Language Acquisition & Symbographic Research

I recently sat in on a lecture/salon regarding language acquisition research and it re-confirmed the power and value of SymbographicTM research to help understand the meaning, motive, emotion, and identity of constituent groups and audience segments.

As some of you know, my wife is in the data collection phase of her PhD dissertation. She is using a mixed-methods approach -- looking at motivation among middle school-aged students to persist or not in foreign language immersion programs. I sat in on a presentation she gave earlier in the week and saw some strong parallels in her research and those of my research and consulting background in communication and symbolic identity. Not to trivialize her research or over simplify it, but rather to keep this post a manageable length I’ll focus on two items – the value of Symbographic research in understanding your audience segments and the need to conduct research with your target customers and constituents.

1) In her research, she is seeing strong elements of motivation and identification that would not be picked up solely in a quantitative study. From a SymbolicID and Symbolic Convergence perspective this makes sense. While we may have people that are demographically and sociographically similar, their motives and identification with a foreign language are quite different. From a Symbographic perspective, some of the students persist for righteous reasons (they want to learn more, stretch the brain, etc. – which is quite interesting that middle-schoolers are that progressive), while others do it for more social reasons – family and peer group influence, or by learning other languages you can communicate with more people. Social reasons may exist for not persisting as well, as the kids are now feeling nervous about fitting in with their peers. I’m guessing there would be few pragmatic reasons for persisting in a language immersion program.

2) Another element in my wife’s research is way the students have been traditionally left out of the research. Some scholars are recognizing and calling for research with the students when discerning their motivation for persisting – not continuing to rely on the teachers and parents for data. This reminded me that we often gloss over the customer/end-user in our communication and research efforts, like the students have been in previous motivation research.

Take-Aways
1) Symbographic research provides valuable insight into the meaning, motive, identity and emotion of your consitituent groups and audience segments. By understanding the dramas (righteous, social, pragmatic, hybrid, or no vision) you can more effectively communicate with your audience than relying on your standard demo-, socio-, and psycho-graphic research.

2) Remember the end-user/customer in your research and design.

Podcasting Continues to Grow

From eMarketer & Universal McCann. Look at the global growth of podcasting (specifically, and social media generally). Now, compare that to the trend lines for appointment television and newspaper subscriptions. To paraphrase McLuhan, we are seeing a retribalization of society driven by electronic media...as the long-tail continues to stretch.

Kamen is working on a new type of prosthetic arm

As you know, I've been fascinated with TED.com as of late. Here's another great video from the site. It's Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, talking about his new project.

Poetic Prophet - Waxin' and Milkin' All Your Suboptimized Sites

It's hard to be a prophet in your own town, especially when it comes to SEO, site conversion, and paid search. Let the Poetic Prophet drop some mad rhymez to help optimize.

Sanctioning Agent, out!

What's Your Connection Strategy?

Beyond brand and symbolic identity, you need to understand the technology that will be used to deliver your message and enable engagement with your stakeholders. The technology you choose creates structures that both enable and constrict future communication. Five years ago, we didn't think about gesture technology or a robust web browser on our phone. Five years from now, what will we have available? User experience and design elements will be challenged as we continue to move away from the standard keyboard, monitor, mouse framework.

Lying & Symbolic Identity

Hillary misspeaking...er, lying. about what happened in Bosnia 12 years ago may be her Howard Dean scream, the Quayle "potatoe" moment, Dukakis in an ill-fitting helmet riding in a tank, or a George Allen "macaca." One that reminds voters of what they might fear about the candidate and lets that dominate the media. Dean (crazy), Quayle (dumb), Dukakis (weak on military), and Allen (racist) become hard to shake when the candidate themeselves provide the ammo to "ground" a negative idenity. This nearly innoculates them from success as they reinforce a negative dramatic vision of their personae. Maybe Hillary can ask hubby Bubba how one should tell the truth. I did not have sexual relations with... Oh wait, he did.

Remember kids, you want a sane person on the other end of that red phone, not one that thinks she's under attack.



Take aways:
1. Meaning is co-created -- just because you say it doesn't make it so, your audience participates in the construction of a symbolic reality.
2. Today's technology and media cycles make it harder for you to try and recreate your image, especially when you leave behind such easy targets.


Gotta run, I'm under fire...head down, zig zag.

TED - Ideas Worth Spreading

I was recently turned onto TED by a coworker. TED stands for technology, entertainment, design. There's a lot of good, in depth content. In this nerd's opinion, Wow! What a great site. As a sampling, here's a video of Larry Lessig (Stanford prof and digital copyright authority). "TEDTalks" are also available via podcasts.

Yikes

Saw this on the 37 Signals blog. Crikey!! Cool, nightmare-inspiring, and all around sublime.