Film Application Paper free essay sample

Patricia Warber October 11, 2011 Film Application Paper Mean Girls Speech and communication are a very large part of life. From face to face contact to the media, concepts and theories in human communication are incorporated into daily life. There are many concepts and theories in communication, and specifically introduced in the following paper are five major components of communication. The components of culture and co-culture, non-verbal behaviors, types of listening and barriers to effective listening, attraction and uncertainty reduction theories, and self disclosure will be explained, as well as how they are embodied in the film Mean Girls. First are the components of cultures and co-cultures. Culture is defined as the totality of learned and shared symbols, values, norms, and language of a group of people. Those four pieces (symbols, values, norms, and language) of the definition are the four major components of culture and co-culture. Symbols are a visual object or image that stands for something else. Norms are the expectations that others in the culture have in regards to social behavior, such as personal space or greeting methods. The values upheld by a culture are the ways that a particular culture believes their society should behave, for example, qualities such as honesty, equality, and freedom. Language is also a very large component of culture. People within the same culture tend to use the same language, as well as, various forms of slang to communicate. An excellent example of the components of culture and co-culture in the film Mean Girls would be the way the plastics, the group of popular and superficial girls, communicate and act, differently than the rest of their student body because they believe their status and culture is above the others. Another concept is the concept of non-verbal communication, specifically through kinesics, haptics, physical appearance, and artifacts. Non-verbal communication is considered to be the primary means of expressing emotion and is easily communicated from person to person. Kinesics covers aspects of non-verbal communication such as facial expression and gestures. This is the most common type of non-verbal communication among people. Haptics deals with nonverbal communication that involves the sense of touch and tactile feedback. Physical appearance is displayed in the way a person is dressed, their hairstyle, or even in their body type, which may give off clues as to a person’s mood or attitude. Furthermore, artifacts are the personal items a person carries or displays for others. Non-verbal communication can be easily seen in many instances throughout the film Mean Girls. A specific example would be when the popular girls in the school use their clothes, attitude, and facial expressions to show superiority over their classmates, especially the females. Next to be covered are the types of listening, listening responses, and barriers to effective listening. There are three types of listening: informational, critical, and empathic. Informational listening is simply listening to get the necessary information from the conversation, not to chat. Critical listening is taking informational listening a step further and using the information gathered to form an opinion on what was said. Empathic listening, unlike informational and critical listening, involves the listener to go beyond sympathy and try to understand how the speaker is feeling. The different types of listening are shown all throughout the film Mean Girls, for example, empathic listening can be seen in a scene toward the end of the movie when the girls of the school are given an intervention and are forced to give apologies to the class mates they have hurt. To continue, there are also several barriers to effective listening. These barriers include noise, both physical noise as well as psychological noise, and pseudo listening, which is the act of listening, but not hearing/comprehending what was being said. The barriers to effective listening are also shown in the film, specifically in the scene where the girls of the school break out into a massive fight, causing massive amounts of noise, making any chance of reason in the situation unimaginable. The fourth concept chosen to be covered is the attraction and the uncertainty reduction heory. The attraction theory, in basic terms, is a theory that states there are three levels/parts of attraction: physical, social or personality, and task or abilities/achievements. This theory is meant to be a general guideline and is tailored to each person individually depending upon their own personal likes and dislikes. The attraction theory can be seen clearly in the film Mean Girls through the main character, Cady, and her crush on the boy in her math class, and she clearly uses the three different components throughout the film. The uncertainty reduction theory is used in primarily initial interactions to remedy an aversive state. This theory states that people use information seeking strategies to reduce tension between strangers and was developed in effort to predict and explain relational development between strangers. There are four information seeking strategies including passive, active, interactive, and extractive. The first strategy, passive, is a strategy used to obtain information through observation, active strategy is used when obtaining information through other people such as friends or family, interactive strategy is a direct approach to obtaining information by simply asking the person directly, and extractive strategy, the newest addition to the theory, is obtaining information through the internet such as Google or Facebook. The last concept to be covered is self-disclosure. Self disclosure happens during the initial meeting and continues as relationships are built and developed and is a crucial building block for intimacy. Self-disclosure can include may things such as thoughts, feelings, aspirations, fears, goals, failures, successes, dreams, likes, and dislikes, and it is a major component of the social penetration theory which suggests that relationships progress along a continuum. The concept of self-disclosure can be seen in the film Mean Girls in several scenes throughout the movie, specifically, when the main character, Cady, is introduced to the social world of school, the first friends she makes are with people who started to share information about the people and her surroundings. To conclude, there are many concepts and theories in communication and human interaction. Although they are not the only important concepts, I chose to cover five that were embodied in the film Mean Girls specifically. These concepts include components of culture and co-culture, non-verbal behaviors, types of listening and barriers to effective listening, the attraction and the uncertainty reduction theories, and self-disclosure.