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[] A priori
This is the starting point of an argument. At every point there must be an assumption, and no argument can proceed fully by argument without some a priori position.
[] Abstract Expressionism/ Action painting
Free ue of paint reflecting the artist's instinct. Main person: Jackson Pollock (1912-1956).
[] ABX model of communication
A triangle where A and B are communicators and X is the social context. The three should be in equilibrium and adjust to change in any of the three. The important point then is the inclusion of the environment around and the psychological balance of the two people. Main person: T. H. Newcomb (model introduced 1953)
[] Acceleration factor
Accelerated transport and electronic communications are making the world a global village. The faster pace of change in Internet and email and other electronic communications media could make transport somewhat redundant, with changes in working patterns and ways of contact. Main person: Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
[] Accommodation with food and drink
A room with no meals is called the European Plan (EP). Bed and breakfast gives a place for the night with breakfast in the morning, whereas a boarding house will provide other meals too. A hotel garni on the continent will provide bed and breakfast but only light refreshment otherwise. A guest house is small private hotel-like accommodation providing food and drinks too, just like a pension (pron. paunshion - French) does abroad. En pension means full board, just like the American Plan (AP) whereas demi-pension offers just one meal a day on a half board hotel tariff. A botel or boatel is either a hotel on a permanently moored ship or a hotel or motel for marina users. Motels/ motor hotels/ motor lodges are hotels which give easy access and parking for cars and serve the driving traveller. Hotels provide a full or near full range of accommodation services and may be classified according to facilities and comfort. Registration of hotels has planning, health and safety and fire impact as well as a possible grading for standards. A bothy or bothie is nothing more than basic shelter for walkers in Scotland.
[] Acculturation/ Accommodation/ Assimilation
Visitors and resident/ host communities acquire what were differences from each other.
[] Acronym
Word made from the first letters of an organisation, phrase or other words in a collection.
[] Action research
Research that intends social change. The researcher stops the method or pretence of invisibility and is involved.
[] Action theory/ Action frame of reference
Related to symbolic interactionism. For Weber's action theory, action was concerned with its meaningfulness in its causal origins. There is traditional action (done because it always was), affectual (to give an emotion), zweckrational (comparing means to an end and the benefit of the end) and wertrational (the goal in itself is the important aim, not the means).The hermeneutic approach to action theory takes the meaning element further, where means to an end are intented and reflected upon according to streams of experience (Schutz) leading to action; and when someone else's stream of experience is incorporated, then there is social action. Under a value system, in an action frame of reference, interaction leads to adjustments and expectations become established which lead to the creation of norms of behaviour (Parsons). Parsons approach is a system which reduces the actual role of the actor, but in general the greater the meaning approach the less important is social structure for analysis.
[] Actuality
Material on the media gathered from real life, as pioneered in the 1930's.
[] Admass
A harmful situation for the culture of persistent advertising, marketing and publicity. Main person: J. B. Priestley.
[] Ad valorem
Means "according to the value". A tax based on a proportion of the price, as with Value Added Tax.
[] Add on fare
Making a through fare from two fares of planes when that through route is not published.
[] Adjoining rooms
Rooms next to each other but no direct access between them.
[] Advance Purchase Extension (APEX)
Reduced fare offered on selective ordinary commercial journeys where the lower price comes about through advanced fare booking and restrictions on cancelling and return times.
[] Advertising
Paid space or time intended to persuade. This is different from publicity, which brings matters to attention, sales promotion which uses devices to directly boost sales, or the point of sale merchandising like displays, packaging, sampling and special offers. Above-the-line advertising is commission paid to advertising agencies who do the work. Below-the-line advertising is advertising outside paying a commission, eg the use of direct mail and merchandising.
[] Aesthetic of poverty
This is where the wealthy, in class conscious times (eg not in 1980's which were times of visible wealth), dress down, as they did in the 1960's and 1970's when socialism and equality were important.
[] Affective
A domain of learning, and area of brain and behaviour responses. This relates to the emotions.
Media advertising often works on the affective (emotional, beliefs, attitudes) responses as a manipulation of acceptance. This is also the area where educators try to create model citizens or, more minimally, positive attitudes to learning. Broadcast news is often analysed for the way it generates for and against emotional responses by time spent and comment - for example, how often are currency rates quoted but not wage rates, how much is the news about Northern Ireland always negative?
[] After sales service
Arranged by the seller or agent, this is repair and maintenance cover, or advice, and advice and information (particularly with tourist services).
[] Agency/ Agency appointment
Appointments are given by principals to sell their services. Appointments may also be given by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to hold air ticket stocks of IATA members with a validation stamp and to receive commission.
[] Agit prop
Propagandising in general, with actual origins in The Department of Agitation and Propaganda created in 1920 in the Soviet Union.
[] AIDA
The customer's response to effective advertising. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Main person: E. K. Strong.
[] Aircraft
Aircraft fly! Aircraft are grounded when there are mechanical faults to the aircraft itself or the class of aircraft, weather is bad or workers are on strike. Certain bodies as well as carriers have the right to ground aircraft - eg Civil Aviation Authority. Aircraft may be leased to a carrier - a dry lease is the aircraft only and a wet lease includes the crew. A regular or narrow body aircraft has propulsion by engines of less than 30000 pounds per engine and has a fuselage diameter of less than 200 inches (eg Boeing 707, 727); but wide body aircraft or jumbo jets are over these figures (eg Boeing 747, 767). Supersonic aircraft fly at over the speed of sound (741 miles per hour at sea level) and the rest are subsonic.
[] Alienation/ Anomie
Being alienated from value in work due to the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and forcing workers to sell their labour (Marxism). Brecht also referred to an alienation effect to root out hidden ideological forces by defamiliarisation (especially in Epic theatre). Durkheim has anomie (breakdown of collective norms governing social action restraining never ending human desires) and Merton looked at deviant behaviour when goals are emphasised but not the means, so that people use all kinds of criminal or deviant means to acheive these goals. Kornhauser uses the term alienation to suggest that the decline in community and extended family increases the desire for more extreme solutions to social ills. Alienation and anomie affects people's susceptibility to extremes in communication.
[] All in
Where everything is included in the price, eg airfares and hotels, meals, rental car.
[] Allegory
Use of characters, settings or plots into a narrative to deal with historical, political or ethical themes, usually to hide the explicit message from censoring authorities (but the audience gets the message) or because it fleshes out and makes comprehensible an otherwise difficult theme. It is, also, a technique of propoganda.
[] Allotment
A number of rooms and seats for travel are allocated to a tour operator who has the task of selling them or releasing them back.
A separate area for home gardening vegetables.
[] Alphanumeric
Combination of letters and numbers. In a spreadsheet, say, it means text, something written but not calculated.
[] Alternative tourism/ Appropriate tourism
Minority interest and ethical tourism that seeks to be environmentally positive and culturally sensitive. It is the opposite of mass tourism.
[] Anarchist cinema
Attacks against authority and inequality in 1930s cinema. Main person: Jean Vigo (1905-1934) who inspired the film If by Lindsay Anderson.
[] Anchorage
Adding a written caption to a photograph to reduce and focus down its potential meanings particularly in the news and information media. main person: Roland Barthes.
[] Anecdote
An additional short narrative to highlight an issue, usually by drawing on emotion. It can have great imact.
[] Animator/ Animateur
Entertainments officer, or person that keeps organises to keep tourists interested and active.
[] Anti-novel
Literature which defies the conventions of the novel: plot, characters, sequence, and further disturbing devices to a smooth reading. Tristram Shandy was the first "postmodern" novel, in this sense.
[] Apache silence
Responding to uncertainty and unpredictability by being silent. For some, silence is the best option when faced with a predicament that seemingly has no solution. The Apaches used silence for meeting strangers, receiving children from their long journey away, in courting and marking others' grief. It is an example of non-verbal communication.
[] Archaeology
Hidden discourses in Western society. The fact that some histories are suppressed (eg women, gays) shows that Western society is based on power and domination. After Michael Foucault.
Of course archaeology is also the study of ancient and not so ancient history through the finding, identifying and categorising of artefacts.
[] Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Recognised area of scenic beauty with planning restrictions and input from statutory bodies, but not large enough to be a National Park.
[] Argument
A stage by stage narrative construction based on deduction or induction, starting with some a priori position and then working through towards a conclusion. A valid argument does this if each stage follows on from the previous stage and the conclusion is sufficiently demonstrated.
[] Art nouveau
1890 to 1910 new art of many curves. Main persons: William Morris and Aubrey Beardsley.
[] Art trouvé
Use of everyday found natural or abandoned human-made objects in art. Affected the Cubists, Surrealists and Dadaists, and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1964) attacked the concept of fine art by use of the everyday, although in postmodern times the exhibits of the everyday (including his) has become part of fine art.
[] Assign
When a meaning is given to a sign and is understood but the origin of why the meaning is given is unknown, in other words the process of being a sign and the signified works but the actual signifier is uncertain.
[] Athens Convention
Limited liabilitty for shipping regarding loss or damage to luggage and even passenger deaith
[] Audience/ Audience differentiation
A target group for advertising. An audeince can be classified according to socio-economic make up. More and more television realises that audiences are specialised and selective, that the quality of the programme for that audience matters than just bringing in the millions. Advertising can then be targeted.
[] Authenticity
A general measurement of being real rather than constructed and fictional (even fake), and is applied in tourism to the nature of attractions relating to heritage and historical events.
[] Automatism
Spontaneously produced art trying to get beyond the control of the mind and getting away from demands of tradition.
[] Avant-garde
Different relative to the time and breaking tradition and received boundaries of taste, usually by a few. The notion started in the middle of the nineteenth century.
[] Average room rate
Average daily rate paid for hotel, guest house and bed and breakfast rooms. The average room rate is room sales (net of taxes and service charges) divided by occupied rooms. The average rate per guest is room sales divided by the number of guests. These measure how well establishments are doing.
[] Back to back
Continuous use, so that as soon as a room is vacated the room is occupied, or a plane or train drops passengers off and then prepares to accept the next load as part of the return trip.
[] Backward pricing
Setting the price according to competition and customer requirements, and then fitting the service level and the costs incurred to match.
[] Baggage allowance
The number of items and weight allowed free on an aircraft, which has been 30kg for first class passengers and 20kg for everyone else.
[] Balance of Payments
An account of trade in and our of the country. Exports (out) and imports (in) are divided into visibles and invisibles on the current account (expenditure). Services are invisible and have usually come in at a profit. Note that tourists going abroad are imports, and tourists to Britain are exports. A high pound just as with other trade makes imports more likely as they become relatively cheaper; similarly a falling pound makes imports less likely as the relative price rise chokes off demand and more people visit (exports). International travel spnding is treated as a separate invisible items. The capital account concerns investment, grants and loans.
[] Bandwidth
How much data can be carried along a line by capacity, increasingly important for the Internet.
[] Bardic television
Television is the contemporary bard or minstrel of the past. It is the transmitter of the cultural hegemony and consensus and giving a sense of cultural involvement through watching. Main persons: John Fiske with John Hartley (1978).
[] Bauhaus
Joined art and craft and was interdisciplinary about art, and was industrialisation friendly. Started in Germany it moved to the US in the Nazi period. Main people: the architects Walter Gropius (1868-1957) and Mies van deer Roche (1886-1969).
[] Behaviourism
The discarding of any speculation on internal psychological workings in favour of observable action. This psychological theory has great impact on educational practice where syllabuses, lesson plans, objectives, examination results, assessment based on objectives and further funding are all based on observable results, even though other theories get used in enhancing educational effectiveness. In sociology action gives concrete reality to theory, but meaning is important.
[] Berne Convention
Agreed in 1961 and amended in 1966 this regulates rail travel across continental Europe.
[] Bibliography
List at the end of a chapter, or a book, or a piece of work, of books consulted and other sources, such as online. References are made within text.
[] Bibliotherapy
The use of books of guidance to help with emotional and identity problems, often to gorwing children baffled with their experiences of the world or to the elderly in long-stay medical stiuations.
[] Biomorphic
Natural (non-geometric) shapes in decoration and art, representing the natural world and what lives.
[] Black economy/ black market
Area of the economy that is not declared for taxation. Some of it may involve benefit fraud as well as taxation fraud. Economic activity is crucially unrecorded and relates to private agreements with trust (no legal comebacks!). It is quite prevelant in small business situations which feature heavily in the tourist trade, for example. A customer may connive in being part of the black economy for a discount, or may be unaware of the cash that gets pocketed with no records kept. The black market specifically is the extra-legal area of buying and selling, and in tourism this means currencies as well as other commodities that fall to impact on the balanceofpayments. Estimates of economic activity and balance of payments impact thus have to be made.
[] Body without organs
Forces in society which repress individual creative desire through a sterile effect. Capital has this repressive body (compared with labour which is productive and creative). It's a sort of psychological theory of sociology and related to pyschoanalysis which also forces people to conform too. Rhizomatic structures are to be preferred for creativity especially as we are desiring machines. After Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
[] Bonding
Financial protection purchased from a bonding or insurance concern to protect against loss and business failure. It is required of travel agents and tour operators - protecting principals and consumers. The best known is ABTA bonding scheme (Association of British Travel Agents).
[] Boomerang response
Audience reaction to mass media message which is the opposite of the intended outcome.
[] Bowlderise
Remove offensive text to clean up the final product: this form of acceptability is not just removing bad language but removing subversive messages for mass audiences. Sex and violent messages are often removed, but there is a political implication too.
[] Brand
A product name applied to a good or similar goods and services or diverse set of goods and services. Brand awareness is the recognition of a brand. Brands work because they give recognition to a certain standard and quality (its brand image). This certainty allows price to be slightly higher. When a consumer comes back to that brand again and again, there is brand loyalty.
[] Breakfast
Continental breakfast is bread, toast, rolls, butter, preserves, with tea or cofee, and sometimes this is described as a café complet although this is a mid morning or afternoon snack. English breakfast (Welsh breakfast too) is more, consisting of fruit juice and/ or cereals; bacon, eggs, mushrooms, beans, smoked fish, tomatoes, fried bread in some combination as a main meal; toast, butter/ margarine, marmalade/ jam; tea or coffee.
[] Bridlepath/ bridleway
A way and likely right of way for pedestrians and horse riders
Daylight saving time. Computers with the British regional setting will jump the time forward by an hour according to the setting's data. It extends the evening's light at the cost of the largely unnoticed later rise of the sun in the early morning.
[] Brunch
A meal served in between breakfast and lunch which can be quite convenient in hotels and similar establishments. Origins in the United States.
[] Brussels Convention
1961 states what the obligations and conditions of sea carriers are.
[] Bucket shop/ Discount ticket agency
They gain their tickets on the grey market out of direct control of the official airline industry.
[] Brutalism
Massive, concrete, sharpcornered, abrasive architecture. 1950's on.
[] Bumping
This happens when overbooking on aircraft. Sometimes the first person to check in for the reserved seat is bumped into place but the second person to check in loses the seat and flight. The second person gets denied boarding compensation. Within the European Union failure to give a person the seat and flight results in an immediate cash payment depending on the distance and delay. Sometimes as in the United States passengers who want to be bumped are asked to pay.
[] Business cycle
The rate of economic activity changes. As it grows, pressure builds on resources of labour, capital (and land) and so prices like interest rates (for money borrowing) and wages (for labour) rise. This inflation is evidence of overheating. The result is a slowdown. Confidence rises and falls and can exaggerate effects. For example, reduced interest rates will not restart growth if confidence is low. This is because to grow, economic sectors need to invest and spend, and saving is only as good as a fund by which to invest. Some tertiary industries feel the effects of economic downturns and upturns, even in a magnified manner, and tourism is a good example.
[] Business mix
The number of market segments attracted to any one business service. A hotel, for example, must consider its tourists, conference facilities, travellers, restaurant service for non-residents, its bar trade and so on. A visitor attraction must analyse the various segments who want to use it. A good business mix insures against sectoral downturns and provides greater strategies for future growth.
[] Business travel/ Business tourism
This is management and employee work based use of tourist facilities and those specific for the conference market. Because of the need for comfort, or to impress clients, business tourism is always higher priced but more facilitated.
[] Cabotage
Transport within the nation state. Domestic flights or flights across international air space but between destinations within the sovereign state are included. International agreements do not apply. Cabotage rights exist for an airline of one soveriegn state that carries passengers within another sovereign state.
[] Campaign
A planned and organised exercise with specific objectives and methods. The marketing campaign embraces advertising and promotions in a consistent manner. The military have campaigns and so do budding politicians at elections, and these are all related.
[] Capital gearing
The proportion of fixed interest capital in relation to equity capital, which can either be high or low.
[] Capital intensive
A high use of machinery or automation compared with use of labour. For example, tourism is labour intensive. Capital intensive industries are usually higher skilled and therefore workers have greater responsibility, skill, training, thus scarcity and are higher paid. Labour intensive industries are generally lower paid. However, some technological developments can deskill the workforce, leading to lower pay for many, or a remnant of higher paid people when once there were more lower paid employees.
[] Caravan
A vehicle and accommodation in one. They can be towed (a trailer) or self-propelled (motor caravan). Caravan sites can have caravans which stay and are thus cheap homes easily put into position, or people bring their own to take away when they leave. Caravans are controversial in tourist areas for the extent to which they slow traffic and are difficult or dangerous to overtake.
[] Carnet
A temporary pass allowing duty-free importation, because the item is leaving again. Means: carnet de passage en douanes.
[] Carnival
The parodying of the ruling class and therefore subverting political authority. This can be in literature. After Mikhail Bakhtin.
[] Carrier
A common carrier is available to the public which has legal implications. A private carrier is under no obligation to serve the public. A designated carrier is an airline which operates services between two countries.
Culture also has carriers, in television and radio and literature, the deeper meanings and assumptions of meanings that are built in to presentations of news, selection of images and their contexts, religious liturgies and writings, factual selections, fictional narratives and the arts in general.
[] Carrying capacity
The maximum ability of an area to absorb tourists without damage to the area. It is obviously important for planning an attraction or for analysing an area with established tourism and ongoing growth. Many National Parks are at or beyond carrying capacity and fear environmental decline and quality of life reductions.
[] Cartel
A group of countries and potential competitor countries who meet together to fix prices, organise production and service levels or carve out the market each to one supplier. The effect is to control the whole market and gain attributes of a monopoly - higher profits from scarcity control and pricing.
[] Caveat emptor
Let the buyer beware. This is heavily qualified by consumer protection legislation, and in the case of services the ability to check the standard offered is either limited or non-existent, and so legislative protection and codes of conduct are needed.
[] Census
This is the one survey that does not need a sample - because everyone is involved: and this is the rub, because modern sampling techniques make the exercise of a census somewhat irrelevant. So does the Information Age, when there are vast amounts of information going around about what people are doing. A census need not be reliable. In the 2001 census a question asked if an individual was out of work and if so whether they were actively seeking work. Anyone reading that and knowing then then Department for Emplyoment and Education rules would have filled that in positively according to the allowance they received rather than what they were doing. In other words, questions are still answered according to the perception of what the surveyor wants as a reply rather than what is actually the case. The UK census has been carried out every 10 years since 1801 except for 1941.
[] Centrality
The centrality of a person within a communication setting depends on the number of links one person has compared with the number others have. The more s/he has, the more s/he has centrality. it can be created through the ability to communicate, not just a given position. It means getting more information and having more influence. It also means stopping information, and controlling what goes where.
[] Chambers of Commerce
Voluntary bodies that promote the interests of business people and local economic development.
[] Chaos theory
Through the application of virtual numbers, a strange condition of self same repetition as in fractals. Yet unpredictability means the real world outcome is hard to predict. This is because, as in the fractal, the smallest input has a big impact several stages down the line as in complexity theory. Take a snooker table and a completely repeated arrangment of balls and shots played: the tiniest variation on the first cue hit means that 15 shots later the outcome is utterly unpredictable. Chaos theory therefore guarantees unique outcomes but only in theoretical maths can a controlled number be entered with predictable generated patterns from sufficient computer power.
[] Check in time
The last minute when passengers should report at the aircraft terminal for a flight. The time varies between types of flight and destinations at home or abroad based on the processing required. Check in time for a hotel only matters when a room is reserved and when it should be taken. Check out time is usually more important, due to the need to make a room available and when breakfast stops. Late checking out can result in extra payment, even an extra night because the room is occupied.
[] Chicago convention
1944, that the airspace above a soverign state is within its jurisdiction. Bilateral agreements are required for co-operating on freedoms of the air: overflying without landing; landing for technical requirements; setting down passengers; cargo and mail; taking on passengers, cargo and mail; a national airline taking on and setting down passengers between two other sovereign states.
[] Cinéma vérité/ Catalyst cinema
A very interventionist and participatory form of documentary making in which participants were actively filmed and asked questions, and even filmed commenting on the filmed responses, as much producing situations as observing them. Main person: Jean Rouche.
[] Circulation
Net circulation of newspapers or magazines, that is not counting those unsold and returned. Controlled circulation goes to selected destinations for free, and eveyone who is due to get a copy should.
[] Class
Relationship to the means of production in any society. In cultural terms, the capitalist ruling class seeks to impose its culture on others through superstructure institutions transmitting its ideology and hegemony. Social class is categorised and has influence on marketing and advertising, both in the amount and type.
[] Classifieds/ Classified advertisements
Small adverts which are presented according to grouping. They can be boxed or have limited diagrams and borders. Sometimes they can be bigger than a column but not usually. Payment is by line with presentational extras.
[] Climax order
Relates to putting the best argument in at the best opportunity of a series of points: the climax order is the best point at the last point and the anti-climax order is the best point made first. Which is best?
[] Cliché
A worn out metaphor through over use and lazy misapplication, and relates to developing stereotypes.
[] Cliometrics
This is the trend towards mathematics and statistics as applied to historical data in order to bolster interpretation, although it has gone into decline.
Non verbal communication where clothes worn indicate class, status, beliefs, etc.
[] Club
A membership only institution giving facilities of meals, refreshments, areas to meet and talk, and possibly accommodation. Clubbing however is to a night club, which is generally open to the public and is really a dance hall.
[] Clubs (Airline etc.)
These are paid or free groupings of passengers given special added value privileges because they give regular custom to the airline and pay higher fares. There are some elements of these extra privileges for first class travel in railways -eg some first class only waiting rooms.
[] Cluster analysis
This puts objects of similarity together and objects of difference apart for the sake of analysing market differentiation. This can be somewhat artificial.
[] Cocktail party problem/ Shadowing
Selecting and focussing on one message in a setting of competing messages. The individual is often quite able to follow one message in a presentation of equally audible messages.
[] Codes
Codes are the social dimension of communication which approximates to norms (rules and methods). They can be overt or covert, or additional to formal methods and rules. There are non-verbal related communication codes within communication such as presentational codes (the extras involved in speaking to add meaning, like facial expression and tone of voice) and prosaic codes (pitch of voice affecting meaning in speech), and there are aesthetic codes which give certain meanings in art to the few (art genres) or many (advertising) versed in them, and there are codes that are more overt and formal and act as rules (say broadcasting). Examples are codes of conduct and ethical codes.
Textual codes are also a more mundane matter of abbreviation, such as their heavy use in the travel, tourism industries (eg airlines, airports).
[] Code of conduct/ Code of practice
These are generally voluntary agreements which do, within a trade association, what legislation might have to do.
[] Cognitive
A domain of learning. This is the processing of intellectual information (at whatever level) and teaching strategies focus on reinforcement of information by various active methods of learning and assessment. In the media some issues are editorially chosen over others quite frequently, but in this case information works at the affective level. Also cognitive teaching is often supported with affective attitudes as a means of generating a positive response to learning.
[] Colligation
Bringing together apparently separate events through a general description or causal principle, creating a pattern by association. Industrialisation can associate together different events. Reconstructionist historians seek out realist causes and therefore the meanings of historical events, and do this instead of the more obviously factional narrative, as causes seem to be based in reality.
[] Commission
One meaning is approaching a person or a body to do a task: giving a commission.
A second related meaning is a body (often statutory) which does a task, eg the Forestry Commission. The most obvious commission of this kind is the European Commission whose task is to propose legislation to the Council of Ministers and oversee the carrying out of agreed decisions and treaty obligations through directives.
A third meaning is a payment to a party that did the selling of a service or product and which receives a proportion of the selling price.
[] Common interest travel/ tourism
This is where the visitor and visited share a common interest, and has certain tourism market effects. Stays have little economic impact in the region in terms of other attractions, and they are somewhat immune from marketing.
[] Common rated fares/ Common rated points
The fare is the same from one place to two different places.
[] Commuter
A regular traveller between home and work who is not considered a tourist though some additional tourist facilities may get used and is included in travelling statistics.
Commuter airline/ Hub and spoke
A regular domestic flight from a small airport to a larger one, thus being a spoke to a hub. Another term is shuttle.
[] Communication
Communication involves an initiator, a message, a mode or vehicle, a receiver and an effect. It involves symbolic codes, and signs, and discourses in transmission - in other words, language. Communication in teaching is both given and received by a teacher in a loop to know that the communication is effective. This is usually mesured in a behaviourist way. Post-structuralism emphasises the independence of the text once made, and the primacy of the reader in interpretation. "Noise" impedes a message, which includes interference distraction as well as noise distraction. Intrapersonal communication is thoughts and feelings within the person, which can be affective as much as cognitive. Communication is also seen as having a key importance in producing rational outcomes (Habermas). No communication can still be communication (eg Apache Indians, Quakers). Communication through the arts can employ diverse and imprecise signs open to wide affective meaning. Body language is an example of non-verbal meaning involving contact, orientation (posture), facial expressions (including eyes) and are qualitative additions to expressing in words, for many kinds of emotional states. Animals communicate and this is little understood, for example how much higher animals have anything approaching concepts. Communication can be to achieve or receive something, to alter behaviour, to find out, to express feeling, to participate, to sort out a problem, to respond and carry out a given role.
[] Communication Integration
The intensity of channels of verbal and non verbal communication between people of a group or society. More channels aids integration through smoother and more frequenct interaction improving flos of information.
[] Complexity theory
This is where simple systems are able to organise themselves into complex outcomes. It is seen with computers that have simple instructions but can learn, and produce patterned outcomes. It is seen in nature and in consciousness. The method is related to fractals and chaos theory.
[] Compulsory heterosexuality
When heterosexuality is the strong norm other forms of sexuality become repressed and deviant and so human sexual nature is not fully expressed. After Michael Foucault and Judith Butler.
[] Constructionism
The proposing of causal relationships between historical events through ideology or metanarrative. This is a third grouping alongside reconstructionists and deconstructionists.
[] Conceptual art
Artistic work that represents and suggests an idea or concept. This is art as an idea. It is sometimes called process art.
[] Congruence theory/ cognitive balance theory
Why might a wife agree politcally or religiously with her husband, or vice versa? Congruence is when someone liked by an individual agrees about something with the individual, or when someone disliked says something disagreed with. Cognitive dissonance takes place when someone personally liked says something disagreeable or out of character. A relationship develops, and therefore affective beliefs change with them, through congruence. So it is a process of explaining (some) change through association.
[] Connotation
Connotation is the addition of meanings to a word that denotes something straightforward. It relates to the additional significations of a signifier. Main person: Roland Barthes.
[] Consensus
This is a widespread agreement to norms, the institutions which produce them, and a sense of unity. The opposite is dissensus. Consensus is related to ensuring legitimacy, and is also actively pursued for purposes of reducing alternatives. It is, for example, part of New Labour's "big-tent" consensus approach to politics of absorption and adaptation which weakens alternatives, a different strategy from the Thatcher approach which used conflict to weaken alternatives.
[] Consistency
In the media, keeping to one message communicates the line better, and retains consensus. The cultural apparatus produces the right reading.
[] Conspiracy theory
It is interesting that at the start of the twenty first century both right and left had an ongoing conspiracy theory (not actually a theory, or even an hypothesis but more a belief) that a slect few people are able to enter into real political and economic (multinationals, financial institutions) power on a transnational basis. The nation state is weakening. In essence, the usual democratic channels are side shows of an already established and self selecting elite organised almost on masonic principles (right) or through the superstructure of international capitalism that follows on from the base of ownership in which the elite are key major shareholders and participants. In more mundane terms, conspiracy theory is compared against cock-up theory, where what goes wrong or is acted out against someone is either carried out by a manipulative extra-institutional clique or results from unintended stupidity or lack of oversight and control.
[] Contagion effect
This is a bandwagon effect caused by media exposure which causes copycat behviour, which Richard Dawkins calls memes (repetition for no reason). The contgion effect is usually some sort of social devianceor break from a consensus that is seen to disturb the equilibrium.
[] Content analysis
research, usually comparative, into the balance of types of content of media messages and its changes over time.
[] Context
Putting things together in relevant association.
[] Correspondence theory of truth
This has become a conservative position in the face of postmodernism and post-structuralism. It states, against them, that there is a direct connection between the words describing something and that something itself. Facts can be described and are about the real world. In history this includes the reconstructionist school.
Often used for public projects, this approach includes in its costs and benefits not just market information (which often never takes account of wider costs and benefits) but social and environmental costs and benefits that affect wider groups of people. An example is the more favourable CBA for electrifying rail over a new polluting road.
[] Cost plus pricing
A mark upo which is added to the cost of a supply to take account of other costs and the scale of profit required. Of course, it the resultant price is not competitive then the firm has problems and better make itself more efficient.
Sleeping compartment of up to 6 places without washing and toileting facilities.
[] Country Park
Privately or publically owned and officially recognised park in the countryside but near urban centres of population, such as the Humber Bridge Country Park.
[] Country Codes
Two letter codes for countries as published by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
[] Covering laws
An event is explained when deduced from a law of nature or practice of human behaviour. The method used is usually statistics and then probability.
[] Cover Charge
In a restaurant and night club, a cover charge is made for extras or a minimum payment to discourage low spenders who'd take up valuable space.
[] Credit card/ Charge card/ Cheque guarantee card
A credit card charges the vendor for services and possibly the purchaser for the facility. There is a credit limit. They can act as cheque guarantee cards. Interest is charged on the balance carried forward. Examples are Barclaycard and Access. A charge card is not a credit card. This is deferred payment which is settled every month. There is usually no payment limit but the decision to give one is based on a judgement of the ability to pay. They carry a fee. Examples are American Express and Diner's Card.
[] Critical path analysis/ Network analysis
Scheduling to complete tasks in the shortest possible time, where some must be done before others and others can be done alongside others. Obviously the amount of simultaneous work depends upon the resources at hand - it would not be done if everything else was done sequentially because it would add to labour and capital costs. This analysis - with a diagram showing the critical path/s - is particularly important in civil engineering projects, but also in developing new products, and marketing projects.
[] Cross elasticity of demand
This is for substitution and complementary products or services. The substitution situation is where to buy one is to not buy the other. If the price of A rises and demand contracts as a result (probably lowering profit), B will experience an increase in demand and raise price (and probably increase profit). This would be something like holidays at home versus holidays abroad. In a complementary situation, if the price of A rises and demand contracts as a result (probably lowering profit), B will experience a decrease in demand and lower price (and probably lose profit). This would be something like UK hotels having higher costs and raising prices resulting in reduced demand for attractions. Cross elasticity is inelastic where a change in one price has little effect on the change in the other, and is elastic where there is a high responsive relationship. Cross elasticity can run across economic sectors, so that rises in the price of UK petrol from tax can have effects on the price possibilities of local tourism, for example.
[] Cruise
A voyage by ship for the sake of the voyage itself and not as such to reach a particular destination. There are scheduled stops, of course, of interest, but the ship arrives back in the same country as the departure. The main areas for cruises are the caribbean and the Meditteranean.
[] Cultural tourism/ Heritage tourism
Going on holiday for the purpose of seeing native culture including performance, historical sites and exhibitions, archaeology and architectural history. People will likely visit one or more of heritage attractions.
[] Culture
Ways of understanding and language that come through a shared understanding of history and lead on to identity that channels how people act and think and are able to communicate deeper layers of meaning. Culture is passed on and taught, and exists at ethnic, community, nation state and international levels. Small cultures are often sub-cultures in the face of dominant cultures.
[] Currency
The means of exchange. For an economist, currency has no value in itself, not even gold or foreign currency reserves, because currency is only valuable in relationship to the economic output of its area. Where there is money chasing, too fast, too few goods, inflation results, and if inflation is held down by price fixing, shortages result. While the West experienced inflation, the command economies of the old Eastern bloc experienced shortages. Currency is usually convertible, for a rate of exchange, though varied restrictions may apply. Currencies may be fixed in relation to one or more others, in a snake mechanism (partial movement) or floating: snakes like the old Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) encourage attacks on the fixed boundaries by speculators. By definition fixed currencies cannot move (as with European currencies before they disappeared to be replaced by the euro). Currencies that float can find their own level, but movement can damage the ability of business to plan and know income, prices and profits, and the inflationary/ deflationary effect can be large. Intervention is by central banks who carry out the opposite activity of the market, and for this reason stemming changes in currencies is often highly expensive. Internvention works best for signalling government and European Union intentions, or giving a comment on economic confidence. Currencies have three letter codes a=from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) so that GBP is the pound sterling and USD is the United States dollar.
[] Critical realism
Often contrasted with postmodernism. In theology it means a liberal position which still upholds certain if not all key real or theistic doctrines where language used still points to a reality beyond. It is more specific within social science where a literature that contains an economic system form a response that supports its key aspects, so that capitalism represented leads towards self interest. After Georg Lukacs.
[] Cyborg
Cybernetic organism or the combination of machine and human. Star Trek truncated this to the Borg, a machine like assimilation into one collective of all spieces. In social science it has been used to escape gender characteristics and in this sense is after Donna Haraway.
[] Dadaism
Art that rejected all tradition, and had a Marxist edge to attack the bourgeoisie and its values, aiming to criticise common values and suggest revolt.
[] Datum level/ Datum line
Newlyn in Cornwall provides the base for mean sea level on Ordnance Survey maps, and from there land altitude is measured upwards.
[] Day rate
Hotels charge this for the daytiome use of their bedrooms (eg at airports). Conference delegates also pay this for the range of services available.
[] Death of the author
A deconstructionist concept. The reader is king and derives meaning from the text and the author cannot make one meaning more authentic than another. Whereas it might be asked in realist approaches, "What did the author intend?", this approach says the importance is what the reader finds (because the author may have intended to conceal, partially reveal, and is also a carrier of other chains of writing and culture - and the reader's task can be to deconstruct the varieties of meanings within any text). The author ultimately becomes no more than producer of a narrative for consumption. Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984) are key personalities.
[] Decoding
Getting into and exposing the many levels of meaning in a verbal message, non-verbal communication or broadcast. Receivers can decode messages and their wide variety of meanings in an aberrrant way (Umberto Eco's terminology regarding television) if they do not share the same cultural understanding as the transmitter. In other words those layred and additional meanings of any communication get mistranslated.
[] Deconstruction
Meaning is arbitrary and figuratively produced within the process of producing and consuming text. There is no external empiricism, pure reason, available objectivity or author intentionality, or a real God or given morality. Deconstruction means taking a text to reveal its presuppositions and assumptions, contradictions and inconsistences, and the power relations revealed or somewhat concealed within. Being deconstructionist is the process of opening up text to this type of analysis. Often the side issues of a text become more important than the central thrust (because of what they reveal). Some detective work is needed, because of the thorough nature of the task. However, this task is not to uncover a different, hidden truth, but simply to expose text as text and the job being done, and to reveal its hierarchies without imposing new ones. This method is suggested: a text's generalisation is taken to an extreme and an exception within is used to attack it; take arguments to the extreme; make sensational points about the text; accept and reject nothing; create an unfinished ambiguous text; disturb the text through using new and unfamiliar terms; the deconstructive argument itself cannot be changed (Rosenau, 1992, 121). Deconstruction works through using an unfamiliar alternative to logic. The key personality is Jacques Derrida (1930-).
Criticism includes its reduction of everything to text (from other viewpoints, obviously), that it does have a method and a consistency of its own, that it is no more than criticism (if useful for that, but keep it in context), and that it does not construct anything in the place of the constructive methodologies that create these texts simply to be attacked and exposed: it is without rationale and the basis to choose between knowledge claims, yet against its own position it often favours critical stances that are metanarratives or ethical positions (feminism, environmentalism etc.). (Rosenau, 1992, 121-122).
[] Deconstructionist history
There is no real world discovered by empiricism, disinterested analysis (neutrality and distance), objectivity and truth, and also the divisions are not accepted but blurred between history, ideology, fiction and perspective. Deconstructive history works with the texts for their various meanings revealed and concelaed.
[] Deep throat
Anonymous yet privileged and guiding source. The source use of this sexual/ pornographic term is the unknown telephone informant to Woodward and Bernstein of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal in the United States. The Simpsons cartoon used the car park and long coat anonymous figure in the shadows (incompetently self-exposed as Smithers) that the film All the Presidents Men made famous.
[] Defamation
In permanent and published form (including Internet), defamation is libel, and in passing verbal form it is slander. The character of a person is attacked without proper and defendable argument. defamation which causes a breach of the peace is criminal, otherwise it is civil. Defamation is impossible in court, between a legal representative and a client, and in parliament, and this is called privilege. Reports of these and in employment references there is qualified privilege where only malice causes defamation.
[] Defamiliarisation
When language is used in literature (usually) so that what was familiar becomes strange. Perception should be prolonged, partly because perception itself is an art form. Such a style is used in order to bring out particular aspects of what is often glossed over due to common over exposure. After Viktor Shklovsky but relates to Brecht's alienation effect, who drew attention to stylistic devices to expose hidden often ideological meanings in words and actions.
[] Demographics/ Demography
Demographics is the make up of the population as revealked by the statistical methods used in demography.
[] Demonstration effect
Where one group imitates and absorbs the behaviour of another. It happens where, for example, a host population adapts the dress and behaviour habits of visiting tourists and this then becomes their appearance and behaviour.
[] Dependency theory
Affective and cognitive dependency on the media increases with the consistency and repetition of output and the fewer the sources of production. This reflects the sheer power of the media to shape events and attitudes. The media often fills a gap of attitudes and activities in people's lives. However, at times, the media follows what it thinks are public attitudes.
[] Deregulation
A large scale and ofte sudden reduction in government controls on private business. The idea is to free up the market and reduce red tape. It happened in financial services (with a boom effect) in the later 1980's and has happened in the airline industry though in the United States (1978) more than Europe where change is slower, regulation greater and prices higher.
[] Desensitisation
The process of drip drip drip through repeated exposure of extreme messages and opinions, real and fictional, becoming acceptable. This relates often to pornography, but also images of human suffering, and propoganda - for example the process by which Nazis stage by stage developed hatred of the Jews amongst the populations they controlled. This relates to media dependency. The opposite of sensitisation
[] Desk research
This is secondary research carried out by looking at what other authors have written, and reviewing some primary research that is already done and published or made accessible.
The external and internal influences that generate tourist and travelling traffic. One is the standard of living. Another is access into the area. Another is the infrastructure that makes tourism practical and pleasurable in any area. Then there is the tourist attractions, their prices, accommodation and facilities themselves. For example, an area that has some manufacturing failure may turn to tourism for economic regeneration: but for this it needs accessibility, infrastructure and attractions.
[] Determinism
What happens in individual events in their generality is determined by forces at a social level as explained by a metanarrative or ideology.
[] Developed and developing countries
In general, developed countries produce the tourists and tourism has the least negative impact on those countries, sometimes giving a chance of economic growth and employment of labour lost to capital intensive business elsewhere. Tourism, however, raises profound issues for developing countries, especially with the huge imbalance in the standard of living and culture clashes. Where Western countries were exposed to great changes in lifestyle but over long periods of change, rapid change descends on just parts of developing countries. Problems of rapid transition take place, such as drug abuse. Tourism can distort economic development away from manufacturing and general infrastructure investment; its transnational nature can take income out of the country as quickly as it puts it in; it sucks labour from the countryside and puts it into low paid and unskilled jobs (so that the workforce is not being educated and trained, and does not encounter new technology as it might); it causes imbalanced and unsympathetic development (eg golf courses!), and it has negative effects on local culture which is at once performed as in a circus and yet lost as a demonstration effect takes place. There can also be detrimental effects that come with such as sex tourism, such as where many young women and men prostitute themselves in tourist areas in order to send money back to their families in agricultural villages. See ThirdWorld
[] Deviant
Who is a deviant depends upon the norms of the day. Those norms are expressed in culture, and the deviant group produces a sub-culture. The media can expose deviance and make it more normal, and a deviance amplification spiral can set in when the deviant group makes its behaviour more marginal in order to retain deviance.
[] Deutscher Werkbund
Movement of design and architecture that welcomed the machine in producing expcellence, inspired originally by William Morris. Main person (founder): Hermann Mathesius (1861-1927).
[] Diachronic linguistics
This is the study of a language historically. Main person: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who set this against synchronic linguistics (fixed point, usually contemporary, study).
[] Dialogism
In any society and culture meaning is generated by negotiation between individuals. Meaning is plural and shifting. After Michael Bakhtin.
[] Differance
Jacques Derrida (1930-) wanted to produce a post-structural development on Saussurian structuralism. To do this he created this term différance to work on the ambiguity between difference and deferring, as with the French word différer and the verb-adjective différant. Différence and différance are heard the same, so writing is privileged. Différance also plays between thing and doing, a noun and a verb, and as such is a philosophical foundational opposition (perfect for postmodernism). Being used it is signifier and signified together and yet différance is itself not a French word nor something that is pointed to (signified). So the term expresses ambiguity quite actively and subverts the Western basis of philosophy, facilitating postmodernism and deconstruction.
[] Difference
Used in the women's movement from second wave feminist writers in various ways, to demonstrate distance between men and women due to oppression (Kate Millett), different experience and psychology of work, love and family from men, social exclusion, a distance to celebrate (Mary Daly), differences within women based on class and ethnicity (Audre Lord), and plurality and heterogeneity.
Alternatively difference is that which makes unlike and separates, and is a starting point in deconstructionist linguistics, for example, though as in this example difference still implies relationship nevertheless.
[] Differential perception
People due to background and education read the same message in different ways.
[] Differentiation
This is the dynamic process of producing a related separateness as in difference. In social science it is where old and new activities become specialised and spread out amongst different social actors and institutions. It means society is less uniform and more plural. Differentiation is part of social change, from simple agrarian societies through to complex urban and industrial societies - urbanisation and industrialisation. Role differentiation also takes place, leading to more anonymity/ privacy of the social actor in the urban setting. Differentiation may be hierarchical, thus related to power and prestige and stratification. It also relates to specialisation within the economy, and the division of labour.
[] Diffusion
The way new ideas get disseminated. They go rapidly through the mass media but fix better (including associated attitudes) through more day to day communication between people at lower levels. An example is attitudes of quality to ethnic differences which had mass media observation but attitudes only really change when practice becomes more in the workplace and between managers and other workpeople.
[] Digital Television
Television plans to leave behind its analogue method of transmission and reception and go digital with many more channels. Analogue is where the signal comes in waves and quality is variable. With digital, the quality is either all or nothing, perfect every time or cannot be seen. It can come through a satellite dish or aerial, though one system may overcome the other thorugh market penetration. With a telephone connection, digital television is capable of being interactive, with shopping, email and web pages and has the potential for personal viewing. Digital radio also exists, and is either hiss free or nothing.
[] Diminishing marginal returns
This is where for a given increase in input, output rises in ever smaller increments. It is where this marginal revenue line passes the marginal cost line that the most profit can be made and so output should be set. in none perfect competitive situations, marginal revenue tends to rise steeply at first, but reaches a peak and then falls. Average cost tends to drop at first, bottom out and then rise. marginal cost drops faster, and then rises passing through the lowest point of the average cost curve. The efficient firm produces at the position of most profit and this is where the average cost curve is at its lowest. Inefficiency means that production, even though most profitable, does not penetrate the lowest point of the average cost curve. Production determines where the price is set - where it penetrates the average cost curve: price equals average revenue and thus for the quantity determines income, just as average cost for the quantity determines total cost; and so the difference or profit can be calculated. In a perfect competition economic situation, of maximum competition and market knowledge, and no entry restrictions for new firms, only normal profit is made to continue the business (all excess is lost through attracting competition), and the purely efficient firm will have output running at the lowest average cost, where it meets average revenue (price) and marginal revenue at that point (both curves are the same: a flat horizontal) and this is equilibrium. In the real world, of imperfect competition and friction in the market, businesses attempt to improve efficiency and lower costs but realise they have to be paid out to increase revenue, and they try to find where the marginal revenue falls to the marginal cost by impression or calculation. This is set against investment and the longer term.
[] Direct cinema/ free cinema (older British version)
Post 2nd World War "how it happens" documentary making made possible with lighter hand held equipment. This idea has been a taken up in the fly on the wall approach, though many now see docusoaps as a form of self-conscious soap opera, the fly on the wall being an elephant in the room. The other related development is television">reality television, game shows with real people behaving in confined settings.
[] Direct mail and related promotions
Promotional material sent to people's homes. There is quite an industry in selling lists of addresses, and later lists of emails. Registration for software, or buying on the Internet, just as from catalogues, gives valuable contact and marketing information which gets passed on. Action can be taken with the telephone company and with the post to reduce or eliminate this kind of material.
[] Discourse
The second level performance (above Saussure's "langue") of a connected in context group of statements with the full extent of meanings, communicating between author and reader/ hearer. The connection of signifiers together mean more than their individual parts. Discourses are formed by contexts, such as social and economic, those who have authority, ideology, and intellectual "grids of specification" that separate out discourses. discourses add meaning to the structural langue of Saussure (1857-1913). Michel Foucault sees discourses like paradigms but built on power relations. Refer to Saussure (1857-1913), Foucault, Barthes.
For sociology this leads on to conversation analysis, symbolic interaction, ethnomethodology and social anthropology.
[] Discretionary income/ Disposable income
Discretionary income is the amount of money left when the essentials have been paid for. It can be saved or spent freely. Businesses relying on discretionary spending, like in the tourist sector, are affected most by the economic cycle and are forced to be more priceelasticityofdemand elastic and cross elastic. The movement where an annual holiday becomes a necessity makes business more stable as this relies on disposable income, which is is one stage before descretionary income, being the money available after taxation and national insurance. It is this wealth which detemines the likelihood of luxury spending and holiday propensities (the likelihood of going on holiday), whereas discretionary income can determine a second holiday or a perhaps a holiday taken in the UK when the main one is taken abroad.
[] Displacement effect
A new media makes time for itself, for example when the Internet use cuts down television viewing.
[] Disqualifying communication/ Defensive communication
To avoid embarassment, innocent verbal conversation or non-verbal gestures are used to divert from controversy or difficulty.
[] Dissonance
When messages/ sources are out of line and discomfort follows. See congruence theory.
[] Diversification
A firm produces products of a different if related kind. It spreads risk, and increases market knowledge, though lack of concentration on the most profitable item can result in lower profits.
[] Division of labour
Specialisation in the labour economy and the reduction in tasks (and consequent alienation) that results from the modernisation and industrialisation process.
[] Domestic excursionist/ domestic same-day visitor
A person who travels out of the home area but does not go abroad to another area but does not stay overnight.
A person who travels out of the home area but does not go abroad who stays at least a night where the main reason is pleasure, professional or business activity, or other specialist tourist reasons.
[] Domestic visitor
A resident of a nation state who travels out of the home area but does not go abroad who stays less than twelve months and whose purpose is other than being paid for work done.
[] Double coding
After the failure of modernist architecture, which never took with the public, postmodern architecture should obey the rule of double coding so that past styles are included for appreciation by the public as well as modernist elements to appeal to the architects. After Charles Jencks.
[] Double occupancy rate/ factor
The double occupancy rate is a tariff per double or twin room where two people occupy it quoted per person.
The double occupancy factor is the percentage or guests per room occupancy by dividing the number of people staying by the number of rooms.
[] Dramaturgical
People stage-manage their appearance to others in a context of potential and actual anxiety and embarassment. Within role differentiation, the faces shown may vary considerably. This is for self-benefit and to try to acquire a sense of self-control. Relates to Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
[] Drive in restaurant or Drivethroughrestaurant
Rare in the UK but drive in is where people eat in their cars, like they watch a film from the car in a drive in cinema.
Drive through is becoming more popular, where the food is ordered by car and delivered to the car as part of driving round ordering and serving hatches.
[] Dry lease or Wet lease
A dry lease is simply a yacht or other ship hired whereas a wet lease comes with a crew, fuel and other necessary supplies.
[] Dumping
Selling quantities at below cost price usually in another country, in order to ruin home manufacturers and suppliers and gain a market, or to avoid price reductions in the market of the dumper. It is illegal in the EU (European Union) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) carries sanctions against it.
[] Duty-free
When tax and customs duty are not payable, in international space and special location shops.
[] Dyad and the Triad
This is an unstable means of communication. The triad is more stable with alliances and disagreements that can be negotiated across three parties. Main person: Georg Simmel.
[] Econometrics
Economic models served by mathematics. An example is regression analysis.
Internal economies of scale/ External economies of scale
Internal economies of scale happen where as the amount of production rises, the average cost of production falls. It becomes logical, say in the steel industry, which obeys this rule, to close small plants and open one huge plant. External economies of scale happen in an area where an industry comes together. It builds up a speciality in the location that runs from colleges to industry to suppliers to a ready trained workforce. See diminishing marginal returns.
[] Ecosystem
Ecological system, therefore interactive ecology seen as a whole where a change in one part brings about changes in others, and where equilibrium is hoped for but disequilibrium is feared, such as when greenhouse gasses heat up the earth and cause a breakdown in the current fragile balance (eg oceans could release nitrogen forcing a rapid acceleration of heating).
[] Elapsed travel time/ Elapsed flying time
The actual time it takes to travel between two points, discounting changes in the time zones.
[] Elasticity of demand
The change in output that results from a change in price - elastic (greater than 1) or inelastic (less than 1).
[] Electronic person
A person who lives and works faster, who replaces the typographical person. Main person: Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
[] Elite
The powerful few. They tend to have similar backgrounds and on top of a social and economic system grant their own kind preferment. For some it is systematic, for others more status based. Elites can also be regarded as in their own fields. Main people: C. Wright Mills, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Wilfred Pareto.
[] Email/E-mail
A text message sent using the Internet and telephone system, sent securely in packages to store on the receiver's server and be downloaded from a phone call by the receiver (very different from the fax which telephones the receiving online computer and can cause clashes between the receiving audio telephones and computers where lines are shared - the computer at least needs the incoming fax program running in the background). Some emails and web pages carry fax like documents via the Internet. Email is POP3/ SMTP (incoming and outgoing to email programs) or MAPI (Windows Messaging) or web pages based. POP3 Emails can be pure text or HTML and both can carry attachments. Pure text emails cannot carry viruses. HTML can carry viruses including within buried Javascript and Visual Basic. Attachments can be or contain viruses and should only be opened with knowledge of the sender. This includes formatted text documents such as MS Word because they can contain Visual Basic Macros. Always send pure text or Rich Text Format documents. Email (and fax) effectively replaced Telex which required a receiver on the telephone to produce text messages and print using a teleprinter.
[] Empathy
Placing oneself into the shoes of others as a way of understanding them, used in history and ociology (rather frowned upon there) as a method of bridging a cultural or time gap.
This has a place in sociology and history. R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) used it in The Idea of History (1936) to get into the historical context of the people living at that time and thinking as they would have done. It is empicial and affective. Reconstructionist historians use this connection between dry sources and reconstituting people of the time to produce history. The affective approach is also relevant in sociology, linked with the researcher's imagination, and is used to ask what social actors might do in this situation or that and so build hypotheses. It is usually frowned upon as a method of investigation as it lacks objective rigour. Mead's symbolic interaction approach shows that social actors put themselves into the other's place in order to anticipate what others will do. Weber's "Vehesten" (understanding) in his interpretative sociology is not empathetic interpretation of real individuals in action but theoretical constructs to examine motives and action.
[] Empirical research
This is based on observable, objective data as through the senses. It reduces the importance of theory, if using hypotheses and personal/ group experiences, but empirical research can be a starting point for theories, hypotheses and further more theoretical research.
[] Empiricism
Knowledge is through specific experience. It is associated with science and discovery. It means methodological naturalism or avoiding untested theory and metaphysics and using mainly quantitative evidence, and so in sociology it wants its method and therefore intellectual discipline to be close to science. A criticism for sociology is that it underestimates the discussion and difficulty in getting reliable data; it also goes beyond the problem that we generate experience through pre-made linguistic concepts and categories. The problem of language is tackled by use of the additional concept of a priori statements, with then an insistence that then under their initial direction evidence can be found. Some empiricists think a priori statements are unnecessary. In the end, empiricism is a theory of the mind, on limitation to and reliance upon sense-experience through testing and repeat experience asnd this is why, in a perverse way, some empiricism can, against the grain, be sceptical about knowledge because it is dependent upon the senses! In general, though, it locates reality beyond the mind in the real world.
[] Emplotment
It is tempting and helpful for readability and making sense to give social anthropology, sociology and history a plot. Literary genres (the novel, comedy, tragedy, satire) are used to give a plot to the qualititative data. This is a reflection that our lives, our biographies, are kinds of stories, as well as recognition that social science and history involves writing. However, the problem is that the emplotment may be too neat and overstrong. Whilst a narrative with a denouement (a twist of sorts not wholly revealed beforehand) may bring out additional and covert meanings in the social actors' lives and situations, it may impose meanings too that they never had. Empathy may be involved here, as well as an imaginative way into the data. Social science could become a form of faction, which is a debatable outcome.
[] Encode
Organising a message (by the encoder - person or machine) which furthermore contains norms and values. The receiver being culturally aware is able to decode the message in its full meaning.
[] English service
Whole amounts of food are presented to guests before either the designated person on each table or the staff proportion them out on to plates for everyone.
[] Enlightenment (the)
The Age of Reason is its other name. It is mainly eighteenth century, with antecedants and continuing impacts until the present day in modernism. This was the growth of liberal and progressive values built into new rational thinking, with social progress, and individualism. It was experimental, empirical, philosophical, and trying to find out the bases of and the extent of knowledge. It stretched from science through to political economy (became our economics) into culture and through religion into government. Social science was born late but out of modernist principles of progress and the culture of science; history also involved notions of progress and human perfectibility. Eventually its basic positions of reason and progress were questioned, as well as the epistemology of empiricism. Romanticism was the first break from its cold reason (that there was more to human life than this), feminism criticised its maleness, extreme plurality, relativity and postmodernism attacked its foundations and its consequent progress-based metanarratives whilst post-structuralism involved the linguistic turn.
[] Entropy
The tendency in organisms to decay, so that everything is transient. In communication, entropy is the unpredictable and therefore surprising, being the opposite of redundancy which is the expected. Entropy is the shock of the new and difficult to translate.
[] Entry requirements
These include passports, visas and other right of entry stamps into passports. A person entering Britain from outside the European Union and certain other Commonwealth states without being blocked needs to have a visa issued by an embassy or consulate, and then if not a vistor's visa may be granted residence for a year, permanently or get citizenship.
[] Epicure
Person devoted to good food and drink, and even more so a life of luxury and ease.
[] Epic theatre
Rather than being about being absorbed into an illusory drama, theatre should generate and alienation effect to oppose dominant power in society. After Bertolt Brecht.
[] Equity
The difference between assets and liabilities: the shareholders' capital or capital accounts in a sole trader firm or partnership.
[] Episteme
According to Foucault (1926-1984) in The Order of Things (1966) an episteme is the assumptions behind knowledge at any one time period that defines a period intellectually. Additional knowledge is thus filtered and added in coherently with other knowledge. Foucault states that there have been four distinctive historical epistemes from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The shared assumptions happen through the troping process (trope/figuration) at the level of human consciousness. An epsiteme, therefore, can be a guide for historians to how people thought at that time, and therefore how to generate an historical narrative or emplotment.
[] Epistemology
This is all about how we know what we know and how to separate knowledge from opinion. Rationalists were most impressed by the foundations provided by logic and mathematics. Followers were Descartes, Leibniz and Pinoza, and it was Descartes who found the logical starting point "I think therefore I am". Empiricists (positivists) rejected their concepts of innate knowledge, a priori arguments or anything independent of experience, and focussed on sense experience. Followers included Locke, Berkeley and Hume and Comte in sociology. Positivism is basically very useful to science, for testability. Kant later rejected experience alone because it did not stretch to those elements which facilitated experience: there was at first a basic and universal conceptual struggle of categories and forms of intuition prior to experience itself. Realists in sociology wish to uncover hidden but causal mechanisms, and Marx, like realists, said positivism was concerned with just surface experience whereas posivists see realist explanations as untestable. For critical (transcendent) realists (Roy Bhaskar) the prior concepts must be related to our experience.
Epistemology has impact with the theoretical assumptions behind any research. The how we know what we know lies behind demonstrations of knowing. Kant is influential in maintaining a need for some for prior conceptual organisation of knowledge. Positivism or empiricism has parallels in how science has influenced sociological research regarding testability. It therefore has some (not as much as thought) influence in quantitative work. It also favours objective sociology over subjective and meaning based sociologies. Nevertheless, it is limited to the observable, that sociology is not like a science and sociology is about deeper interpretation and understanding. Also certain historians have become critical of reliance on empiricism/ positivism in favour of techniques for deeper understanding. Communication of meaning and interpretation, for example, leads to phenomenology and heremeneutics as bases for understanding.
Not agreeing on the foundations of knowledge leads to a sense of relativism. Post-structuralists try to avoid such epistemology in favour of analysing language, and there is no ability to step outside language and its discourses to a non-linguistic reality; however, they constantly have to emphasise the position as a kind of epistemology, and it works against the knowability of research (what difference is there in written fiction?).
[] Ergonomics
We are different sizes, so seating and desks and computer positions matter; we respond to particular environments of noise, heat and lighting, and we move around workplaces taking breaks elsewhere with changes of immediate environment. So anatomy, physiology and psychology are all used to study how people fit into their working environments.
[] Erotica
Sensual and sexual communication enhancement and stimulation, often seen as positive (in contrast with pornography).
[] Ethnicity
A labelling of cultural identification of a people. We can be the same race, but identify with a particular group and its culture, and so this gives a different ethnicity, though race may be partly a determinant of ethnicity. Nationalism is tied in with this, either in an existing nation state or the struggle for territorial independence. Ethnocentrism means attitudes and policies directed towards the interests of people of that identity. Ethnic tourism is where one travels to a place of the group's origins.
[] Ethnocentrism
One's own culture is the way to understand all others. Thus for a long time history was ethnocentric and so was social anthropology until its modernisation with and after Malinowski. Ethnocentrism is seen as prejudicial and culturally imperialist.
[] Ethnomethodology
Harold Garfinkel (1917-) was interested in how people themselves described and made sense of their own lives and rejected the imposition of much top-down sociology which imposed categories, which treated people as unable to account for their own situations. Instead people define their own situations. The cultural background and the assumptions according to context are built into conversations and behaviour. It is like they carry their own practical versions of sociological analysis around with them! A conversation or behaviour makes sense (both by the giver and receiver) through its context (that is, each is indexical), usually done rapidly without explaining these every time (glossing), because this continuously referring to the context is hard work while the conversation or activity goes on. Furthermore, the activity of conversation reinforces and communicates these assimptions. Some analysis then is of conversation, and this understanding of language use leads directly to discourse and post-structuralism giving ethnomethodology postmodern relevance. Garfinkel's experiment regarding behaviour was to tell students at home to behave like lodgers, which led to puzzlement and then hostility. This ethnomethodology depends upon some stability in life, and a criticism is life is too rapidly changing and there is conflict and misunderstanding, and being bottom-up in analysis naturally comes in for criticism from those who see the necessaity for social-structural categories and analyses. It also deals with minute matters at micro level.
[] Establishment
The establishment is the instutionalised setting of the elite.
[] Euphemism
Substitution of an easy on the ear term for one that is considered too risky in polite company or for mass susceptibilities.
[] Eurodollars
US dollars held outside the US, being less regulated and cheaper for the purposes of borrowing to which they are put: financing trade and investment. All currencies slush around outisde their home areas and get put to use through the markets.
[] Evidence
The data used to demonstrate or prove an argument. For this reason it can never be removed from the process of interpretation. Realist and reconstructionist historians rely on the reliability of evidence in the historical sources (eg Arthur Marwick)
[] Expatriate
A long term, possibly permanent, resident overseas, so that in tourism the person is treated as resident there.
[] Expressionism
Early twentieth century art movement that used colour and form to convey more intense psychological feelings. Its centre was Germany.
[] Extrapersonal communication
This takes place without people and generally between computers on their own.
[] Eye effects/ Persistence of vision etc.
Persistence of vision is the continuation in the brain of one still scene over to another still scene. It makes moving image projection and roadcasting possible. For cinema it is frame by frame, for television it is the coloured dot - which with its primary colours alone varied also produces the rich variety of colours. Also, on a grey screen, the lit areas are contrasted with the unlit grey screen which the brain interprets as black.
[] Faciliate/ Facilitation
Assisting something to become more possible. Teachers who take a less didactic approach are more like facilitators of their students as they go though plans of learning. Tourist Information Centres facilitate tourists coming into their areas.
Picture data sent over the telephone by scanning and bleeping it through to a special decoder and printer. Fax (and Email) effectively replaced Telex, fax producing the document image layout and therefore extendable to pictures and handwritten text. The fax also comes to any plugged in telephone and fax machine with electricity supply, spewing out paper. A protocol is to ring the receiving person first and then send the fax in a separate call. Email with attachments is an alternative and leaves the printing to the receiver.
[] Fact
A piece of evidence that is locatable in the real world. Sometimes facts can only be small or simple and on their own inconsequential regarding meaning. Beyond this matters get tricky. E. H. Carr saw historical facts dependent on use, but Arthur Marwick says they are dependent on the reliability of the sources. Facts are problematic because often they are interpretations, so many a sociologist will avoid the term. Facts are often quoted by historians, whilst leaving others out.
[] Familiarisation trip
Where members of the trade or profession go on a visit somewhere to understand it ahead of promoting the area, recommending the area or accompanying people to the area. Tourist Boards may organise these trips to holiday suppliers; regional development bodies take business leaders on trips to have a suitable backdrop to outline what is possible in the area and to facilitate entry.
[] Fare rebates/ reduced fares
These are given to identifiable groups and individuals to encourage travel at certain times or to certain places. There are variations between air, sea, rail and bus. The groups are schools, convention attenders, interest groups, families, groups on industry business, schools, incentive tours. Individuals include children, students, the retired, industry employees. Reduced fares usually carry rush hour restrictions or come with a paid card for discounts, so that having to pay the card encourages a higher number of trips to make the card worthwhile. The object is to encourage those on lower incomes to use the public transport, and also to fill out of peak spare capacity.
[] Fares
Payment for travel. Fares can be fixed, if within zones, for time periods, or vary per different types of people, groups and times. There is usually a standard fare and then a superior fare or additional variations. Standard fares are quite high when discounting for incentive is normal, and higher class fares usually offer fewer discounting possibilities.
[] Farm tourism/ Agricultural tourism/ Agritourism
Tourism with a specific argicultural and rural affairs interest, staying on a farm or in its outbuildings through self-catering.
[] Fast food outlet
Standardised food in a standardised setting, heavily branded and reliable to what it is. The ergonomics are such to encourage people to eat quickly and get out. Origins of McDonaldisation.
[] Fauvism
Colour used to give personal emotional expression, not indicate reality. The movement happened about 1905 in France. Main person: Henri Matisse (1869-1964).
[] File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
FTP is the method of downloading and uploading files as packages which are not viewed as web pages, but downloaded or uploaded as a file. The file is saved to a folder either in the computer (downloaded) or in the server (uploaded). Webmakers send web pages created on their computer to the server using FTP, often moving the icons between two windows in an FTP program. These use ftp:// addresses rather than http (hyper text transfer protocol http://- seen in web page addresses). Software is downloaded in this way, sometimes through a click from a web page. Many files are compressed, which means an unzipping program is used to reconstitute them.
[] Further Education (FE)
Alternative to the academic sixth form and including a wide range of vocational courses. Whilst some courses are of an academic model (like the A level) others are based on competence (like the NVQ). Colleges are incorporated and independent of local authorities.
[] Feasability study
Usually this has market and financial (investment and costs) elements. The marketing is about what is the likely demand for a product or service (eg hotel, attraction) and the cost element looks at basically how much is needed to start the new concern and if it is worth the investment. Cost benefit analysis maybe used.
[] Feedback
A response in a loop that comments on whether the original message was well received. This is used a great deal in teaching and is related to objectives and assessment and evaluation.
[] Federation
A body with an institutional rather than individual membership, where there is a balance between autonomy of the members and decision making by the centre. Federations of states have crucial consitutional executive, legislature and judicidary features which bind them into a whole, and have singlular representation abroad, whereas confederations are in the last analysis associations of states. The European Union is effectively a confederation because the centre of power lies with the Council of Ministers, provided by nation states, with important vetoes in existence, whereas the Commission only proposes and carries out legislation, and the Parliament has review functions and oversight of the Commission.
[] Field research
Marketing that uses various methods of contacting customers for comments.
[] Fieldwork
This is what anthropologists do: they go "into the field" or the location of the primary research, stay there and do their participant observation. Sociologists and others do the same, where there is a location of the primary research for participant observation and interviews. In marketing, fieldwork means mainly interviewing and focus groups.
[] Film noir
A black and white film that is largely dark and moody (actually and in subject) and portrays a thriller.
[] Flagship
The leading and most impressive firm or part of the firm in an identifiable grouping.
[] Flight coupon
The part surrendered at check-in.
[] Flight numbers
Usually two letters and three numbers to identify a flight.
[] Folk cultureThe culture of ordinary agrarian people either in a preindustrialised setting or the culture of a group or setting that harks back to it. Folk culture usually contains a higher degree of superstition and a lower level of rationality, and is seen to lack development on a linear view of progress. Folk culture requires a high degree of reciprocity across different fields of social action that, in an industrialised society, would be separated by specialisation, giving more privacy and a chance for role ambivalence.
[] Fourth Estate
The press, seen as an essential arm of making government effective. The first three are government, judiciary and the Church, so it is rather archaic terminology for the importance of the press.
[] Franchising
An independent business gains a franchise and acquires rights to supply the franchising firm's output. For this the franchisee uses the colours, appearances, ethos and exclusive products of the franchisor. It may adopt all the franchisor's policies (eg employment). It is a cheaper way to expoand for the franchisor, and a guaranteed way to have a market presence and branding benefits for the franchisee. McDonalds is a series of franchisees yet they all look the same.
[] Frankfurt School
Sociological school of thought located within the Institute of Social Research connected to the University of Frankfurt. It covers a period of 1923-1950 (in Columbia University, New York, during the Nazi period, both American and German after the war) and the Frankfurt School's output is also known as critical theory. It modernised Marxism for the modern age. This was both Marxist and revisionist because it criticised economic determionism in Marxism, it showed the importance of culture (and produced studies of music, literature and aesthetics) in its revision of Marxism, it imported psychoanalysis into its interpretation of Marxism and it was pessimistic about the class struggle. It drew on Hegelian and Marxist inheriting tradition of rational dialectical thought, of contradictions synthesised through an internal critique (within the argument) and a possible rational society ahead (either to be realised or even lost). It states that Instrumental reason is about exploiting anything in the world, and relegates values to the unimportant. The Frankfurt recognised, unlike classical Marxism, that capitalism could absorb the working class. Participants and associated were Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Karl Wittfogel, and a modern day figure under its influence is Jurgen Habermas. Habermas starts with language and argues towards a rational utopia of ideal speech communication where information and debate is purely available (unadulterated by Instrumental forces that affect the lifeworld) leading to truth (intellectuals have a key role to play, being more divorced from these capitalist pressures). He builds a whole system (but critical of systems theory) unlike earlier Frankfurt School participants, and uses psychoanalysis for method and inclusion of self-awareness to improve communication. He is a critic of postmodernism.
[] Free House
A public house not tied to a particular brewery and which shops around for beer supplies. Naturally some suppliers favour tied houses, but there is usually plenty of choice and variety for the free house.
An obstacle which prevents market efficiency and certainly perfect competition. An example is a toll bridge of 5p preventing a cabbage of 10p on one side of the bridge competing with a 14p cabbage on the other side. The Humber Bridge keeps property prices lower and petrol prices higher in Barton compared with Hessle.
[] Freeport
A created entity in some countries where import and export taxes are reduced or eliminated as a facilitator of trade.
[] Functionalism
Functionalism is sociology is about maintaining a social whole, a system in equilibrium, where an input into the system is either functional or dysfunctional. Functionalism gained its importance because sociologists were asking how a society made up of different parts maintained itself as a whole. Functionalism provides explanations for the sucess of religion, ideology, law and education. It may be that certain institutions do not exist to be functional, but that they are gives their place in society importance. It may be that people and groups carry motives that seemingly have nothing to do with functionalism, but they carry latent functions of which the participants are unaware. This is a conservative analysis in as much as it does not give an analysis of change or indeed sources of values and norms around which equilibrium is maintained. Main people: Talcott Parsons, Emile Durkheim, Robert Merton.
In architecture, function determines form, so that buildings are objects which work and their design either demonstrates their work or makes it easier to function. Important person: Richard Rogers (b. 1933).
[] Galley
Ship's and plane's food preparation area.
[] Game reserve
Conserves wildlife and controls visitor access.
[] Gateway
A developed point of access to a larger area or country or continental region.
[] Gate Keeper
Gates through which messages must pass to reach the audience. The Personal Assistant gate keeps for the boss. The newsroom gate keeps news for the public. There are social and sociological implications of gatekeeping. Another form of gatekeeping is practised by Sky Television who permit packages of channels on to their satellite television system by competitors, or a computer operating system allows the coverage of rivals. These kinds of gatekeepers could, if unregulated, or potentially unregulated, exert huge monopoly power.
General Household Survey (GHS)
A continuous mult-purpose survey of a sample of 12,000 households published by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and summarised in Social Trends.
[] Gerbners model of communication
There is quite some variability possible in the creative and interactive way an event is picked up for communication and transmission (this can be broadcasting or any formal communication setting, as in the classroom). Context is important for how messagesfor communication are selected and formed, and the formation (means of messaging) is vital for the content, and an important issue is access and control over these messages. So by the time the public or intended audience receives the messages, the content limits the selection, context and availability that the receivers can make of the message. The model is event - perception - form to content - perception. Between event and perception and content and peception is the horizontal of slection, context and availability, and between the perception of the communicator and the forming is the vertical aspect of control, channels and access.
[] Gestalt psychology
Perceiving the whole picture from fragments. The whole is greater than the parts, and the parts can be filled in using the context of the whole. We build a whole view of our lives from its fragments.
[] Ghosting
Hiding something by something else. Ghosting on the Internet means using a web domain name that stays on the browser whereas all it does is pass the user to another server with a far more complex and mundane name. So http://www.pluralist.co.uk is the ghosted name for http://www.pluralist.freeuk.com/index.html, a frames layout page, and so it is important in referencing and doing a bibliography to find the actual web page address (URL) being accessed and not just the ghost name that remains on the browser (unless a new page jumps up).
The term is also used for not declaring one's sole employment for tax purposes and being part of the black economy.
[] Glasgow University Media Group
A radical research body that showed how value-laden news broadcasts became, transmitting between the lines a particular ideology, and criticising select groups through its choice of language - eg calling trade union leaders "militant" and a choice that persistently showed them as anti-social, and the news portrays current ideology. Whilst this approach has been influential, competitive forces and declining interest in public affairs has turned news more towards entertainment values and softer stories, with less foreign news showing a disinterest in difficult subjects and wider agendas (known as "Bloody Bonsnia" in some circles.
[] Gourmand/ Gourmet
A gourmand is someone who likes eating, and will visit many restaurants, and the gourmet is a connoiseur of food and drink.
[] Grand Tour
Members of the English aristocracy used to send their older teenagers and early twenties offspring on to Grand Tours to improve their artistic and cultural appreciation and make them better citizens.
[] Graphic revolution
In a setting of reduced attention span, and using impressive hardware and software, the image has become seemingly more important than the written word. Because the image has become so sophisticated in its meanings, the graphical representation becomes more important than the reality it seeks to portray. A major example of the graphic revolution came with the Windows graphic user interface with computers, using a pointing device, rather than only menus and arrow keys, an idea originally on the Macintosh. Main person: Daniel Boorstin.
[] Gratuity
A voluntary additional payment for a personal service, like a tip.
[] Gravity Model
Traffic flows are measured by multiplying the population of origin and destination local populations and dividing this by the distance squared. OIbviously, the larger the urban centres and shorter the distances, the more will be traffic flow.
[] Green belt
An area of restricted development on the outskirts of an urban area to prevent much further development, especially where this is pinned between one urban/ suburban area and others.
This is not quite like the blackmarket. Many manufacturers and service providers have legal or strong controls over the distribution of their products. Nevertheless, genuine items (not fakes - official distribution systems are often justified on the basis of exposing fakes) find their way out of standard distribution methods. They end up at discounting shops, sometimes called bucket shops. Sometimes grey retailers attack the protective systems of the usual suppliers and can force more competition and creater an open market.
Value added (not intermediate products) of goods and services produced and sold within the UK.
GDP plus resident's income from economic activity and property earnings abroad less income earnt in the UK from non-residents.
[] Ground arrangements
Services provided on the ground for tourists abroad to facilitate the stay.
[] H certificate
1930-1951 the horror certificate, the forerunner of the X certificate, later to be the 18 certificate for films in Britain.
[] Hard copy
A paper print-out rather than seeing the item on screen.
[] Hard sell
Direct aggressive advertising leaving no linguistic or artistic ambiguity.
Mass tourism and development without a care for the environment and other locality development issues.
[] Hedonism
The philsophy and practice of seeking pleasure.
[] Hegemony
A successful situation of hegemony is where there is a legitimised consensus of ideas and beliefs amongst those dominated that operates in the interest of the dominant ruling group. Used by Marxists to show when false consciousness is achieved. Main person: Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).
[] Helical model of communication
This shows the importance of feedback but that communication is not a circle but a spiral. Communication goes forward but sees its past. Main people: Frank E. X. Dance in 1967, Jerome Bruner (education: the spiral curriculum).
[] Hermeneutics
This started with the analysis of the Bible and the authors' intended meanings/ meaning. The hermeneutic circle is the relationship between the text and its author. It also therefore relates a given text to the reader's experience so far. Main people: Friedrich Schleirmacher (1768-1834) (father of hermeneutics), Wilhelm Oilthey (1833-1911), R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) (empathy), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) (us as interpreters in our being and existence).
[] Heritage
The inheritance or the illusion of inheritance (thus a reference to history) of objects of the past culture. The present culture may be linked to the past through these objects (artefacts, buildings) or lost.
[] Heritage coasts
Coasts of outstanding natural beauty which give the impression of being natural and unchanged, whereas coasts change all the time and little landscape in the UK is natural.
[] Hierarchy of needs
These are physiological, safety, belonging, love and esteem. The highest is self-actualisation. Main person: Abraham Maslow.
Education that is above A level, plus certain professional courses, with a focus on Higher National Diplomas, honours degrees and postgraduate degrees as well as postgraduate professional diplomas. Many HE institutions provide courses of a more introductory nature too, especially with lifelong learning interests.
[] Historical
Of the past and identified with it or pertaining to be of the past. Nevertheless some things of the past are pastiche and create false historical memories and so are invented traditions.
[] Historical interpretation
p>This means the historian uses narrative and devices like colligation, contextualisation, empathy, emplotment, etc., to bring history alive and increase the understanding of an otherwise dry sources-limited account.[] Hold
A place for luggage in a ship or aeroplane. Hold baggage is not available to passengers during their journey.
[] Holiday
The customary or legal suspension of work outside the weekly pauses for breaks (traditionally but increasingly less so Saturday and Sunday). Some of these breaks include going on holiday, in other words leaving home for somewhere of leisure interest. Whilst the rise in technology at one time suggests more leisure time opportunities, the increasing marketised economy and competitive labour market has meant more people seem to be working longer hours: as labour becomes more productive it enojoys an expansion in comparative demand. Family life is said to suffer and in the long term business suffers too from less leisure time. The frequency of taking a holiday does depend on net wealth and disposable income and discretionaryincome.
[] Holistic/ Holism
This is a perspective based on seeing the whole picture rather than analysis of the parts, on the basis that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Holism is the philosophy of this approach; it is often associated with certain spiritual and religious outlooks such as New Age.
[] Homophilious
Communication is stronger when people share the same background, ideas and beliefs, or are homophilious, because they understand the complexity of meanings that are lost when people are very heterophilious.
[] Horizontal integration
Mergers at one level of the production process and important for economies of scale. Contrast with vertical integration.
[] Horse opera
A western film.
[] Hub and spoke system
Feeder services are the spokes to the hub of inernational airline services. The railways effectively once had this model before the Beeching closures in the mid to late 1960s, and still do in some places, although railway feeders tend to be cars driving to large railheads (like Doncaster) and train travel taking place from there.
[] Hype
Publicity for a product in a quantity and claims made that exceeds and is not warranted by the product's actual quality. From hyperbole.
[] Hypodermic needle model of communication
A rather simple view that the mass media can inject into the consciousness of the masses who lack discrimination and absorb it all. Also called the one step theory, it was dismissed in favour of needing an opinion leader by Paul Lazarsfield and others having studied the 1940 US presidential election. The two step model sees the auidence as interacting and able to discriminate. The multi step model sees a message being relayed, the number depending on the penetration of the mass media, audience exposure, what the message concerns, and if it is relevant to the audience.
[] Hypothetical fare construction points
Because tourist fares are cheaper than city to city fares (especially in Europe), hypothetical fare construction points are entered into tickets so that they include the flying between a tourist centre, though the flight coupon itself is not involved, and the passenger goes direct for the resulting cheaper price.
[] Ideology
Ideology is those coherent beliefs, attitudes and opinions that develop a group consciousness and stands behind the basic assumptions made at any time. It can be separate from or determined by the structure of economic institutions depending on approach, but ideology infuses and is carried and transmitted by institutions like the media, education, church, law, thus governing the outcome of particular beliefs.
Ideology can be seen as even more pervasive, only being related to intellectual ideas as such in an indirect way. Ideology centres not just around ordinary beliefs about the world but the very assumptions behind the way we do things. For example, secularisation is based on the lifeworld of technology, science and the everyday assumptions of this-worldy outcomes through effort. Ideology is also seen in the rules behind way we write and talk.
[] Imperfect competition
This is where the average revenue (price) curve is not a flat horizontal (perfect competition), nor a straight vertical (pure monopoly) but is on an downward slope. It reflects the position of most firms where there is imperfect knowledge and some barriers to competition. It may be caused through branding and monopolistic competition. It means that there is some excess profit and output is not set at the point of lowest average cost (greatest efficiency). Oligopoly is a few firms situation of growing market control and restrictive entry.
[] Impositionalism
This is where it is recognised that an historian is in a dialogue-relationship to the historical sources and influences the outcome of work. In a sense, the historian by arranging the data found and explaining it imposes upon the history. The historian's work becomes a linguistic exercise and there is no way past this conundrum of historian working on the language of the sources and producing another account.
[] Impression management
Controlling the self's performance in a social situation as understood in symbolic interactionism. The front region is an alert presentation of the self for particular public consumption whereas the back region is having that real unpresented self, the one barred to the others to whom we present ourselves. Main person: Erving Goffman, who likened interaction to a performance in a drama.
[] Income elasticity of demand
Income elastic goods and services have a more than proportionate change in demand to a change in income, and income inelastic goods and services have a less than proportionate change in response to a change in income. Measuring rises and falls in real income is thus part of the planning of the businesses involved. Tourism is income elastic.
[] Index number
A base year is selected and that year is given value 100. From then on the index rises and falls to give a relative value to that base. The Retail Price Index is the best example of use.
[] Induction/ Deduction
Induction goes from the particular observation to the general statement. Deduction is producing a conclusion through evidence using premises. Deductive falsifiability (thus far my theory about x is demonstrated by repeat testing) is more reliable as a method than infering towards a general condition by observing a specific condition (I saw this here, therefore it happens in general), and inductive reasoning tends to be more speculative regarding actual cause and effect in an observed situation (I see this connection and so the reason for this connection may be this but could be that).
[] Industrial revolution
In Britain dates are given round 1760 to 1780, but the process of industrialising began earlier. Phases of change included more international trade, slavery, enclosing the land and developing agricultural profits while releasing its labour supply, liberalisation of mercantilist practices and laws, establishment exclusion of religious dissenters leading to their thrift and business activity, technological change (that was unbalanced and led to catch ups in several areas: also military improvements had direct impact on engineering of pipes and pistons), the change from water supply to coal power and transportation. Then the creation of more urban centres itself was a spur to a clock based industrial and disciplined system, for which the growing compulsory education system was a part. A raw but profit generating system is established that leads to take off. Eventually the system becomes more developed, needs more education for knowledge, needs more regulative lawand business becomes more corporate and rationalised. In Britain it was the aristocracy and the elite which first began generating supluses, but others joined in and some religious non-conformist industrialists in the demand for parliamentary reform, but that an aspiration remained gaining a country seat and joining the existing order. The growth of the urban working class was a new feature.
[] Industrialisation
The process of moving from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy, with not simply factories and work patterns to suit (large numbers working according to the clock) but also the whole infrastructure of a modern economy. The process can be market based or state planned.
[] Inference
This is where induction or deduction produces a new outcome and therefore new beliefs.
Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO)
Body established by treaty to work at the international level where member states take part. An examples is the International Monetary Fund. The IGO has certain legal functions which have force over member states once agreement is reached. Arguments about a "New World Order" centre around IGOs like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to enforce world capitalism (left wing view) or as centres of the conspiratorial elite who rule at a level making the nation state a mirage (right wing view). The European Union is not now counted as an IGO because it has more developed functions and a stronger basis as an entity, even though it was also set up and developed thorugh treaties and has direct member state representation in the decision making Council of Ministers.
Information Technology (IT)/ Information Communication Technology (ICT)
IT is generally "sit forward" information processing technology (like computers) whereas "sit back" information carrying technology (like television) is not normally included. However, the categories are becoming blurred. ICT is a recognition of the communication of information as it is now more interactive especially with both email and the World Wide Web on the Internet.
Culturally determined, they include dirt signals (based on activities around human and animal waste), obscene signals (based on sex and sexual violence) and threat signals (which may threaten violence but keep a distance).
[] Intepretant
An interpretant is a more developed sign from a sign produced during communication, where the receiver adds meaning to the received sign by drawing on some experience. Main person: C. S. Peirce (1839-1914).
[] Interpretation centre
These are information centres which receive visitors going into a heritage or natural attraction. They give ticketing facilities where relevant, offer education to improve appreciation and also guidance so that visitor behaviour is regulated towards the attraction and damage is minimised.
[] International English/ Business English
With the growth of the American economy and the history of British world trade, and the colonies now Commonwealth, English became a dispersed language. With the growth of the Internet, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of China to trade, English is becoming the world's second language. The World Wide Web and, to a lesser extent, email, drives English as a second language. It is largely American in spelling, but not wholly so, and it is fast and loose with certain grammatical rules. Email breaks as many grammatical rules as it obeys. These media are now working back on to the main language centres (US and UK) and changing the language rapidly. Ethnic and age variants of English are able to expand rapidly around the world and feed into general speech and written patterns, and the languag is changing extremely fast. At one time English was the product of post-Roman Empire Angles and Saxons emigrating on to a tiny Celtic (the equivalent of today's Welsh) island, with developments from Vikings and something of the Norman French, and yet through accident and circumstance it is the world language, achieving what Esperanto sought but never did with its rational but rootless forms.
[] Internet
The US military set up a web like system that would not lose computer communications if one link was severed. It is this principle that has since been applied with routing for the Internet. Web pages, downlaod packages and emails travel the Internet, a series of servers and links that get connected from the telephone systems of the world. Packages of data are secured and connect together at the receiving end. Web pages sit on the creator's server and carry a URL address which can be found by the http address (web pages have http://(hyper text transfer protocol) usually www (World Wide Web). the name with no spaces. and then .extension/.s representing type of web page activity (company, organisation, educational, government) and usually but loosely country (USA has no country extension - .com is its equivalent of co.uk). This is also the case with File Transfer Protocol. Email is sent to the receiving server, name@servername.type/country, where it sits until the computer receives and erases it or just erases it.
[] Intervening variables
Environments and people that influence the reception of a message.
[] Intimisme
Late impressionist paintings restricted to interiors. Main persons: Pierre Bonard (1867-1947) and EdouardVuillard (1868-1940).
[] Invented tradition
Any object or practice that gains authority and recognition by being past-like, but they are constructions that in fact represent the concerns of the period. The best example is the Oxford Movement of the Church of England and Victorian gothic more generally, which was an anti-secularisation movement which took its imagery from the Middle Ages.
[] Investment
In a loose sense a financial arragment of lending money to gain a rate of return. In more concrete terms it means spending on capital items and other up front costs in order to gain a rate of return from subsequent new or increased economic activity. An investment appraisal comes first and its success depends on predicting a good pay back period, average rate of return on captial or discounted cash flow. The government imroves prospects of these with investment incentives. A high rate of investment intensity exists when it takes much in the way of capital and stocks to generate income flows, as in tourist hotels and attractions, although running a service like a touroperator is low in investment intensity. Banks are often most happy to invest in shops and tourist businesses like hotels where there is a high cash flow, so that even though there is high debt or lower prospects, there is always a flow of income.
[] Invisible exports or Invisible imports
Financial flows and services that are not tangible purchasable goods that come within the Balance of Payments. In Britain, traditionally, the financial services of the City of London have offset the almost permanent deficit in visibles.
[] Issues
Ideas in the news media which seem of impact and importance. Issues are selected by editors, who look at selections in other news media and draw on the consensus (hegemony?) and government workings . Also charity groups and other organisations produce issues and send these in packages to the news media including examples interviewable people. It makes the job of the journalist much easier and may exclude issues harder to find and portray. Sometimes the media wishes to set the agenda, perhaps according to a pre-set position of a conglomerate, but this raises the issue of novelty triumphing over the continuity of news issues. Issues sell, which determines what is chosen - for example a tabloid newspaper will make an issue out of a scantily clad female celebrity's mundane life. Issues even like this can be accused of reinforcing hegemony by descent into trivia and many main would-be critical issues lie unexamined.