistics—descriptive and inferential. This primer deals with descriptive
statistics. Descriptive statistics refers to methods used to obtain, from raw data, information
that characterizes or summarizes the whole set of data.

Measures of Central Tendency

The statistics describing the location of the distribution are usually called measures of central
tendency because they indicate the central point of distribution on the scale. There are three more
commonly used statistics: mean, median, and mode.

The Mean
The mean (the arithmetic average) is the sum of all observed data values divided by the sample
size.

The Median
The median (Me) is the point in the distribution that divides it into two halves. The median can
be used as a measure of central tendency for all kinds of data except nominal data. The easiest
way to find the median for raw data is to order them from the lowest to the highest. If we do this
for the words in our sentence, the result is as follows: 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 44|44 5 7 8 9 9 9
101011 12

The Mode (số xuất hiện nhiều nhất)

The third measure of the central tendency, the mode (Mo), can be applied to all kinds of data.
The mode is the most frequently observed value in the frequency distribution. In the case of

57
our initial sentence, the mode is 3 because more words consist of 3 letters (7 words do so) than
have any other length. In statistical language, it appears this way: Mo = 3.

Measures of Dispersion
The statistics describing how broad the interval is on the measurement scale covered by the
frequency distribution are usually called measures of dispersion. There are many such measures,
but we describe here only two of them—the easiest one (range) and the most frequently used one
(statistical deviation).

Range
This statistic is easily calculated, and its meaning is very clear—the range is the distance
between the two endpointsx of the frequency distribution.

The Problem of Interpretation

If we don’t find problems in the research methodology or means of data collection in research
projects (or in both), we often find different points of view (and sometimes mistakes) in the
interpretation of the data collected. So media stations and networks battle with one another, using
statistics selectively, and we must be on guard and notice the qualifications they use and the way
they “read” the data they have collected to suit their own purposes.

Chapter 16: Nineteen Common Thinking Errors

Common Fallacies
1. Appealing to false authority
2. Stacking the deck (selected instances).
3. Overgeneralizing (allness). is the error -- This error involves assuming that what is true
of some X is true of all X. The term generalization comes from the Latin genus (kind,
class, genre) and refers to a statement that is true for every member of the group or class.
4. Imperfect analogies and comparisons: When we make an analogy, we compare two
things and allege that they are similar in some important way or ways.
5. Misrepresenting ideas of other people
6. Pushing arguments to absurd extremes.
7. Before, therefore because of (post hoc ergo propter hoc).
8. Misleading percentages.
9. Using seemingly impressive numbers.
10. Misleading use of the term average.

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11. Incorrect assumptions
12. False conclusions: Let us suppose that a class satisfaction survey is taken of 200 students
and 8 people complain that they do not like the class. That does not allow you to
argue that 192 people “liked” the class; all you know is that they did not complain.
Many students in the class might not have liked it but did not indicate their feelings,
for one reason or another.
13. Mistaking correlation and causation: Just because there is a correlation between X and
Y does not mean that X causes Y. For example, there may be a correlation between the
amount of higher education and small families, but it does not mean that the amount of
education causes small families. There may be other factors involved, such as the age at
which people with higher education get married. We have to distinguish between some
factor causing something to happen and that factor contributing to something’s
happening.
14. Diversion of attention by using emotional language
15. Begging the question
16. Oversimplification: When dealing with complicated issues, to make ourselves clear or
do the best we can with a weak position, we sometimes oversimplify things. Often,
elements of the reasoning error discussed in 5 above, misrepresentation, are at work here.
When we have oversimplified arguments made by others and weakened them by doing
so, it generally is much easier to claim support for our own position.
17. Ad hominem arguments: The term ad hominem comes from the Latin for attacking the
person—literally “to the man.” We don’t focus our attention on the argument being made
but on the person who has made it. And by insulting or casting doubt on the “good name”
of that person, we indirectly attack his or her ideas. We focus on “who” is making the
argument and not on “what” argument is being made.
18. Ad populum arguments.
19. Pooh-poohing arguments: Pooh-poohing involves ridiculing other people and failing
to take their ideas seriously. It is a means of avoiding logical argument and often uses
the “everyone knows” tactic to suggest that an idea is so absurd it shouldn’t even be
considered. Pooh-poohing is a common evasive technique.

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 Chapter 17: Writing Research Reports
A Trick for Organizing Reports
The Secret: One Idea per Slip of Paper
Outlines, First Drafts, and Revisions
Writing Research Reports
Formal style. Reports do not use colloquial language and usually generate an air of seriousness
about themselves.
Third person. Reports are written in the third person (one) rather than the first-person singular
(I), although some journals are much more casual about things nowadays.
Gender-neutral language. Reports use gender-neutral language. This is most easily
accomplished by avoiding he and she and using the plural.
Transitions to guide readers. Transitions are important guides to readers to cue them into what
is coming. The following chart lists some of the more important kinds of transitions:

Active voice. Some writers use the passive voice to give their research an air of authority, but I
think the passive voice, which uses some form of the verb “to be,” tends to deaden the prose
rather than enliven it.
Verb usage. In writing your reports, it is important that you follow conventions about which
verb tense should be used in each part of the report. Let me suggest you do the following:

Jargon. Do not use jargon (that is, highly specialized terms) to the extent that you can avoid it.
A good way to accomplish this is to write for an imaginary audience of readers who are

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intelligent but do not have any knowledge about your subject. Define all terms that might be
difficult for your readers and avoid abbreviations and acronyms (words formed from the initial
letters of a name, such as NATO).
Undeveloped writing. Undeveloped writing lacks detail and color. It tends to be vague, overly
general, and abstract. You can avoid this style by doing things such as offering examples,
defining your terms, dealing with causes and effects of the phenomena you discuss, and
contrasting and comparing things.

The IMRD Structure of Quantitative Research Reports

Conventionally, quantitative research reports are divided into four sections: an introduction, a
description of the methodology employed, a report on the findings, and a discussion section. This
is known as the IMRD structure. Qualitative research reports can employ this design as well.
Let’s look at each section.
- Introduction.
- Method. In other words, in the method section you deal with the operationalization (the
activities carried out) in your research. This section deals with the design of the
research or with the methodology employed
- Results. The findings are reported in the results section. If you have numerical data,
present them as charts and graphs in which results and relationships are easy to see.
Usually, the results section is fairly brief because it doesn’t take as much space to report
what you found as it does to describe how you found what you found.
- Discussion. In this section, you discuss what you found, talk about any problems you
faced in doing the research, describe any unexpected things that happened, deal with the
relation between your findings and research by other scholars, offer suggestions for those
doing research in the same area, and mention plans you might have for future research.

Writing Correctly: Avoiding Some Common Problems

Awkwardness. Awkward passages are ungainly and stiff and not well formed, for example,
“The humanity of the death penalty is a problem that has long been a debate in many societies.”
Writing that uses the same sentence structure over and over again is also considered awkward.
Coherence problems.: My research involved making a content analysis. I selected some comic
books to study. I decided to look for how much violence was in the comics I chose. I had
trouble defining violence.
Dashes and hyphens
A dash (—) is made of two hyphens. Hyphens are used to link compound words (son-in-law) and
cannot be used as dashes. Dashes are used to suggest a pause, longer than that suggested by a
comma, in a sentence or to set off an important phrase.

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Comma faults. Commas cannot be used to set off two independent clauses (that is, two
complete ideas) without a conjunction (e.g., and, but). You must use a semicolon or make some
other kind of a change, such as inserting a transition. For example,
Fragments. In writing reports, make sure you use complete sentences and do not have sentence
fragments—incomplete thoughts you think are sentences. In other kinds of writing, such as
personal essays, you can use fragments for emphasis as long as you know what you are doing
and use them sparingly.
Padding or wordiness. This is writing that is too wordy, using many words where just a few
would do.
Spelling errors. If you are not certain about the way a word is spelled, you should check its
spelling in the dictionary. Spell-checkers in computer programs are useful, but sometimes they
make mistakes because they don’t recognize that a word that is spelled correctly does not fit the
sentence in which it is found.
Clarity problems
Pronoun reference problems.
Repetitiveness.
Verb agreement problems.

Academic Writing Styles

A Checklist for Planning Research and Writing Reports
- Choosing your research topic
+ Find a subject you are interested in that can be researched in the time available to you.
Narrow your topic as much as you can.
+ The narrower your focus, the better chance you have of being able to do your research.
- Designing your research project
- Determining the appropriate method for your project
- Organizing your data for presentation
- Using the correct format for your report: When doing research, it is vitally important
to write down all the bibliographic information you might need for your references. The
best way to do this is to use an index card for each reference or approximate index cards
on the computer.

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