Philosopher Peirce, inputs that 'we think only in signs'. The culture which we live in effects the meaning that society gives to things. When culturally we accept meaning without societies agreement on this they are meaningless. The audience creates meaning through signs we see and unconsciously interpret. Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning.
Ferdinand
de Saussure (1974)
Linguist Ferdinand created a dyadic or two-part model of what a 'sign' is. The two parts to the dyadic are:
1. A 'signifier': this is the form which the sign takes
2. The 'signifier': The concept which it represents
Pierce extends on his point with three types of signs:
1. Icon/Iconic: The signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified (recognised by looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) through being similar in possessing some of its qualities. For example, portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model, onomatopoeia. For example we can recognise that a crown is a symbol of royalty.
2. Index/Indexical: A mode which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or casually) to the signified - this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms (pain, a rash, pulse-rate), measuring instruments (weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level).
3. Symbol/symbolic: a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional - so that the relationship must be learnt: e.g. language in general (plus specific languages, alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words, phrases and sentences) numbers, morse code, traffic lights, national flags.
Building on the subject of semiotics the way in which we describe the relationship between the signifier and the signified are as connotation and denotation. We make an analytical distinction between the two types of signifieds: a denotative signified and a connotative signified. The meaning includes both denotation and connotation.
Roland Barthes (1967) Roland analysed covers in terms of symbols and how small details become symbolic to ideology. He argued how in photography connotation can be distinguished from denotation. He describes to connotation as 'myth'. For Barthes, myths were the dominant ideologies of our time. The orders of signification called denotation and connotation combine which produce ideologies.
Paradigms and Syntagms
Roman Jakobson (1956) and later Claude Levi-Strauss developed the idea that meaning arises from the different between the signifiers, which come in two kinds:Syntagmatic which is concerning how the audience is positioned
Paradigmatic concerning the substitution Film and televisions have paradigms which include ways of changing shot (cut, fade, dissolve and wipe). The medium and genre are also paradigms and particular media texts derive meaning from the ways in which the medium and genre used differs from the alternatives.
When evaluating media language it is an evaluation of all the micro elements and how they have created meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations/ideology, targeting of audiences through these micro elements. To evaluate we have to use semiotic terminology to explain the encoding of these elements and the codes and conventions within the media texts. Looking at preferred meaning that we would ideally want our audiences to decode based on what we encode can link to the reading of texts.
Micro Elements
Mise-En-Scene: Creates the diegetic world/diegesis which is the fictional space and time implied by the narrative, so, the world in which the story takes place.
Key areas: location, character, cinematography, layout and page design.
Camerawork: Four elements come with camerawork which are shot types, camera composition, camera movement, camera angles
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Editing: Post-production technique in which the footage shot during production is cut up and reassembled in such a way as to tell the story. TV shows and films are not filmed in chronological order, after filming the 'takes', post-production edits in the correct order.
- Long takes are takes which are of long length whereas short takes only last a few seconds. Two basic types of editing are continuity and non-continuity.
