The Dictionary of Media and Communications, By Daniel Chandler & Rod Munday

This book is a useful corrective to the assumption that media studies is an easy option. The entry on "relevance theory" informs us it is "a theory of pragmatics based on the principle... it is a necessary condition for communication that all utterances are presumed to be related to contextual assumptions."

The semiotic mists also swirl in entries on falsified metacommunication, linguistic relativism, paradigmatic axis... Despite the book's impressive scope, ranging from flâneur to whip-pan and from big close-up to Enlightenment (Age of), there is one odd omission.

A consideration of panopticon, Bentham's prison in which all prisoners would be continuously observed, mentions Foucault, but not Orwell.