Synchronous soundA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWcians, vaudeville and radio stars. As a technical
possibility, synchronous sound had been inviting
interest from movie makers from as early as- In that year Monsieur Gaumont gave an
address to the Société Française de la Photog-
raphie, on film and employing synchronous
sound. Indeed, two years earlier Herr Ruhmer
demonstrated what he called ‘light telephony’ to
record sound directly onto the fi lm itself – the
fi rst soundtrack.
Following the inventions of the thermionic
valve by John Fleming in 1904 and the audion
vacuum tube by Lee De Forest in 1907, ampli-
fication of sound by comparatively simple
electric methods was feasible: the studios were
simply not interested, fearing, perhaps, the
impact language diff erences might have on the
universal appeal of fi lm as mime, whose only
verbal language was easily translatable titling
(see reference to suppression of radical potential
in supervening social necessity).
Though Lee De Forest’s Phonofilm of 1923
demonstrated how light waves could synchro-
nize sound and image, and though the Germans
had developed the finest early sound system
of all, Tri-Ergon, the continuing profitability
of the silent movie blinded the studios to two
signifi cant facts: the potential of silent fi lm had
practically been exhausted; and audiences were
becoming bored.
Lights of New York (1928) was the first all-
talking picture and within a year thousands of
cinemas had been equipped for sound. Warner’s
vitaphone disc was soon replaced by optical
sound systems where images and sound were put
together on the same fi lm, to make the married
print where sound synchronization with the
picture could not be lost. As sound recording
techniques developed, dialogue, sound eff ects
and music were recorded separately, using a
magnetic sound process, and then mixed at a
later stage, thus allowing latitude for changes
and creative editing.
Th e introduction of sound did not rescue the
cinema from the general economic slump that
followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. During
1931, cinema attendances in the US dropped
by 40 per cent and in 1932 the movie business
lost between US 4 and 5 million. However, it
was probably the new dimension of sound in
the cinema that enabled the industry to rally so
quickly.
The ‘Talkies’ interacted substantially with
radio, the one drawing technical and creative
ideas as well as talented personnel from the
other. By 1937, 90 per cent of US-sponsored
benign. It would be interesting to apply symbolic
convergence theory, the notion of homo narrans,
to fantasies entertained about racial superiority,
where fantasy becomes a nightmare. See topic
guide under communication theory.
▶Ernest G. Bormann, Communicative Th eory (Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1980); The Force of Fantasy:
Restoring the American Dream (Illinois University
Press, 1985).
Symbolic interactionism Term associated
with the ideas of American scholar Herbert
Blumer and crystallized in his book Symbolic
Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Univer-
sity of California Press, 1969; first paperback
edition, 1986). Blumer sees ‘meaning as arising
in a process of interaction between people’. Th e
meaning of an object or a phenomenon for one
person ‘grows out of the ways in which other
persons act towards the person with regard
to the thing’, that is the thing’s symbolic value.
Symbolic interactionism sees meaning as a
social product, as a creation ‘formed in and
through the defi ning activities of people as they
interact’. All meanings, emphasizes Blumer, are
subject to a constant and recurring ‘interpreta-
tive process’; and this is a ‘formative process in
which meanings are used and revised as instru-
ments for the guidance and formation of action’.
See self-concept; self-identity; semiol-
ogy/semiotics; semiotic power.
Symmetry, strain towards Concept posed
by Th eodore Newcomb in ‘An approach to the
study of communicative acts’, Psychological
Review, 63 (1953). Th e act of communication is
characterized, believes Newcomb, by a ‘strain
towards symmetry’, that is towards balance and
consistency. See congruence theory; inter-
personal communication; newcomb’s abx
model of communication, 1953.
Synchronic linguistics See linguistics.
Synchronous sound In film, sound effects
synchronized with the visual image were fi rst
used commercially in 1926, in Don Juan, but
it was Th e Jazz Singer in November 1927 that
caused the sensation among audiences and
marked the birth of the ‘Talkies’. Warner Broth-
ers had been heading for oblivion in the cut-
throat world of the hollywood studios when
the company adopted a system developed by the
Bell Telephones Laboratories which reproduced
sound from large discs, matching sound and
picture by mechanical linkage. Nothing in the
cinema was ever the same again.
Th e ‘Talkies’ marked the end of many careers
made in the silent era, but created new opportu-
nities for actors from the theatre, writers, musi-