Audiences and social and cultural circumstance

Overview

Interpretive community, reading that changes with the audience's circumstances and cultural proximity.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Why do two audiences interpret the same product differently?

   Model answer

   Interpretation draws on knowledge, values and experience, and those differ by culture, generation, class and personal history.

2. 2

   What is meant by an interpretive community?

   Model answer

   A group whose shared background and shared discussion produce broadly similar readings of the same material.

3. 3

   How does the passage of time change how a product is read?

   Model answer

   Later audiences bring assumptions the product did not anticipate, so what was unremarkable can become the most visible thing about it.

4. 4

   Give an example of a reading that changes with the audience's circumstances.

   Model answer

   A drama about policing is read very differently by audiences whose own dealings with the police have been different.

5. 5

   How does language affect the reception of an imported product?

   Model answer

   Subtitling and dubbing both alter what reaches the audience, and jokes, register and regional speech survive translation poorly.

6. 6

   Why does a product's humour travel worse than its plot?

   Model answer

   Humour depends on shared reference and on timing in a particular language, both of which are lost when either changes.

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