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______________________________________________________________________ The "Zeitschrift für
Semiotik": Abstracts ______________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________ Georg Wiest Gerald Wagner, Michael Schlese Ulrich Thomas Lange Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich Enclosure Literary report: Approaches to a theory of technical communication Joachim R. Höflich, Augsburg Summary. Technical mediation of communication is engaged here as a basic category of
media analysis. It is characterized by two types of rules: The specific restrictions
imposed on communication by the use of a technical medium require the application of
special procedural rules in the communication process. The specific constraints governing
existing communicative practices necessitate special media rules that facilitate the
incorporation of the various media into these practices. Media rules determine which
medium should be used for which communicative practice. The aspects of technically
mediated communication elaborated in this article are finally integrated within a
conceptual model. Media-specific codes in computer-supported communications systems Georg Wiest, Augsburg Summary. The success of computer-mediated communication systems is comparable to that
of the telephone in the last century. In the social applications of this technology, new
media-specific codes have come into use. The present contribution distinguishes between
primary codes, which are directly based on operating instructions, and secondary codes,
which depend on social usage, vary according to the practical situations and cultures
involved, and compromise context-dependent forms, contents, and procedures. Both
professional use of electronic mail (e-mail) in organizations and its private use via
mailboxes are shown to have resulted in a broad spectrum of secondary codes, which have
been introduced partly to overcome weaknesses of the medium and partly to exploit new
possibilities. It is predicted that intensified efforts at standardization and
normalization will lead to extensive code changes. Media-specific types specialist context in computer-supported communication systems Gerald Wagner, Free University Berlin Summary. The authors of this contribution investigate interrelations among technology,
sociology, and semiotics. They regard functional technology as a semiotic phenomenon and
present two case studies of computer-mediated communication: (1) global interaction by
means of the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program; (2) medical decision making by means of
the medical expert system Medex. In both cases, the problem of constructing
system-external reality is discussed. In the IRC case, this reality comprises electronic
communities of program users with their own personal identities, emotions, and attitudes.
Special devices for their development such as email addresses, smileys, and other
emoticons are described. In the Medex case, the system-external reality to be analyzed
consists of patients in medical intensive care units. The focus of this discussion is on
the interrelations among the patient’s state of health, computerized patient
information, therapeutic procedures offered by the expert system, and decisions made by
the physicians. The authors find that the social conditions for the long-term success of a
computer-mediated communication system involve functional communities of users,
well-defined codes, and the possibility of application to a reality independent of the
system. Save the telephone! A plea for masked dialogue Ulrich Thomas Lange, Free University Berlin Summary. The telephone as medium of communication is characterized by two essential
technically based constraints: (1) The option of initiating a conversation always belongs
to the person calling, who in turn is dependent on the spontaneous response of the person
called; (2) the visual, olfactory, tactile, and thermal properties of the conversation
partner are inaccessible and this considerably delimits the perception of the
communication situation and the transmisson of verbal messages. As in other technical
media (telegraph, telefax, email), the telephone allows for only a partial social presence
of the interlocutors. However, this reduced presence need not be disadvantageous; instead
it can be an opportunity for communicative interaction which is lacking between
interlocutors fully present to one another: In every society, there is a need for
communication involving anonymous, only partially identified, or at least visually unknown
partners; everyone has a right to limit his or her attention to selected properties of the
interlocutor and to listen or watch only partially. The media-specific constraints of
traditional telephone conversations will soon be modified in predictable ways by the
introduction of additional technology such as answering machines and picture telephones.
The present contribution analyzes expected modifications and vertures some
prognoses. Friday night talk shows: dialogue types of public
communication and the example of a talkshow Summary. This contribution describes the multi-layered structure of public
conversations such as theatrical dialogues, TV discussions, and talkshows. Therein each
speaker uses one and the same utterance to perform several speech acts addressed to
different people and having different perlocutionary effects. The addressees in a talkshow
can belong to the inner circle of invited protagonists, specially invited studio guests,
the general studio audience, the TV viewers at large, and, potentially, the general
public. The possibility of feedback from these audiences depends on the discourse
strategies of the talkmaster. This is exemplified with a case study, in which the
conversational interaction between the participants of a special talkshow (from the Berlin
series "Freitagnacht") is analyzed. Computer zombies or Homo ludens? Research tendencies on the subject of computer games Ralf Schlechtweg-Jahn, University of Bayreuth Summary. Computer games are constituent parts of postmodern popular culture. They
transcend the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, game and imagination, adult and
youth culture, and enable the players to try out ever new identities. Educational critics
often fail to recognize these characteristics and indulge in wishful thinking with an
ideal of innocent childhood, which serves to compensate the anxieties of the mainstream
culture. |
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