Amber's Blog: Semiotics

Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Pierce

2. Which French ‘Structuralist’ recently developed this media concept?

Roland Barthes

3. The two methods:

a. Describing the TEXT is called denotations

b. Myths and associations with the TEXT is called connotations

4. What quest is at the heart of the semiotic approach?

Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological

dimensions

5. Identify the factor that is given for readings of a media texts that determines the

variety of meanings it can give? It can depend on the genre

6. What word is given for OPEN TEXTS? Polysemic

7. Popular and mass culture e.g. mass media texts are known as CLOSED texts.

8. Anchorage where words, captions or logos are used to direct a reader towards a

particular meaning.

9. Preferred meaning is when a text prefers one particular meaning. These can be a result of

media producers agendas and assumptions.

10. Define Stuart Hall’s THREE main types of audience decoding:
a. DOMINANT: the reader fully accepts the preferred reading so that the code

seems natural and transparent.

b. NEGOTIATED: the reader partly believes the code and broadly accepts the

preferred reading, but sometimes modifies it in a way which reflects their own

position, experiences and interests.

c. OPPOSITIONAL: The readers social position places them in an oppositional

relation to the dominant code. They reject the reading.

11. How media texts speak to an audience is known as direct address.

12. Define what the MALE GAZE is:

The male gaze is the way heterosexual men tend to objectify and sexualise women.

13. What is semiotics?

Semiotics is the study of signs and their meaning in society. A sign is something

which can stand for something else.

We can see different meanings in society and we can understand what these meaning stand for.

Amber's Blog