Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 8

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue VIII Version I 19 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A Locating Media in Cultural Theories Second, the first reason is emphasized by the novelty of the notion, although locutions that act as illocution or perlocution actually prescribe the way in which the communication assumes the role of producing effects. Third, as a form of writing in the general sense of t he term, the performative cannot be explicated by reference to any substantive, semantic value, and in this sense, it differs from a constative. Fourth, the difference from the normative role of utterances manifests itself in the need to distance the performative from the question of the truth value, so that the analysis on force is prioritized . With these four reasons, “Austin has shattered the concept of communication as a purely semiotic, linguistic, or symbolic concept.” 24 However, one detects a shortcoming of speech act theory in applying its original insights to media in the absence of methods with which to explore the mechanisms of the force that underlies illocutions. In his discussion about the performatives with relative degrees of subsumption to predetermined rules, Austin suggests the possibility of historic mutation of performatives, but the topic has not been explored sufficiently. 25 Nonetheless, as the history of media reveals, media practices generate illocutionary mediatization as a form of act, influencing the daily practices of recipients. Certain types of performatives are undoubtedly endogenous in media. Although media practices are normally seen as a form of communicative process, the effects of saying something therein are not merely referential. Just as confession in the medieval ch urch involved disclosure of internal self, printing did not simply convey messages; contrary to the tendency in media studies to cling to the message of media, media actually ‘mould’ (Hepp) the ways in which subjects reflect their way of doing things and interact with others. Indeed, media have affected the way in which imagined communities were conceived. Even though the deeds of print capitalism have been captured in terms of shared contents of media, the actual impacts derived from a mechanism are unique to respective eras, often with considerable forces legitimizing the media’s performance. There is a paucity of methodological tools available to illuminate the process that would lead to the performativity of media, but the introduction of performatives into media research provides the promise of liberating our inquiry from the pursuit of referentiality based on the premediated logic of representation. 26 24 Derrida, ibid., p. 13. 25 Austin, ibid., p. 66. 26 Karin Wahl-Jorgensen writes, “Research on how emotionality is constructed and embedded in journalistic text has contributed methodological tools and conceptual insights.”, in Emotions, Media and Politics , 2019, p.14. Needless to say, the performativity of journalistic texts does not have to be limited to emotionality. b) Detecting the acts of media: How to do things with writing? Media studies have not given attention to the speech act theory to face issues that are crucial for understanding the ways in which media influence culture. Lack of interest can be ascribed to the assignment of agency on the role of an actor: in the definition of the concept, an utterance demands the presence of the speaker with no spatial or temporal hiatus, whereas media make the presence of the agent irrelevant for successful emission of a message. Media intervene into speech practice and reformulate the fabric of time/space of a speech event. Nevertheless, Derrida’s argument shows that speech act theory, if recomposed by the notion of writing, promises advantages in methodological terms over the theories proposed by Hepp. The lack of space makes it difficult to substantiate the claim, but I hope that a brief examination of the characteristics of illocutionary acts as Austin defined them will be of some help. A short schematic enumeration involves (1) the non-referential value of speech acts, (2) the autonomy of illocution with regard the intention of an actor, and (3) the historical mutation of illocutions with regard to their perlocutionary force. (1) Non-referential aspects of illocutions Embedded in media practice, the iterability of a speech act has been given insufficient attention in media studies. This omission arises from the unfortunate outcome of debates on the issue between Derrida and Searle; it has not been taken up as a substantive issue with concrete implications to empirical research. However, in certain media genres, illocutions tendentiously acquire far more potent perlocutionary effects than in the normative settings. If not recited in a written text, a speech act in media can retain the immediacy of the agent, attaining a tempo-spatial transcendence. Media thus abound with performative acts that mutate seemingly innocuous statements in highly regimented institutional orders of things. Critique of media has tendentiously concerned itself with the contents of media. However, the theory of speech acts is not concerned with the truth value of the contents of the literary locution: this implies the significance of the illocutionary effects apart from the semantic value at the locutionary level. While the non- semiotic approach to media based on practice-oriented reception partially resolved the question of meaning, it had to confront the question of the subjectivity of recipients. As we have seen, the media research that Hepp formulates promises to solve the conundrum, but without any measure to gauge the effects of media practices, the notion of the act of media remains largely metaphoric. When discussed against the relocation of original acts of saying through media, the notion of iterability radicalizes our perception of communications.