MEDIA STUDENT'S BOOK - SEMIOTICS, STRUCTURALISM, DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION, DIFFERENT KIND OF SIGNS, ADVERTISING IMAGES, IMAGES FROM PHOTOJOURNALISM

MEDIA STUDENT'S BOOK

The Media are as places which most of us inhabit. Their messages seem to flow around us. The audio-visual and verbal languages have become as a key part of a modern world. Modern media are often thought as a kind of conveyor belt of meaning between the world and audiences, producing images about a debate, an event or a place. Sometimes this involves news, the hidden secrets of celebrities and so on. To understand well the functions of media we can study the Semiotics . Semiotic approaches are part of the subject area, of television and of press and fashion with their frequent discussions of style differences.

SEMIOTICS

Semiotics is also called semiology and we can define it as the study of signs, or of the social production of meaning by sign system, of how thinks come to have significance. Semiotics argues that verbal language is just one of many systems of meaning. These include gesture, clothing, architecture and so on. At the time when semiotics was first developed (at the late 1950), there were two main models for understanding language:

Language as a reflection of the world (for example: in realistic photographic or film styles)

Language as based in the intentions of the author, that is the way in which we each express ideas, feelings. (this is the individual language)

Language is both constructed and inherited by people, using it within existing cultures to produce meaning.

Semiotics used the term signs to describe the way that meanings are socially produced. Signs have several characteristics:

First a sign has a physical form called the signifier. The signifiers are sometimes marks on paper, sometimes sounds in the air.

Second a sign refers to something other than itself. This is called signified and it  is important to understand that it is a concept, not a real thing in the world

Third semiotics emphasises that our perception of reality is itself constructed and shaped by the words and signs we use in various social contexts.

STRUCTURALISM

First Structuralism argued that all human organisation is determined by large social or phychologycal structures with their own logic. Freud and Marx in '900 century had begun to interpret the social world in this structured way. Freud argued that the human psyche (especially the unconscious mind) was one such structure, making us act in ways of which we are aware.

Marx argued the economic life, and particularly people's relationship to the means of production.

Second and later structuralism argued that meanings can be understood only with these systematic structures and the differences which they generate. For example structuralism anthropology might study how a culture organizes its rules on food as a system by:

Rules of exclusion (the English see eating frogs and snails as a barbaric French custom)

Signifying oppositions (savoury and sweet aliments are not eaten together in most western cuisine)

Rules of association of foods

Lévi Strauss was a structuralist anthropologist whose work has had a great influence on semiotics. He emphasised the importance of structuring oppositions in myth systems and in language.

Saussure applied this to the ways that language produced meanings, often through defining terms being the opposite of other terms: black/white, hot/cold and so on.

An example of these opposition terms is the film Titanic. The narrative of Titanic works partly by differences such as upper deck/lower deck; upper class/lower class; American/European which are worked through in signifiers of types of music, of dress, of colours, of sets etc. Another example is advertising campaigns where the qualities which will be attributed to the product are contrasted (example coca-cola). This structuralist emphasises on oppositions help explain semiotics insistence that signs are fully understood only by reference to their difference from other signs in their particular representing system.

DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

Signs denote different aspects of our experience. The word Red denotes a certain part of the colour spectrum differentiated by language from other parts. But signs also connote as well as define things. The word red can be used to describe blood, fires, blushing complexions etc. This perhaps indicates why, in certain cultures, the colour and the word have gathered connotations of fierceness, passion, danger. In Pretty Woman there is a scene where Vivien wears a red, quite formal dress. At this point in the film it could plausibly be argued to signify a growing confidence and passion in her feelings about her relationships with Edward. In this film red signifiers also passion. The word Gold again denotes a part of the colour spectrum and a particular metal. Example: Golden opportunity; Good as gold.

The US flag, the stars and stripes, originally signified or denoted the union of the different states after the Civil War (1861-l865) between the North and the slave-owning South. There are now 50 stars to represent the number of states, and the red stripes represent the original 13 British colonies and the blood of the revolutionary war of independence against the British.

DIFFERENT KIND OF SIGNS

A key distinction is made (initially by Pierce) between iconic, indexical, arbitrary and symbolic signs. Verbal language, spoken and written, is mostly composed of arbitrary signifiers in the sense that, there is no necessary resemblance between the black marks on the e. Iconic signifiers always resemble what they signify. There a physical similarly between a photo and a good drawing. The term indexical is used to describe signifiers that act as a kind of evidence:

For example → smoke of a fire, sweat of effort.

Also the distinction of analogue and digital are indexical signs that refer to the time passing. The term symbolic is used of visual signs that are arbitrary linked to referents. Example → the diamond hats often worn by monarchs are called crowns and symbolise monarchy.

ADVERTISING IMAGES

In textual analysis with any image we need to observe its formal or rhetorical strategies especially: to examine the areas of compositions, framing, colours, choice of words and so on. The analysis need not be overlong. The advertising can only make invitations to meanings. We can only speculate about the intentions of its makers. Analysis of ads (advertisement) often benefits from locating them in the meaning system from which they derive part of their power.

IMAGES FROM PHOTOJOURNALISM

Advertising images are often constructed in ning meetings, studios, specially chosen location, real or digitalized. But the evidence of photojournalism is that it seems "caught" a kind of trace of the real. When we analyse such photos we should see:

Photographic and technical codes such as lighting, colours, distance from subject, any evidence of an amateur or professional photographer, developing techniques. Some of these would be researched outside the image itself.

Codes related to cultural and aesthetic frames of reference: the choice of what to include and what to leave out via framing

Codes of intertextuality

In this context images are connected only by one event. The composition of this image is striking.

The text is talked about the American soldiers that ted the American flag in the island of Iwo Jima. This photo is at the same time:

An iconic sign (the photo is analogue; there are real people in the photo)

An indexical sign (the photo is not digital but it is real because we can see the sky, the light and the shadows; this is an evidence of the outdoors)

But later this photo was modified by other photographers whom have given another sense to the photo. In this moment the photo isn't real.

VOICES AND SOUND IMAGES

Images need not always to be visual. In the case of these kinds of images we can't see a person that talks or that sings but we can hear his/her voice. Then hearing this voice we can express our opinion about. Key components of voices in play are:

Accent, dialect and language register (formal and informal manner of speaking)

For example: in the radio we don't hear the original voice of the speaker but its reproduction.

NARRATIVES

Making narratives or stories is a key way in which meanings get constructed and organized both in and outside the media. Most of us spend a lot of time telling stories every day. Systematic study of narrative in modern media:

Narrative theory suggests that stories, in whatever media and culture, share certain characteristics.

But particular media are able to tell stories in different ways.

According to Vladimir Propp is possible to group the characters of the narrative into 8 character roles. These are:

The villain

The hero or the character who seeks something

The donor who provides an object with some magic property

The helper who aids the hero

The princess, reward for the hero and object of the villain schemes

Her father who rewards the hero

The dispatcher who send the hero on his way

The false hero

Such work in stories is inevitably bound up with the times and social orders which produced them. For example: Propp's original study worked in the context when many woman would die in childbirth and the role of stepmothers could be a reference point. But now the hero can often be a female character, like Xena or Buffy, especially since the word "heroine" (Propp's princess).

Narration describes how stories are told, how their material is selected and arranged in order to achieve particular effects with their audiences. Plot and story are key terms here. Plot → is everything visible and audibly present in the film before us. Story → consisting of all the events in a narrative both explicitly presented and inferred.

An important part of the construction of narratives involves the "voice" telling the story. A  first person narration will use I as the voice of the teller. A third person or impersonal narration however refers to a story which seems "to get itself told" as in "Once upon a time there was a prince" . .

NARRATIVES IN DIFFERENT MEDIA

Photography

In this sense narrative is founded images and colours (an example are cartoons). The  difference between black and white and colours, often signals "pastness" and "presentness" in the story.

Comic strips

Cinema

Radio

We have closed narratives and open narratives.

Closed narratives are films that we watch to the cinema. Open narratives are television's and radio's soap opera. Another kind of narratives is the influence of computer's culture. Via computer we can read a lot of stories. Also the computer is more rapid to find all kinds of material we need.

GENRE AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

All media output is classified. This classification is made by:

Its makers

Its commentators

Its consumers

Censorship, art and reviewing

Other ways of classification also have the power to position media products in some ways and not in others. In the UK is operated a censorship system for films and videos by the regulatory body, the BBFC (British board of film classification) and for television by the code of ITC (independent television commission). The classifying bodies decide for which audiences a product is presumed to be suitable and sometimes amend or cut it to fit the creature of this presumed audience. At the cinema these categories of expectation would include "accompanied by a parent and "only when over 18".

Genre and escapism

Media theorists have been invested in genre because of:

Its importance in understanding the low-status of mass-produced media products, in relation to higher-status art's forms.

Its focus on how entertainment forms might work to organize and to narrow or to expand the expectations throw which we understand and imagine the world and its possibilities.

The real and verisimilitude

All media forms are constructed working with codes and conventions. There is no division between the real and the imagination. Some genres have more verisimilitude, or connection to the real, and this generally gives them higher cultural status than others. This real-seemingness in texts involves two areas:

Generic verisimilitude → sets of expectations which are internal to the genre such as how a "real" vampire film or science fiction film.

Cultural verisimilitude → the genre's relationships to expectations about the world outside of the genre, the real world (gangster film for example). Generic elements change from culture to culture in these kinds of genre.

After the attacks on the US of 11 September 2001 was produced a discussion about the relation of escapism genre forms and the rest of the real world. Then US video store experienced an increase in demand for terrorist-themed films. However action and adventure film is often valued as a very escapist film. In the audience starts up a process called intertextuality when the audience watches a variety genre. Intertextuality is the variety of the ways in which media and other texts interact with each other, rather than being unique or distinct.

Stereotype

This term could be used to represent something which would need considerable work with individual pieces of type to show fine details. Stereotyping is the process of categorization necessary to make sense of the world, and the flood of information and impressions we receive minute by minute. An example of stereotypes are black slaves, that for many years in Hollywood cinema and other discourses, have worked on cotton tations before the American civil war of 1861-l865. Stereotypes seem to insist on absolute difference whereas exist spectrums of differences (think of gender, age, racial differentiation etc).

Representation and gender

The distinction between sex and gender is still very useful. Sex in this context is not the same as sexuality. Sex difference refers here to the division of people into male and female, depending on physical characteristics, sex organs, hormonal make-up and so on. Gender differences are culturally formed. They exist on the basic of the biological, "the body", but build a big system of differentiation over and above it.

Representation and real

The media text is a representation in the other sense of the word: a construction with its own formal rules and fascinations.

Positive and negative images

History suggests that, once an oppressed group, such as women or black people, perceives its political and social oppression, it begins to try changing that oppression to the level of representation. After struggling sometimes for simply visibility, this group will then try to replace 'negative' with 'positive' images.

IDEOLOGIES AND POWER

Ideology → doctrine that studies the origin and nature of ideas. This term refers to:

Set of ideas which give importance of the social world

The relationship of these ideas to the ways in which power is socially distributed

The way in which such ideas and meanings are usually posed as natural and obvious rather than socially aligned with particular power groupings.

Origin of the term: Marxist approaches

Most discussions of ideology in Media and cultural studies comes out of the work of Marx, who writing in the '900 century. He analysed the new profit and market dominated system "Capitalism" and the power of two classes within it, the rising industrial manufactures (or capitalists) and the working class (or proletariat). According to Marx, the working class had the power to change history by its united actions. He used the concept of ideology to account for how the capitalist class protected and preserved its economic interests. Three of his ideas has been particularly important for Media Studies:

The dominant ideas of any society and those which work in the interests of the ruling class, to secure its dominance. It implies that the working class needs to develop its own ideas and struggle for  the means of circulating them if it is successfully to oppose the capitalist class.

Related to this, he talk about a base-superstructure model of the social role of institutions such as media. Such a model is also often called economic determinist since the economic base is argued to determine cultural and political activity.

A final important step is the argument that, the dominant class is able to make workers believe that existing relations of exploitation and oppression are natural and inevitable. This power mystifies the real conditions of existence, and how they might be changed.

Hegemony  term used by Gramsci to indicate this situation of dominance over the powerless class. The process of globalization are discussed in highly ideological ways. The hegemonic version emphasis globalization as being :

such a big process as to be irresistible

associated with global technologies

related to theories which provoke that the world cannot be rationally and morally accounted for.