Every medium has it's own language that it uses to to communicate meaning. TV uses verbal and written language as well as moving images and sound. They are called languages because they use familiar codes and conventions which are genrally understood; for example scary music builds fear in the horror genre, a close up camera shot could infer intimacy, and a big headline on a newspaper signals significance.
Understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of media language increases our appreciation and enjoyment of media experiences as well as helps us to be susceptible to manipulation from the media.
Evaluating media language is an evaluation of all the micro-elements (sound, editing, cinematography and mise-en-scene) and how they have created meaning to inform us about genre narratives, representation/ideology and targeting of audiences.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1931)
"We think only in signs." - signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects but such things have no intrinsic meaning and only become signs when we invest them with meaning.
Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as signifying something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs by subconsciously relating them to familiar systems of conventions.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1974)
Ferdinand de Saussure put forward a dyadic (2 part) model of the sign. He said a sign is composed of:
- a signifier: the form which the sign takes
- the signified: the concept it represents
A sign can be:
An icon/iconic - a mode in which the signifier is received as resembling or imitating the signifier.
An index/indexical - a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected to in some way to the signified.
A symbol/symbolic - a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional.
In semiotics, denotation and connotation describe the connection between the signifier and signified.
Roland Barthes (1967)
He noted Saussure's models of the sign focused only denotation at the expense of connotation which was left to sub-theorists.
John Fiske (1982)
Denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed.
Fiske and Hartley (1982)
Barthes 'myths' were the dominant ideologies of this time, the 1st and 2nd order of significance, denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology which is classed as the 3rd order of signification.
Roman Jakobson (1956) and later Claude Levi-Strauss
Emphasised that meaning arises from the differences between signifiers are of two kinds; syntagmatic (concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution).
Charles Sanders Peirce (1931)
"We think only in signs." - signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects but such things have no intrinsic meaning and only become signs when we invest them with meaning.
Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as signifying something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs by subconsciously relating them to familiar systems of conventions.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1974)
Ferdinand de Saussure put forward a dyadic (2 part) model of the sign. He said a sign is composed of:
- a signifier: the form which the sign takes
- the signified: the concept it represents
A sign can be:
An icon/iconic - a mode in which the signifier is received as resembling or imitating the signifier.
An index/indexical - a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected to in some way to the signified.
A symbol/symbolic - a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional.
In semiotics, denotation and connotation describe the connection between the signifier and signified.
Roland Barthes (1967)
He noted Saussure's models of the sign focused only denotation at the expense of connotation which was left to sub-theorists.
John Fiske (1982)
Denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed.
Fiske and Hartley (1982)
Barthes 'myths' were the dominant ideologies of this time, the 1st and 2nd order of significance, denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology which is classed as the 3rd order of signification.
Roman Jakobson (1956) and later Claude Levi-Strauss
Emphasised that meaning arises from the differences between signifiers are of two kinds; syntagmatic (concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution).
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