Personality Tests

Personality tests help people find their strengths, work on their weaknesses, come together as a unit, or even help find the right career choice for an individual. The Keirsey Temperament Personality test or the KTS-II (Keirsey Temperament Sorter II) is a test designed and distributed by Keirsey and can be found at the Keirsey site and a free personality test is given at the site.

This tool has become a key factor in organizations finding the right place for the right person. The best thing a business can do is maximize their top assets, and this test is one way that has shown pretty good results. Some specific uses for the tests are: navigating and resolving conflict, building high performance teams; selecting, retaining, and developing the best. These are just some of the uses, the rest can be found and expanded upon here.

There are four types of temperaments from the test; the Guardians, the Idealists, the Rationals and the Artisan. The two things, concrete vs. abstract and utilitarian vs. cooperative. As such they combine to create the four different temperaments. A quick example is the Rationals which I fell in are abstract utilitarians. The find how the rest of the temperaments work click on this link here.

Within those four are four more subcategories also found in the previous link. For example I received the Rational Field-marshal. Each of the terms is defined for you also, to give you a quick example the field marshal says:

"considered to be the "leaders of leaders" because they can see the full scope of a large project or enterprise and quickly identify the resources and tasks needed for success. As a Fieldmarshal, you think in strategic terms and you are able to mobilize and coordinate all of the resources needed to complete a project, and communicate the vision and plan to make it happen. You can quickly create and delegate tasks to others and easily manage entire projects."

The test is a ton of fun to take and it above all else is a great tool for organizations to run smoothly and for individuals trying to find and refine their place. Again if your interested in the KTS-II head here. You'll be happy you did. 

Using Theoretical Approaches to Become a Valuable Asset

Life's mythologies states that I will go to school learn skills and build a set of core skills to get a job. The true skill I've gained from school is understanding how to use the theoretical tools to find and understand structures. These tools are Hermeneutics or the study of interpretation and semiotics or the study of signs. These are two prime approaches among many others that I find useful to my future success.

Most situations will call for known knowledge from courses such as what techniques are used in the industry and what has proven successful. These approaches stated earlier are what will help me conquer all situations. These are used to understand structures and with that knowledge any situation can be dealt with.

Hermeneutics or how we interpret things become useful. Hermeneutics has expand from just literature in the new form of today's media. So hermeneutics is a good way to start understanding the structure of the situation or a message. The Nixon-Kennedy debate showed this change in interpretation by image overtaking oral messages. So next we take this structure of we started by interpretation and move into the semiotics.

Using signs we can develop very intricate meanings behind the face value of a message. Imagery is everything in today's media. So the semiotics help feed into the preexisting structure. With every product or message or image we know that the purpose is to reach an audience and illicit a response positive to the organizations goal. Semiotics is going to be the means by which the several layers of messages and there signifier. These layers of a meaning appear due to sign having its face value and also being the signifier for the signified inner meaning. In the ad below the use of semiotics is shown with the signifier and signified.

Signifier: Tiger Woods, Signifies: Success, Smooth, Golf

The understanding of these approaches are key when identifying and working with the structure of the situation to produce results.

Simply put, structures are necessary to understand how to fix and conquer any problem that arises. Im constantly practicing my use of these approaches to continue making myself a more invaluable asset to future employers.

Deeper Understanding in Genre

Genre is the term used in media related fields in place of categories. While at the very core of the word they are categories they are much more in depth in having the structure of each category behind the word. Before learning anything about how genre works I think it is first important to truly understand exactly what a genre is.

Genre by definition according to Websters dictionary is "a category of artistic, musical or literacy composition characterized by a particular style, form or content." For the sake of clarifying the definition further films are a part of these. We shall use this to start our journey of understand what a genre is.

From the definition we can see how category is used with genre. Rock and roll may share common backgrounds with hip hop but they are classified as different categories of music which just from listening we can tell a difference. What I want to point out with this blog is that it's also point to the difference in structures that make up different forms of media. All movies have the basic three step process of beginning middle and end. It's the various use of this overall structure treated with a more refined structure that differentiates the genres. A romantic film will end in love while a thriller may end in retribution. To get to these points we use different structures within an overarching one that falls into all movies and different forms of media.

A good visual map for what all genre structures themselves follow is this:

To keep this short, sweet and to the point genre are simply categories but I strongly believe that there is equal importance in understanding that structures are a part of genre. And a side note genres are also useful to help find what you like and explore more types of media that are like it.

Mythologies VS. Ideologies

MYTHOLOGIES VS. IDEOLOGIES

Mythologies are often misunderstood as just stories of the ancient Greek culture, but they span much larger than those stories. Myths are a part of our everyday lives, they are structures that we live by and we may not even recognize them. The definition of a mythology as defined by the field of communications is "a system of communication, that it is a message cannot be possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form.” (Roland Barthes) The problem that we run into is now distinguishing between myth and ideology. Ideology is often a misused term that people put in place of myth. The term ideology holds equal significance myths are much larger that ideologies. Ideologies are defined as "a set of ideas that constitute one’s goals, expectations, and actions." Which both definitions we can begin to decipher the significance and difference of both.

Ideology claims its roots from the word idea, and is more of a rigid structure than anything else.  Using Mythologies it would observe the structure of the story behind the end product. An example of a structure is finding companionship. The story that we all follow in getting to that point is finding someone that interests you, moving on to dating, and eventually over time get married, and have a family. That is the common myth behind finding love and companionship that people use throughout their life.

Good examples of how Mythologies themselves are used in fields of communications are movies and script writing.

Using this map we can trace most movie plots in all genres.

Now that the basis for how Mythologies are used has been presented we must now understand how Ideologies are used.  It’s easiest to think of a Mythology as the structure surrounding an ideology. Marx becomes a big player in the way we use ideologies in today’s society. Marx' theories play on the ideology of culture and how to use them. Marx often does not get the correct representation of his work due to attributing to the basis for the creation of communism.

Lets take a glass of orange juice for example.  The orange juice itself is an ideology, while the mythology in the photograph would be the glass surrounding the orang juice. Why is this? The orange juice is the ideology due to its symbol of good health and good taste. But the Mythology is the glass around it that makes that ideology possible.

These ideas both work together to steer communication is certain directions. Just as the map earlier was shown for the basic structure of all movies most of what the communication field produces to appeal to the masses use the same structures that apply to many things. Ideologies go hand in hand with these structures that narrate our lives and what we witness by creating the moral values and goals that the structures lead to.  If you have an ideology of safety the myth in the ad is the helmet demonstrating the structure followed to achieve this idea of safety. To show how these are used in ads in today we’ll take a quick look at an ad.

The Versace ad wants to appeal to the idea of success and comfort in luxury making it the ideology. The Myth is that wearing Versace will help you achieve this idea of success.

One last stop along the way is a final example of how myths are used to understand literature works in history. The Monomyth is a structure used to show how the basis for all stories in mythology(ancient Greeks) will go.

Myths and Ideologies are highly important in steering how communications works and progresses forward. Beyond that understanding the true understanding of Mythologies and how they differ from Ideologies can help understand certain structures of life.

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is in simple words is the study of how we as individuals interpret our world around us. This can work closely with semiotics which is the study of signs. How this works closely is very simply the interpretation of the signs in our world. There of five parts of Hermeneutics that my Comm 403 Media Theory class covered, those five are; natural, normative, scientific, philosophical and depth.

Natural Hermeneutics is the everyday interpretation that we do. We will rarely not reflect on how we interpreted and brake down the central understanding to what we experienced in our multimedia lives. A clear example to look into is the Nixon/Kennedy debate Text as an art becomes a part of Hermeneutics as Normative Hermeneutics. In the Normative section we looked at "castes" of individuals in our society that are specialists in the interpretation of text. Some examples given were; priests, lawyers and judges. Running with one of the examples a lawyer, their specific job is to interpret laws which are in written text and use the knowledge at a greater understanding to win cases. A article of work I found which surprisingly had no author attached to the document has a statement that helps understand the importance of Normative Hermeneutics. "The inevitable result is some degree of alienation, as texts speak to a situation and an audience that no longer exists." (Unknown, 1).

Moving forward is scientific Hermeneutics which is the foundation of human or historical sciences. The goal of most science experiments can't be realized until you interpret results and findings which is one of the key steps in the scientific process. We take our data and are able to better interpret findings that are recorded to create a much more in depth understanding. Depth Hermeneutics is the "Hermeneutics of suspicion." It's basically interpreting text as something beyond its face value. A good blog post to look at is one about that gives an example with Obama and Depth Hermeneutics.

Finally we come to Philosophical Hermeneutics which basically states interpreting is not what we do but in fact we are the interpreters. Philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey expanded on hermeneutics saying that we will make unique interpretations for ourselves.

Intro to Understanding

A fresh semester is underway and the start of media studies has begun. Starting off this course I took a look at the syllabus and carefully read and dissect it. The syllabus doesn't give the quick overview that other do and definitely doesn't leave any grey areas in the course. The document is broken down into five chapters with each outlining what's expected, why it's expected, and how to start your journey to accomplish the goals of the course.
In the first chapter I liked how the course is broken down into nine objectives. Out of these nine two of them really stood out to me, semiotics or the study or signs, and hermeneutics or the study of interpretation. The second chapter not only does it do a good job of establishing good tactics for successful blogs but it also touched on podcasts which I believe are great tools like blogs. Up to this point the syllabus presented the objectives and a deeper understanding of a great tool to use to create written content to use later in life. The third chapter focuses on critical thinking and new technology which I found to be a breath of fresh air with how thorough the document was in what the departments expectations are for the use of technology and creating a skill set that can be used to solve problems through analytical skills etc. In the second to last chapter the visions and values of the course are examined which helps understand how the department is going to help myself and other students get ready for the job market and succeed after life. In the final chapter "LEAP" is discussed which is shepherds version of the "no child left behind act." Reading about "LEAP" was interesting seeing the various goals ranging from quantitative literacy to collaboration/teamwork.
This syllabus was awesome, it was very well though out and thorough. It not just raised what was expected of but what skills will be worked on to help one accomplish these things.
The syllabus can be found at profkevingwilliams.com in his Comm 403 syllabus tab.