Test 5

Making, Use and Misuse of Symbols


1. _____________ indicate the presence of an event, feeling or object.



2. A ____________ is something that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention.



3. English is one of the more simple languages with fewer than 500,000 words.

4. Language is the most widely used type of symbol.

5. Studying a persuader’s use of symbols is critical because the results can help us ______ .




6. Making and using symbols is a creative and ego involving act.

7. Referring to the deaths of Afghani and Iraqi civilians in operations Rolling Thunder and Enduring Freedom as “collateral damage” is an example of _________ .


8. English is the first language of ___________ countries.



9. A scull and crossbones on a bottle is an example of what?



10. “What a delightful time I shall have in my garden”, Hans said and he went to work at once. If by “delightful” we mean “very pleasant”, what kind of meaning is that?



11. In order to understand the total meaning of a religious ceremony, one would have to experience the entire thing. In other words, they would have to receive the _____________ .



12. ___________ is/are usually made up of sequential, smaller bits of meaning.



13. An official in the Washington City Council and aide to the African American mayor used the word “niggardly”. The official was removed as some people were offended though the dictionary definition of the word is “unwilling to give, spend or share… stingy, scanty or meager”.



14. Which of the following is NOT an example of an extensional device?



15. “University of Oklahoma students are conservative, cold, and aloof … among other things”. What extensional device was just made use of?



16. For the general semanticists, the real problems in communication occur when people act as if their maps accurately describe the territory, thus turning the map into the territory.

17. The result of using extensional devices is to make the maps in our heads more closely resemble the territory to which we are referring.

18. _____________ is similar to Aristotle’s term “common ground”.



19. According to Burke the development of identification occurs through the linguistic sharing of substances.

20. ____________ defined persuasion as “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols”.



21. To K. Burke ½ of all words have emotional shadings and reveal the feelings, attitudes, values and judgments of the user.

22. _____________ are the things to which the signifiers refer.




23. What does it mean when I put my words in quotation marks such as “You are “funny”?



24. According to semiotic approach almost anything (for example, a doctor’s office, a meal, a TV program, etc.) can be a text that has one or more meanings.

25. In a semiotic approach to the study of meaning, we try to read each message from the following perspective: