COMS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Performative Utterance

• School: McGill University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 200
• Professor: Christopher Gutierrez

Document Summary

Perec: infra-ordinary - the things that take up our time that we don"t really take note of. Complains that the media only talks about the extra-ordinary . Trains only exist when they are derailed . Perec is interested in everyday life and how we communicate. What"s scandalous isn"t the pit explosion, it"s working in coal mines . Media = main means of mass communication (especially tv, radio, newspapers, internet) regarded collectively. Four de nitions of medium: an agency or means of doing something. A means by which something is communicated or expressed. When you communicate something it has effects/changes things. E. g. marriage union (performative utterance = words alter actions/symbols: the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses or a force acts on objects at a distance. The substance in which an organism lives or is cultured. Humans exist within a particular medium: a particular form of storage for digitized information, such as magnetic tape of discs.