key terms denotation - refers to the simplest, most obvious level of meaning of a sign, be it a...

Key TermsDenotation - refers to the simplest, most obvious level of meaning of a sign, be it a word, image, object or sound and occur immediately to the audience

Connotation - refers to the second order of meaning in which a wider range of associations may arise and rely on the representational and symbolic levels of meaning that can be associated with or suggested by a sign. These meanings often depend on the culture and background of the ‘reader’.

Myths - frequently told stories that a culture repeats in order to convey the dominant values and ideologies of that culture.

Structural theory

• Semiotics, structuralism and post-structuralism are theories that explore the way in which audiences gain meaning from media texts.

• In AS Media Studies you began to understand how audiences read media language, such as colour, camera work, clothing, editing and ‘mise-en-scene’ in media texts such as moving image and magazines.

Semiotics

• The study of codes or languages and the signs from which they are made such as words in spoken or written language.

• We have learnt to read another range of languages or codes such as nodding or shaking your head means ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in body language.

• Semiotics has been extended into many different areas, for example the car someone drives or the clothes they wear convey a certain message and give information to the ‘viewer’.

• Give an example of what the reader of the text could interpret through the choice of car someone drives and then through the choice of clothes they wear.

Saussure (1983) suggested that there are three levels on which we read media texts.

• Syntactic level – identifies the basic denotations in the text, its dominant elements, for example the colour or overall effect.

• Representational level – looks at the representations conveyed in the text

• Symbolic level – involves the hidden cultural or symbolic meanings that the text conveys.

What can you read from these pictures?

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Connotations?

Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?

Denotations?

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Connotations?

Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?

Denotations?

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Denotations?Connotations?

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Denotations?Connotations?

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Denotations?Connotations?

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Structural Theory - Semiotics

Denotations?Connotations?

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Structural Theory - SemioticsDenotations?

Connotations?

Who is the institution behind this text? What ideology is embedded

in the text?Audience? (Mass or Niche? Theory?)

Making it right - highlights

Making it right - highlights

Barthes (1967) developed Saussure’s ideas to analyse media texts in relation to culture.

• He suggested that our understanding of many media texts rests not merely upon what the texts portray but on the texts’ relationship to frequently told stories or myths in our culture.

The Cinderella myth

• Many media texts convey or tap into popular myths. The romantic comedy genre of films often draws on the Cinderella myth.

• There is a repeated narrative a girl rescued from her miserable life by a handsome man.

Barthes (1967)• For Barthes (1967), the final layer of signification

(the idea, meaning or concept that is represented) relates to cultural meaning.

• In terms of the Cinderella myth the cultural meanings or rather the ideologies and values conveyed are that men are active and women are passive, that men are economically powerful providers and a women’s key role is to be sexually alluring.

• Try to think of three more films that use the ‘Cinderella myth’

The Cinderella Myth

What does this magazine cover articulate about the Cinderella myth?

What does it assume about little girls?

What is the ideology embedded in the text?

Homework: How are women represented in the following texts? (Apply a structural analysis. Also, think about stereotypes, etc.)