Aaron Burr
(1756–1836)US Democratic Republican statesman. After losing the presidential election to Jefferson in 1800, Burr was elected Vice-President. He was defeated in the contest for the governorship of New ...
abacus
An ancient device for performing arithmetic calculations by sliding beads along rods or in grooves. Despite the spread of electronic calculators and computers, the abacus is still widely used in the ...
abduction
An inference process widely used in artificial intelligence, particularly in expert systems and rule-based systems. In diagnosis, for example, there may be a rule like “if measles then red spots” so ...
aberrant decoding
Making sense of a message or text in terms of a different code from the one used to encode it (Eco). This can be the basis for cultural misunderstandings: for example, the hand gesture made by ...
abortion
There is no actual prohibition in the Bible against aborting a foetus. Nevertheless, in the unanimously accepted Jewish consensus, abortion is a very serious offence, though foeticide is not treated ...
above-the-line
A term which now has come to mean mass audience advertising and promotional campaigns—for example, to describe campaigns that are targeted at high volumes of consumers in a large number of countries ...
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–65)US Republican statesman, 16th President of the USA (1861–65). His election as President on an anti‐slavery platform antipathetic to the interests of the southern states helped precipitate ...
absent presence
1. In poststructuralist theory, a concept most closely associated with Derrida, for whom it refers to the mythical status of the supposed hub of any system of ideas (see also deconstruction; ...
absent signifier
1. A particular feature which is perceived as missing from a representation in any medium, especially where it is ‘notable by its absence’, breaching expectations. See also commutation test; ...
academies
Are societies or institutions for the cultivation and promotion of literature, the arts or science, or of some particular branch of science such as medicine, for example, the Académie de ...
Academy aperture
Named after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, this is the standard size of the 35-mm aperture plate of film projectors and printers. It produces an aspect ratio (expressed as 1.33:1 ...
Acanthus
(family Acanthaceae)A genus of shrubs and perennial herbs, most of which are xeromorphic and have spiny leaves. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals. The upper lip of the corolla is lacking. ...
access
1. (accessibility) General availability for use: e.g. the percentage of a given population owning or having access to a communications medium/technology. This was a key issue for Cooley in 1909; ...
account handler
In advertising and web design agencies, the person who acts as the intermediary between the agency and the client, whose job is to interpret the client's brief and manage the process of its ...
acoustic flow
In speech perception, the stream of vocal sounds in which a listener competent in that spoken language is able to identify words.
acrostic
A poem, word puzzle, or other composition in which certain letters in each line form a word or words. The word is recorded from the late 16th century, and comes via French from Greek akrostikhis, ...
active audience theory
The view (particularly associated with mass-media usage) that the audiences are not merely passive receptacles for imposed meanings (see hypodermic model) but rather individual audience members who ...
active picture
The television picture visible to the viewer, as distinct from the parts of the image at the top and bottom of the screen visible only to the television engineers. See vertical ...
actuality
1. Film of real people going about their everyday lives rather than of actors playing roles (often as segments incorporated into fictional or fictionalized narrative films in order to add realism).2. ...
ad retention
(market research)The percentage of consumers who recall a specific advertisement or brand even after exposure to the advertising has ceased. Advertisements thus have a residual ‘half-life’. See also ...