According to Griffin (2009, p. 455), Muted Group is "People with little power who have trouble giving voice to their perceptions because they must re-encode their thoughts to make them understood in the public sphere; e.g., women." I will use the film 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy' as an example where the Veronica was at a constant struggle to complete and attract attention for air time on TV rather than her more dominant male colleagues to help understand how power privileges in the divided in men and women in our daily lives.
Kramarae (2005) states that muted group theory suggest in which women are confines to what they can say, when and with what results moreover, languages are man-made; constructed by man in order for them to express themselves and this leads to women being muted. Kramarae and Ardener established that this mutedness is also caused by lack of power dynamics in any group with low rank and they are deemed as "black holes" due to being overlooked and seen invisible (Griffin, 2009, p. 455). In the case of the Veronica, due to their lack of 'power' as a upcoming female news reporter rather than their male counterparts, she is usually ignored from given any TV air time and are not fully utilized as they should be. Kramarae assumes that women see the world differently from men due to dissimilar experience in division of work, furthermore due to men's political dominance and their perception is dominant, hence it ensures that men have the 'controlling power' especially control of the dominant mode of expression.
Co-anchors; Ron Burgundy and Veronica Comingstone |
Muted Group Theory focuses on women who are muted but nowadays more and more women are able to empress themselves such as seen in the movie, women should not be discounted as invisible despite the 'power privileges' that we see in our daily lives.
References:
Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look At Communication Theory (7th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kramarae, C. (2005). Muted Group Theory and Communication: Asking Dangerous Questions. Women & Language, 28(2), 55-61.
Kissack, H. (2010). Muted voices: a critical look at e-male in organizations. European Journal of Training and Development, 34(6), 539-551.
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