October 2018 archive

Open Blog Exam 2: A Gilmore Town

Gilmore Girls is based in a fictional small town in Connecticut called Stars Hollow. Stars Hollow is a quirky little town with residents that are equally as quirky. The small town feeling that is portrayed by Stars Hollow is a key characteristic of the show, giving it the vibe that everyone makes us all wish to live in a fun little town. Often in the show, we see the entire town gathered at a town meeting. Town meeting’s address all sorts of issues throughout the town, allowing each member to put their input in and see what is going on. In this clip of Gilmore girls, we see Taylor Dossey, the mayor of the town, standing up in front of the town to address issues within the town. Taylor is often a controversial character, always trying to instill new laws and ideas into the town that the town is not interested in. We see the members of the town rebutting Taylor and insisting his idea is crazy. This a small-town culture that is instilled within this small community which almost acts as a large team or organization, working together to ensure their town always holds true to their values and its character.

 

In our textbook A First Look at Communication Theorychapter 19 discusses a theory called Cultural Approach to Organizations or CAO. CAO discusses the idea of culture, and how it comes about and what exactly it is. Our textbook defines culture as “webs of significance; systems of shared meaning.” (245)  This definition is admitted by the author to be slightly vague, and goes on to explain additional aspects of culture such as subcultures and ways it can be shown differently in society.  The author of this theory explains how culture comes about and tells us that “we need to concern ourselves not only with the structures of cultural webs, but with the process of their spinning as well.” (244) With this we understand that not only is the culture important, it is equally important to know how that culture has been formed. Through culture we then have cultural performance which are “actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others.” (245) When one performs a culture performance we can see them aligning with one certain culture and the ways in which they fit in. Culture surrounds us every day, whether that be in school, work, friendships, etc. Culture is significant in all of our lives.

 

In the Gilmore Girls episode mentioned above, we see the town acting in reacting in ways that constitute them as being a part of its own culture. The town is in a sense an organization or a team itself. While it is not a corporate organization, there is a culture that has been formed with it and is shown in the way the members of the town react to each other and react to Taylor speaking with them. The cultural performance put on by many of the town members in the Gilmore Girls Clip show their membership within the organization.  When the author of CAO shares with us his definition of culture, he says that there are webs of significance. These webs have been formed over time in Stars Hollow and have formed their town and the culture within it now, giving them shared meaning to town meetings and what it means when they all join together. We see structures of these cultural webs, as mentioned by the author of CAO, and how the town reacts with Taylor as the mayor and the meeting facilitator. All of these things are ways in which culture is prevalent not only in corporate life, but in everyday life as well.

Week 9: A Gilmore E-mail Relationship

Another week, another time to discuss the never-ending uses of theories in our beloved show, Gilmore Girls. In this clip of Gilmore Girls, we see Lorelai and Rory discusses their recent relationship being strictly email. With both of them having unending busy schedules and not being able to get each other on the phone, they have begun emailing. Once Lorelai is able to get in touch with Rory, she addresses what she calls their “email relationship” and her feelings and opinions on it. Lorelai mentions that verbs must be used in their emails in order for them to be informational and her and Rory banter about information that was mentioned or not mentioned. With email being so common in our world today, we see theories such as social information processing theory play out daily as exemplified in Gilmore Girls.

 

Our textbook “A First Look at Communication Theory” provides us with in depth information on social information processing theory or SIP. SIP is a theory that plays off of theories such as social penetration theory and uncertainty reduction theory. The author of social information processing theory “initially developed SIP to explain how people form relationships across the communication technologies…such as email.” (121) This theory created by Walther discusses how relationships can be formed and kept through technologies such as email and text message. This theory describes a theory where a recent friend moves out of the country and while one may think that it would be difficult to grow in this relationship, Walther says that “relationships grow only to the extent that parties first gain information about each other and use that information to form interpersonal impressions of who they are.” (123) The theory claims that regardless of online or in person communication, the relationship can be active regardless, because of the interchangeability of verbal and non-verbal cues. SIP “at its heart…recognizes that the information we receive depends on the communication medium were using.” (123) This is in conjunction with the time that is allowed in the exchange of communication as well as verbal cues used.

 

In the Gilmore Girls episode attached, we see Lorelai and Rory working through the issues and ideas of social information processing theory. While they are communicating in email, they still feel as though their relationship is active because of the communication. While Lorelai states that she wants more out of the email relationship, she does not believe that it can be affective at times. Her argument is that she would like the use of more verbs and for Rory to be more descriptive of things going on in her life. Their email relationship, as Lorelai would call it, is being formed and according to social processing theory has every aspect to thrive, if done correctly. Lorelai feels a lack of Rory’s verbal cues throughout their email conversations, which social information processing theorydeems to be important, and through that Lorelai is able to realize that is what’s missing. Lorelai and Rory have formed a steady and strong relationship and are able to continue this through a different medium by using the information of their previous knowledge of one another to creative connectedness.

Week 8 Blog: A Gilmore Tradition

This week, we find yet another episode of Gilmore Girl’s being applicable to our lives and the topic we will soon discuss. In this clip of Gilmore Girls, Rory and her grandparents Richard and Emily, along with Rory’s mother Lorelai take a trip to the infamous Harvard vs. Yale football game. Rory, a current Yale student, along with her grandparents Richard who is a Yale alumnus, and Emily who spent time at Yale with Richard, bring Lorelai to engage in Yale traditions. The four engage in Yale rituals like making a toast to the Yale mascot “Dan” as well as Richard encouraging a Yale traditional chant with the other students around him, each engaging in the known cultural performance. Lorelai and Rory are stunned at the way the others engage with Richard and the meaning placed upon the toast to their mascot. Through this, Rory and Lorelai get a feel for what it means to be a part of the Yale culture. Rory getting to experience it as a current student, embedded in the culture, as well as Lorelai experiencing it from the outside looking in.

In our textbook “A First Look at Communication Theory” we are introduced to a theory called Cultural Approach to Organizations. The authors of this theory are concerned with the ways in which culture “not only with the structures of cultural webs, but with the process of their spinning as well.” (Geertz, 244) This theory looks at how we form culture and the ways in which we analyze it. This theory defines culture as “webs of significance; systems of shared meaning.” Within culture, ethnographers are assigned to go out and discover this culture in depth. The definition of ethnography states that it is “…discovering who people within a culture think they are, what they think they are doing, and what end they think they are doing it.” (245)  With this, we see things arise from it such as cultural performance and rituals, both important aspects to this theory. Cultural performances are “actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others…” (245) This theory also states that rituals, “texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life transitions.” (250) All of these things are ideas that build the foundation of the Cultural Approach to Organizations.

The Gilmore Girls episode mentioned in the first paragraph has multiple elements of Cultural Approach to Organizationstheory embedded within it. We see rituals prevalent through the toast to the Yale Mascot “Dan” and the cheer that was embraced by many other Yale students. Universities are a great example of the way culture is a web and how it evolves and spins over time. The cultural performance that is embraced by the student body at Yale is one that has evolved over time, and is shown in many ways, in this episode specifically through the chant. Not only does everyone know the words to this chant, they understand what the language behind it is talking about. We also see how culture is formed by looking from Lorelai’s point of view, who in this circumstance, is an outsider. She was not a student at Yale and does not understand the lingo, cultural performances or rituals that have the others understand, which follows the idea of how culture is made in organizations. The culture that has been built up has been done overtime through a shared understanding of meaning. Yale University culture that is known among students that through metaphors, rituals, and culture is an example of how Cultural Approach to Organizations is shown in this episode clip.

Week 7: A Gilmore Friend

Let’s start this week off by introducing you to a new character in the beloved show, Gilmore Girls. Rory is a student at Yale University. She is thriving in many things, one of those being her involvement in the Yale Daily Newspaper at her university. Rory’s classmate Paris Geller is one she can’t seem to leave behind. Paris is an assertive, slightly aggressive, over the top girl who’s never had a lot of friends, but has somehow kept Rory around. Paris gets the job as the head editor at the daily news, and because she’s Paris, she lays down the law to her fellow classmates who work at the paper. In this short clip of Gilmore Girls, Paris is addressing those at the paper in a way only Paris can. She wants the environment to be serious. No fun, no play, no debate; just business. As Paris begins her journey as editor, she is harsh on the others at the paper and soon earns herself a bad reputation. As time goes on, Paris gets booted from her position as editor as she stopped assigning jobs to anyone else involved. Paris believed she was doing what was best for the paper, but this was not the way to go about having a position of the power at the newspaper.

 

Our textbook, A First Look at Communication Theory, discusses Communicative Constitution of Organizations, which is a theory that believes “persons-in-conversation co-construct their social worlds and in this case, those worlds are organizations.” (255) To unpack what this theory is according to the authors, let’s first start with the name. In this case, constitution, is defined as “communication that calls organization into being.”  (256)  One theorist solely defines COO as the definition of constitution. To best describe this theory, the authors of Communicative Constitution of Organizations, or COO, came up with four flows to best describe the interworking’s of this theory and what it means to us in our everyday lives. A flow is defined in our textbook as “circulation fields of messages that constitute organization.” (257) The four flows are intended to look at “a member of an organization, how…they structure their working relationships, how they coordinate their work, and how the organization positions itself with other people and organizations.” (257) The first flow introduced by the authors is membership negotiation. This flow looks specifically at who is considered a member and how they are considered as such. This could be through the language they use that associate them with a group or symbolic items they have they assure they have membership. The second flow is self-structuring. This is the “communication that shapes the relationships among an organization.” (258) Next we have activity coordination, which is all about the communication that is used to reach and work toward a goal in an organization and how this is done. Lastly, is institutional positional. This is how organizations address and regard other people and other organizations they come across and have to work with. These four flows lay a baseline for COO.

 

In the Gilmore girls clip, Paris is harsh, and addresses the newspaper as a whole. She defines her membership immediately by speaking with them about only things they would understand. There is no doubt that this is a well-formed organization but Paris takes it just a little off track. When applying COO to this episode of Gilmore girls, and the way Paris handles the Daily Newspaper, we see a poor example of COO and ways that this theory would most likely say not to act. Through her first conversation with the members of this organization we see her fail at building a cordial self- structuring relationship with others. She does not introduce a good way of activity coordination that promotes teamwork and a goal driven environment. And she surely does not promote institutional positioning in a positive way. Her use of constitution called this organization into being in a poor way. While COO is certainly still applicable, this would be an example of “how not” to build a strong organizational relationship using COO’s four flows.

Open Blog Exam 1: A Gilmore Vs. A Gilmore

This week, I would like to discuss a new Gilmore relationship that has not yet been introduced. That is the relationship between the independent Lorelai, and her mother, Emily Gilmore. Lorelai have never quite been on the same page. Not in only in terms of their mother daughter relationship, but in terms of how they each choose to live their lives, how Lorelai was raised vs. how Lorelai has chosen to raise Rory, as well as how they view the world. Emily Gilmore and her husband Richard are well off, and live a life that Lorelai chose to remove herself from when she got pregnant with Rory. In this episode of Gilmore girls, we see Lorelai and Emily arguing about the recent news of Lorelai’s engagement. (Please fast forward to minute 3:00 and watch through minute 4:00) She lashes out at her mother wondering why she is not capable of being happy for her, even in the moment she informed her mother she would be getting married. I believe this conversation is a very good representation of what their relationship looks like. Constantly a battle of how one views something opposed to how the other views it, and really goes to show the conversations and communication that has formed their relationship at this point.

 

In our textbook “A First Look at Communication”, chapter six discusses a theory called Coordinated management of meaning, or CMM. The authors of CMM say the “theory looks directly at the communication process and what it’s doing.” (66) Throughout this chapter they give us four claims that help explain this explanation in greater detail. The first claim the textbook gives us is that “our communication creates our social worlds.” (66) much of this has to do with communication perspective. The authors tell us that communication perspective is “an ongoing focus on how communication makes our social worlds.” (67) Through communication perspective we find that our  “selves, relationships, organizations, communities, and cultures are the “stuff”” that leads to creating the social world mentioned. (67). This claim also forms the idea that conversations form people, people do not form conversations. While the theory encompasses three other claims that are important in understanding the entire aspect of CMM, the first claim is vital in understanding the base of what this theory is made of.

 

As we saw in our Gilmore Girls clip, Lorelai and Emily have not always been the best of communicators. Their relationship is filled with constant misunderstandings of each other and the language used. I see the first claim of CMM being prevalent in their relationship. While Emily will always be Lorelai’s mother, their relationship is not one that is typically sought after. I see the communication perspective playing a large role in their adult life and the way they now interact. Because of lifelong communication issues being aggressive, not emotionally satisfying, and not necessarily warm and fuzzy, we now see how this has formed the social world that they live in with each other. Their conversations have formed who they are as people when they are around each other. While they both are people with things to offer to the world and to each other, it is not themselves as human beings that form their conversations in their adult life. As the book also mentions, “persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create.” (67) Lorelai’s social reality of her relationship with her mother and who her mother is as a person has been co-constructed with her through conversation to form the relationship they participate in. In a relationship such as this, it is hard not to recognize the role it can play in our relationships that ha