Content Analysis & Semiology

Semiotics study of symbol and signs, science of signification.

Semiotics is defined as the theory of signs. It is about the tools,
processes and contexts we have for creating, interpreting and
understanding the meaning in a variety of different ways. - Stuart
Hall
Absence is sometimes more important than what is shown. We
cannot not communicate. Even silence is meaningful. There is no
final truth in semiotics. You can never state one truth, instead
you must come up with all the multiple meanings.
The term semiotics comes from the Greek semeiotikos (observant
of signs) which was coined by Hippocrates the founder of western
medicine. It was originally developed to designate the study of
warning signs produced by the human body (symptoms). It started
off in the medical sphere. Hippocrates argued that the particular
physical form that a symptom takes called a semeion which
constitutes a vital clue to its source. Its visible features announce
that something invisible (a disease, malady, ailment) is present in
the body. The idea of a symptom is central to semiotics.
Split in two:
Hard Data (objective sign) whatever the physician himself
observes with his eyes/ears or instruments such as an x-ray. They
are visible and tangible.
Soft Data : this is subjective data, whatever the patient relates
verbally about his/her feelings (pain in my chest) or what he/she
exhibits non-verbally (groaning while pointing at chest)
Sign: something which stands (to somebody) for something in some
respect or capacity.
Key theorists:
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) he is the father of
linguistics, Swiss linguist who developed structuralism,
believed that every language had a structure so to understand
it you must understand the structure, believed that meaning
does not reside in individual words but in a complex system of
relationships or structuralism
C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) American philosopher, he developed
the scientific system for logically understanding all kinds of
signs.
Verbal signs: the word

Visual signs: the image, perception of colour, philosophy of colour,

non-verbals, ads bla di bla.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe this is not a pipe, to show he is creating
an image of a pipe not a pipe. It is standing for a pipe, we can't
smoke through it. ' If I Had written on my picture ; this is a pipe I'd
have been lying' R, Magritte. He was a surrealist artist.
Semiotic: keywords:
sign
meaning (which is always fluid because meaning is subjective
through personal context)
concept
intention
representation
inter-textuality (when using another text, quotes, ads
parodying others, parts of movies that refer to others etc,
allusions, mostly used in jokes)
nature and convention ( we think that signs are natural for
example buying a pink dress for a newborn niece but this is
actually only conventional, there is no law)
misunderstanding
genres (genre specific signs for example what we expect to
see when we watch a horror movie)
stereotypes (similar to genre) what comes to mind when one
hears: old, teenagers, we tend to have a single story for
particular genres, people
ideologies
context time and place
What is the aim of semiotics: it is a tool for effective and holistic
understanding
we are not just consumers but also producers of meaning.
The ultimate goal of semiotics is in fact to unravel the meanings
that are built into all kinds of human products, from words, symbols,
narratives, symphonies, paintings and comic books to scientific
theories and mathematical theorems M Danesi.
The semiotician is a kind of detective.
Its central aim is to investigate, decipher, document and explain the
what, how, and why of signs no matter on how simple or complex
they are.

It can be applied to everything that human beings produce and

used to communicate and represent things in some psychologically
and socially meaningful way.
Why study semiotics:
1. to provoke you into thinking and talking about visual
communication rather than just do it.
2. To encourage you to pursue the issues more in depth.
3. To form your own conclusions independently of academics and
practitioners even if you end up disagreeing with everything
4. to experiment with some of the idea to see how or if they work
in practice.
5. Knowledge is power, offers much potential to educate, inform,
improve and benefit.
6. Offers us a deeper understanding of many intuitive decisions
they make.
Lecture 2
Semiotics has been applied to the study of:
body language
art forms
discourses of all kinds
visual communication
media advertising
narratives
language
objects
gestures
facial expressions
eye contact
memes
clothing
space
cuisine
rituals.
It helps flesh out recurrent patterns (structure) in the production of
human meaning.
The meaning of the word meaning: definition, opinion, dictionary,
symbolic, intention, indication, has importance, purpose, convey
In 1923 they came up with 23 different definitions for the word
meaning

We are interested in the way meaning is injected into signs by other

human beings.
Our main area of inquiry is produced meaning
The only way to study produced meaning is to study the products
themselves, determining how they convey meaning and then
reconstructing the various forms of meaning by inference.
No sign is born meaningful, meaning is built into signs and
texts.
Meaning is a cultural construction based on multiple layers
of input and interpretation.
Where do we derive meaning from?
Science (materiality)
culture: art, myth, legend, language, public
discourse,philosophy, cartoons, toys
While science can help us understand the materiality, or physical
reality of things, language, artistic expression, stories, philosophical
and public discourse, are the elements that combine to create
meaning. - Lucia Zammit
The Sign
Something physical that stands for something else.
Semeion a sensual indicator that communicates something
invisible (just like a symptom indicates a disease)
signs:
images
words
sounds
odours
flavours
non-verbals
objects
gestures
numbers
punctuation marks
road markings
silence
proxemics science of space, intimate space, personal space,
work space

these signs essentially have no meaning until one is attributed to

them.
Theorist Ferdinand de Saussure
The Signifier vs the Signified
sign = signifier + signified
1. signifier (Sr) often described as a physical object (shape,
colour, sound, text) has to be a thing and not a concept,
e.g. the spoken/or written word love would be a sound/image
or its graphical equivalent. Neither the sounds nor their written
form bears any relation to the object it is referring to.
Container (r) - glass
2. Signified (Sd) what the physical sign is referring to, a
mental concept not a physical object. Contained (d) the
meaning contained within the signifier.
According to Saussure the sign is completely arbitrary (based on
agreement, completely social constructed, relative, not
absolute, there is no natural reason/purpose.), there is no
connection between the sign and its meaning. This sets him apart
from previous philosophers like Plato or the scholastics, who
thought that there must be some connection between a signifier
and the object it signifies.
Polysemy when one signifier stands for multiple signifieds, when a
word/image/sound has multiple meanings.
Synonym: multiple signifiers (words, sounds, images) that stand for
the same thing.
e.g. tuffiegha, apple, pomme, all mean apple.
Sources of Signing
societies have 2 basic sources of signing:
natural (storm clouds, blushing)
conventional , depending on the rules of the particular society
I am part of ( language, gestures )
the text: a larger sign, it is used in linguistics and semiotics to refer
to any collection of signs which together form a coherent whole.
When reading a text importance is not only given to the signs within
but also the relationships between the signs.
The journey of a message:
sender: the person (or collective source) that motivates an action or
transmits a message.

Intention: the original meaning that the sender would like to

convey, (the reason)
message: any item of cultural data transmitted
transmission: the physical means by which a message is
transmitted (channel)
noise: anything that interferes with the reception of a message.
signification: form and substance of the sign
a sign: is a stimulus that is a perceptible substance, the mental
image of which is associated in our minds with that of another
stimulus.
A sign is always marked by an intention of communicating
something meaningful. This intention may be unconscious.
Semiology Pierre Guiraud
A sign is always marked by an intention, for example clouds in
the sky have no intention of signifying rain, nor does the wrongdoer
who leaves traces of his presence.
Codification
the relation between signifier and signified is always conventional
meaning an agreement between those who use them. The
convention may be implicit or explicit, and this is one of the flexible
boundaries which separate technical codes from poetic codes.
The notion of convention, particularly implicit convention, is
relative, it can be more or less strong, more or less unanimous,
more or less constraining. There are degrees of convention. It is
quasi-absolute in highway code, in chemical or algebraical
formulae. It is strong in the rule of good manners, in the techniques
of the theatre, in the more or less orthodox rules of rhetoric but the
relation between signifier and signified may be more intuitive,vague
and subjective. So codification is in fact an agreement among the
users of a sign. Thus a monosemic sign is more precise than a
polysemic one. Objective denotation is more accurate than
subjective connotation, an explicit sign is more precise than an
implicit one (to imply), and a conscious sign more than an
unconscious one. The more precise and widespread the convention
the more the sign is codified. Codification is a process, the more it is
used, the more precise it comes.
Motivation
two types of relation can be distinguished according to whether the
relation is motivated or unmotivated/arbitrary. Motivation is a
natural relation between the signifier and the signified, a relation

which is in their nature their substance or form, it is analogical in

the first case, homological in the second. The terms extrinsic and
intrinsic are also used sometimes.
Analogy may be metaphorical or metonymic according to whether
the properties common to signifier and signified enable one to
assimilate the former to the latter or on the other hand whether
they are linked by a bond in contiguity in space or time. In its
strongest form analogy is in the form of a representation: a
photograph, portrait, dramatic performance. The iconic value of the
representation is generally of a more schematic or abstract nature
as in the case of a map, a plan or a traffic sign.
Systematic versus Asystematic
signalling procedures are systematic if their messages can be
broken down into stable constant signs, such is the case with the
highway code with its discs rectangles and triangles constituting a
well-defined family of signs. But there are a-systematic procedures
such as an ad poster using form and colour to publicise a brand of
washing powder. It is doubtless one of the main tasks of semiology
to establish the existence of systems in apparently a-systematic
models of signification.
It is useful to distinguish between 2 types of syntax: temporal and
spatial
in articulated language optical signals and music the signs stand in
temporal relation to one another, whereas in painting drawing and
the relation is spatial. Many systems are mixed: dance, cinema.
Articulation
a message can be articulated if it can be broken down into elements
which they themselves are significant. Language is in a special
position among sign systems in that it has double articulation : first
it can be reduced to morphemes: (roots, affixes and endings) each
of which correspond to a particular signified. And then these
morphemes can be analysed into phonemes rang/sang, rage/sage,
rot/sot, the phoneme has no fixed semantic correlation unlike the
morphemes.
in cases where the articulation of the signifiers (lion/lioness)
corresponds to the meaning of the signified based on the trait of
masculine/feminine there is homology. With horse and mare there is
no relationship between the articulation and the signification.
Communications can be
an indication
an injunction

a representation
code is a system of explicit social conventions
hermeneutics: a system of implicit, latent, and purely contingent
signs
3rd Lecture.
3 types of signs
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839- 1914)
icon: a sign which physically resembles the object it signifies
whether through sight, sound, smell, touch or taste e.g. a
photograph visual: a map, a sign denoting ladies/gents,
verbal:onomatopoeia (the hum of the bees), olfactory: some
perfumes are artificial icon's of nature's smell (rose,
strawberry) He thus claims that because it looks like and is so
close to the object it is representing, icons belong to the
category of firstness.
Index: a sign which has a direct existential connection with its
object. For example smoke as a sign of fire. It is physically
related to (or affected by) its object. Belongs to the category of
secondness because it doesn't bear resemblance to what it is
representing. Visual: smoke as an index of fire, if I describe
myself as having specs and a yellow banner at the airport then
they will be indexes of me, olfactory: smell something burning,
auditory a sneeze, context and placement are very important
in indexical signs
symbol: a sign whose relationship to its object is entirely
based on convention. (agreement), it bears no logical
resemblance and so the relationship between the object and
sign must be learned in order to understand its representation.
National flags or logos that represent a company or
organisation, so too are alphabets, punctuation and morse
code. It is purely cultural, belongs to the category of thirdness.
Auditory: national anthems. Sometimes what we call icons on
our desktop are actually symbols, they don't look like what
they represent but we are used to the representation.
Does each sign fit only into one category?
No, (research examples?)
the fact that pink is associated with girls and blue with boys was
decided by an american marketer, up to 1918 white was the neutral
colour, it was only after that this distinction was apparent e.g.
Franklin Roosevelt picture. Time Magazine published a printed chart

showing sex-appropriate for girls and boys according to leading US

stores, originally pink was promoted for boys and blue for girls
Why pink and blue?
Marketing: standardisation made it easier to sell, the more you
individualise the more you sell
prenatal testing and gender discovery (1980s)
a dichotomy/binary thinking : any splitting of a whole into
exactly 2 non-overlapping parts. In other words it is a partition of a
whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets) that are.
mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to
both parts and
jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or
the other, either/or
The term comes from the Greek dichotomia (divided) dich two
tomia (cutting, incision)
in sociology they are the subject of attention because they may
form the basis to divisions and inequality.
Binary oppositions is an analytic category from structuralism (De
Sauussure). It is used to show how meaning can be generated out
of two-term systems.
There are specific pairs of opposites that have organised human
culture as we know it today. They differ from normal opposites
because they assume a deeper meaning.
In critical theory, a binary opposition (binary system) is a pair of
theoretical opposites. In structuralism it is seen as a fundamental
organiser of human philosophy, culture, and language.
Sometimes just by liking one you are automatically disliking the
other.
Rules of Binary Opposition
1. Meaning is generated by opposition: we know what
darkness is because we know what light is and vice versa,
signs or words mean what they do only in opposition to others,
their precise characteristics is being what the others are not.
Saussure- 'there can be no meaning without difference'.
Saussure advocated that binary opposition is the most
extreme form of significant difference possible, as in the binary
system there are only two signs or words. Shown in this way:
Land:Sea, the terms are mutually exclusive and together they
form part of reality. Us:them being in/out of a group.

2. Ambiguities are produced by binary logic, and are an

offence to it. In spaces between binary opposites a midway is
created. Between male and female, straight and gay the ones
in between are seen as controversial or taboo. These stark
oppositions actively suppress ambiguities or overlaps for
example beach as being both land and sea, but neither one or
the other. It is simultaneously one and the other, and neither
one nor the other. The market needs binary opposition but we
study it so as not to use it in media and our way of thinking.
3. Binary oppositions are structurally related to one
another, we prefer one over the other, binary function to
order meaning and you may find alterations in meaning due to
the imbalance of power and the creation of hierarchy, one is
more powerful than the other, one is better than the other.
Even if we think about it and know it's not true, instinctively.
The binary Masculity:Feminity can be organised as following
good:bad
presence: absence
male:female
rational:emotional
thought:speech
mind:body
we don't have this binary written down anywhere
Us:them
positive:negative
maltese:foreign
legal:illegal
civilised:uncivilised
victims:criminals
fair:dark
good:bad
when we move from one binary to another there is transference of
meaning, and sometimes even inclusion of moral judgement.
Masculinity:femininity
outdoors:indoors
public:private
social:personal
production:consumption
men:women
seen as one of the several influential characteristics or
tendencies of western and western-derived thought that
typically one of the two opposites assumes a role of

dominance over the other. The categorization of binary

opposition is often value-laden and ethnocentric with an
illusory order and superficial meaning. Eastern thought deals
with both, inclusion.
These oppositions create society's ideals of good and bad.
They are convenient: can be useful, easy,
The In-Between
an axis of possibilities
between child:adult there is youth.
Between us:them there are deviants.
According to the binary system, an area of overlap is impossible. It
is a scandalous a category that ought not to exist.
The ambiguous boundary between two recognised categories is
where taboo can be expected. The news often structures the world
into binarily opposed categories. When this can't be done, taboo is
created such as sick, deviant.
Liminality
liminal refers to the thresholds, boundaries and borderlines of
binary constructions. It is the third option in world of only 2. it is the
beginning of pluralism, possibility and openness,
Axis Thinking by Brian Eno
An axis is a name for a continuum of possibilities between two
extreme positions: so the axis between black and white is a scale of
greys.
Converting two polar opposites into a spectrum of in betweens
All creativity happens in between binaries
If you categorise something on an axis between two possibilities, for
example a haircut as being feminine or masculine. And then
attempt to categorise it in terms of neatness or shagginess you
could then make a kind of graph, with feminine and masculine on
one axis and shagginess or neatness on the other and every haircut
could fall at a point that represents a particular position in relation
to the 4 possibilities. Each of these points is a cultural address, or a
stylistic address to which any possible haircut could belong.
to describe a wide range of possible haircuts we would need
several others:
natural <--> contrived rebel <-->conformist wild <--> civilized
futuristic <--> nostalgic businesslike <--> bohemian.
Each of these polar pairs defines another axis along which any
particular haircut could be located. And each of these exists as a
'dimension' in the haircut space, which now becomes

multidimensional and no longer easily drawable on a sheet of paper.

a stable duality can easily dissolve into a proliferating and unstable
sea of hybrids. What happens at such times is that all sorts of things
become possible: there is a tremendous energy release, a great
burst of experimentation. Not only do the emerging possible
positions on this new-born axis have to be discovered and
experienced and articulated; they have to be placed in context with
other existing axes to see what new resonances appear.
The period of transition is marked by excitement, experimentation
and resistance. Whenever a duality starts to dissolve, those who felt
trapped at one end of it suddenly feel enormous freedom they can
now redescribe themselves. But, by the same token, those who
defined their identity by their allegiance to one pole of the duality
( and rejection of the other ) feel exposed. The walls have been
taken away, and the separation between inside and outside is
suddenly gone. This can create wide-scale social panic: vigorous
affirmations of the essential rightness of the old ways, moral
condemnation of the experimentalists, back to basics campaigns,
all the familiar signs of fundamentalism
the period of transition is marked by excitement, experimentation
-and resistance. - Eno. B
The evolution of culture is the gradual rethinking of the whole
matric of axes the discovery of new ones, the careful
tailoring/trimming of existing ones.
You could say that the evolution of culture is the gradual rethinking
of the whole matrix of axes: the discovery of new ones, of course,
but also the careful tailoring trimming and extending of existing
ones. For instance, the axis of possible human relationships used
to extend from total slave to absolute ruler. Fewer cultures are
now willing to accept either of those extreme polarities as part of
their vision of civilised behaviour, so you could say that this
particular axis has been effectively shortened focused down to a
narrower range.
What characterises fundamentalism is a set of extremely narrow
axes that allow almost no movement, no experimentation. And
liberalism is perhaps the attempt to keep the axes as open as
possible without incurring complete social fragmentation. The
importance of symbolic behaviours like art and religion and sexual
fantasy is that they allow us to experiment symbolically with new
and even prohibited positions on the axial matrix experiments that
may be inconvenient, dangerous and divisive in real life.

Lecture 4
concepts are defined not positively in terms of their content, but
negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What
characterises each most exactly is being whatever the others are
not De Saussure.
From Polar to Axial
Axial thinking doesn't deny that it could be this or that but that it is
more likely to be somewhere in between Brain Eno.
The Semiotic Triangle Ogden and Richards 1923
concept that gave importance to reality as well whereas the first
one was purely linguistic.
This model includes 3 elements:
-an object/thing that exists in the physical world
-sign (word/image) referring to the object
-signified mental concept that is elicited

Word/Sound
SIGN
perception
CONCEPT
(personal views)

convention

experience

OBJECT
Actual thing

To understand the meaning of ads, an effort has to be made to

grasp it.
Umberto Eco
An Italian philosopher and semiotician,
He makes a distinction between open and closed texts
closed: has one reading strongly preferred over all the others
open: requires a number of readings to appreciate its full richness
or texture, considered to be more high-culture.
When reading a text, alternative readings to the preferred one,
come about because of the differences between the cultural
experiences of the author and those of the reader. Eco calls this
aberrant decoding.

Stuart Hall
Jamaican cultural theorist and sociologist. He believes in the power
of the audience, who isn't a passive receiver. He reworked the
communication model to introduce the decoding step.
This is called reception theory:
encoding: transformation of information from one format to another
which includes any form of intended/unconscious bias which
authors may have.
Decoding: the process of the audience reading what has been
encoded.
Proposed 3 main types of readings of tv texts which correspond to
the reader's response to his/her social condition:
dominant-hegemonic: this is the preferred reading, it accepts
the text full and straight, Dominant . the ideal-typical case of
'perfectly transparent communication' The definition of a
hegemonic viewpoint is (a) that it defines within its terms the
mental horizon, the universe, of possible meanings, of a whole
sector of relations in a society or culture; and (b) that it carries
with it the stamp of legitimacy - it appears coterminous with
what is 'natural', 'inevitable', 'taken for granted' about the
social order.
negotiated reading: acknowledges the legitimacy of the
dominant codes but adapts the reading to the specific social
condition of the reader. (compromise) Subordinate
oppositional reading: produces a radical decoding because it
derives from an alternative, oppositional meaning system.
Radical
Stuart Hall Encoding and Decoding Summary
Stuart Hall's influential essay offers a densely theoretical account of
how messages are produced and disseminated, referring
particularly to television. He suggests a four-stage theory of
communication: production, circulation, use (which here he calls
distribution or consumption), and reproduction" For him each stage
is 'relatively autonomous' from the others. This means that the
coding of a message does control its reception but not transparently
each stage has its own determining limits and possibilities
Further, though the production structures of television originate the
television discourse, they do not constitute a dosed system. They
draw topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the
audience, 'definitions of the situation from other sources and other
discursive formations within the wider socio-cultural and political
structure of which they are a differentiated part. Philip Elliott has

expressed this point succinctly, within a more traditional framework,

in his discussion of the way in which the audience is both the
'source' and the 'receiver' of the television message
The consumption or reception of the television message is thus
also itself a 'moment' of the production process in its larger sense,
though the latter is 'predominant' because it is the 'point of
departure for the realization' of the message. Production and
reception of the television message are not, therefore, identical, but
they are related: they are differentiated moments within the totality
formed by the social relations of the communicative process as a
whole.
Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific
language comrnunity or culture, and be learned at so early an age,
that they appear not to be constructed - the effect of an articulation
between srgn and referent - but to be 'naturally' given. Simple
visual signs aPpear to have achieved a 'near-universality' in this
sense: though evidence remains that even apparently 'natural'
visual codes are culfurespecific. However, this does not mean that
no codes have intervened; rather, that the codes have been profo
lundly ruturalized.
The connotative levels of signifiers, Barthes remarked, 'have a
close communication with culture, knowledge, history, and it is
through them, so to speak, that the environmental world invades
the linguistic and semantic system. They are, if you like, the
fragments of ideology'. The so-called denotative IneI of tl:.e
televisual sign is fixed by certain, very complex (but limited or
'closed') codes. But its connotative leoel, thortgh also bounded, is
more open, subiect to more active frazsformations, which exploit its
polysemic values. Any such already constrtuted sign is potentially
transformable into more than one connotative configuration.
Polysemy must not, however, be confused with pluralism.
Connotative codes are not eql.Jala mong themselves
Hall begins by pointing out that traditional research on
communication has been critcised for being too linear by
interpreting communication as a mere circulation circuit (128).
He asserts that a better approach, conceptualised by Marx, is one
which encompasses additional distinctive aspects of communication
so that the old model of sender/message/receiver should be
replaced by a new model of production-circulationdistribution/consumption-reproduction
Because the broadcaster makes assumptions about the audience in
sending the message, Hall supports the view that the audience is
paradoxically both the source and receiver of the message.

Saussure
made a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole
(speech). Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions
which is independent of, and pre-exists, and parole refers to its use
in particular instances.
Langue: The full repertoire of possibilities within a language code.
The entire set of formal structures and rules that must be shared by
speaker and listener in order for communication to occur at all
Parole: One specific utterance composed by selecting from the
langue. They are specific sounds/words produced by a speaker that
are understood as meaningful.
Saussure focused on langue rather than parole, what matters most
are the underlying structures and rules of a semiotic system as a
whole rather than specific performances or practices which are
merely instances of its use.
In semiotics, this principle could be applied to understand the
distinction between code and message. According to the
Saussurean distinction, in a semiotic system such as cinema, any
specific film is the speech of that underlying system of cinema
language

Paradigmatic signs: a vertical relationship, belonging to the same

category , for example the category colour includes purple, blue
etc In language these are categories such as object, subject, verb,
adverb, adjective, noun etc.
To form one sentence (syntagmatic structure) we need to select one
option from the categories.
Syntagmatic relationship is a horizontal one, it is a structural
relation that guides the combination of signs or parts of signs in a
coherent way , in language it is how we string different words into a
sentence. These relationships can be seen in food, clothing, music.
In syntagmatic relationships, objects are complementary to each
other.
Code: Food
Paradigms: Pasta, sauces, meats, fruit, vegetables, appetisers,
deserts
Syntagms: Meal

Products in a supermarket are placed in a paradigmatic

composition. Several types and brands of a product are grouped
together in one area. They are based on competitors rather than
complements.
If one had pizza bases, tomatoe sauce, cheese, oregano and bottles
of Chardonnay placed on adjacent shelves, this would be a
syntagmatic organisation of products. Gift packs of complimentary
products are examples of this.
Products are thus seen as alternatives to their competitors rather
than as complements to their accompaniments.
Context is all: knowing the context, changes the meaning
completely,

Lecture 5
Banksy is a provacateur, British street artist, film director and
painter,
What is art?
sense of human agency
Key semiotic concepts
Sender (who)
Intention (with what aim)
Message (what it says)
Transmission (by what means)
Noise (with what interference)
Receiver (to whom)
Destination (with what result)
inter-textuality: when the sender is not using his own words, but
uses references to other texts to give its message. No text is an
island. All texts are connected. Can be very powerful but can also
be lost. Each text that is created is automatically inter-related to
texts that were created in the past and the ones that will be created
in the future. Either borrowing or referring.
translations
parody (Austin powers, scary movie, johnny english, vampires
suck, frankenweenie, not another teen movie, epic movie.
pastiche
plagiarism
allusion

homage (tribute bands)

echo
quotation
recycling
spoof
sequel
prequel
remake

Movies: Narnia and whole biblical references.

Julia Kristeva:
came up with the term inter-textuality, bulgarian semiotician,
psychoanalyst and writer. She says that inter-textuality works on a
vertical axis (paradigmatic) and thus connecting a text to other
texts.
Roland Barthes refers to this intertextuality as 'already written
Self-conscious inter-textuality is when texts allude directly to one
another, for example remakes, tribute bands etc
degrees of inter-textuality
reflexivity: how self-conscious the use of inter-textuality is
alteration: how different is the copy from the original
explicitness: how obvious it is (direct quotation)
critical to comprehension: how important is it for the reader to
recognise intertextuality. In parody this is extremely important,
whereas in allusion for example narnia not necessary.
Scale of adoption: the overall scale of allusion/incorporation
within the text
structural unboundedness: to what extent the text is presented
as part of a larger structure (series/prequel/sequel)
texts owe more to other texts than to their own makers (daniel
chandler)
art imitating art: rather than the realist perspective of art imitating
life.
The concept of a link in a website is an example of inter-textuality.
Culture: directly linked to lifestyle and identity.
It is the sum total of learned knowledge, beliefs, art, values, morals
and customs.
Whatever is natural is not part of culture, culture is learnt.

Features:
adaptive: it changes as society faces new problems and
opportunities.
Satisfies needs: by providing norms (rules of behaviours)
provides values which delineate what is right, good, and
important to a society.
What does it include:
material objects
behaviour
language
religion and rituals
technology
architecture, art, what we build, what means a house to us is
different to what a house means to someone else, aesthetic,
gender roles, all binaries
ideas and values
institutions
the way we dress, think, eat, spend our time, celebrate,
mourn, take breaks, look at the 'other'
genres: a category of artistic composition marked by a distinctive
style, form or content, series of codes that allow the communicative
act to take place successfully. A code of shared understanding. We
learn what signs and structures to expect that each genre and thus
much of the meaning is generated from the knowledge of the genre
itself. Our understanding of any individual text relates to its
framing.
Signs include soundtracks, sound-effects, costumes, accessories,
hairstyles, objects, places, situations, facial expressions, food,
colours, time manipulations (slow-mo flashbacks, revelation)
movie genres:
crime/gangtsre
drama
comedy
musical
horror
western
epic/historical
Nowadays genre boundaries have become very fluid and blurred
which is reflected in the coining of terms like infomercials,

edutainment, advertorials
the danger of a single story: chimamanda adichie
ted.com
Lecture 6 Originality
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to
make it the definitive story of that person. -Adichie C
The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of their
dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It
emphasises how we are different rather than how we are similar.
Encoding/Decoding
audience is not simply a consumer of texts, but an active producer
of meaning, a text is an interface where both sender and receiver
interact
the word original comes from the word origin,
Plato's theory of forms
Form: the truth (original) the concept which exists independently of
its manisfestations. And form: the copy, an imperfect physical
manifestation of the ideal. According to Plato an artist is a major
deceiver because art is a copy of a copy.
Everything is a remix: the arrangement and transformation of
samples.
To create there are 3 basic elements:
1. domain knowledge
2. transformation
3. combination
in its early days the typewriter was called the literary piano, in fact
we call the keys, keyboard.
Albert Einstein's e=mc squared was a combination as was the
Gutenberg printing press
Jim Jarmusch: Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that
resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old
films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems,
dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs,
trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select things to

steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work
and theft will be authentic.
Levels of Meaning
denotation vs connotation
denotation: dictionary definition, derives from Latin 'de noto'
meaning to mark out, specify or indicate', intended to point out the
literal
connotation: interaction between the sign and the feelings of the
viewer. Meaning moves towards the subjective. This encompasses
all kinds of senses including emotional ones. Most of the nontechnical texts that people create. Very culture specific.
Denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is
photographed.
Serial Position Effects:
the fact that the first things in a list of adjectives will leave more of
an effect as to how we will judge them primacy effect
First impressions counts but even the opposite applies, for example
in starters and desserts layout. Recency effect is when the last few
occurrences affect our judgement.
Primacy: the initial terms presented are most effectively stored in
long term memory because of the greater amount of processing
devoted to them.
Recency: these items are still present in our working memory
circuit of culture: Hall and DuGay in studying cultural texts or
artefacts one must look at 5 aspects which are representation,
identity, production, consumption and regulation.
Hyperreality: inability to distinguish simulation from reality, the
authentic fake, what is real and what is fiction are blended together
so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and
the other begins.
Jean Baudrillard: believed that the world we live in has been
replaced by a copy world, simulation is not just to feign but to
threaten the difference between the real and the fake. Simulacrum
is the condition which results namely a system where empty signs
refer to themselves, where meaning or value are absent. Our
experience in this hyperreal world, is one in which media are not

simply located in their hermetically sealed spaces but dispersed

around us in all forms of experience.
Umberto Eco
believed that we recreate re-creations in an attempt to find
something better than the real, trying to improve upon reality. He
also saw a sales pitch behind the facades which is a great
representation of today's culture.
Las Vegas has become city of imitations.
War of the worlds drama on the radio in 1938
The

effects of hyperreality
role models
confusion
surface and depth: content is shifted to surface level, into the
realm of experience rather than communication of truth

Travels in Hyperreality Umberto Eco

check out the school of holography in new york displays and door of
the museum of withcraft in san francisco, castle of citizen kane,
Holography, the latest technical miracle of laser rays, was invented
back in the '50's by Dennis Gabor; it achieves a full-color
photographic representation that is more than threedimensional.
You look into a magic box and a miniature train or horse appears; as
you shift your gaze you can see those parts of the object that you
were prevented from glimpsing by the laws of perspective. If the
box is circular you can see the object from all sides. If the object
was filmed, thanks to various devices, in motion, then it moves
before your eyes, or else you move, and as you change position,
you can see the girl wink or the fisherman drain the can of beer in
his hand
We can identify it through two typical slogans that pervade
American advertising. The first, widely used by Coca-Cola but also
frequent as a hyperbolic formula in everyday speech, is "the real
thing"; the second, found in print and heard on TV, is "more"in the
sense of "extra.
If you venture beyond the myth of the West, you have cities like
the Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, or Santa Claus Village,
Polynesian gardens, pirate islands, Astroworlds like the one in Kirby,
Texas, and the "wild" territories of the various Marinelands, as well
as ecological cities, which we will discuss elsewhere. important
thing is precisely the fact that these are not humans and we know

they're not. The pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one

of the most innate in the human spirit; but here we not only enjoy a
perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has
reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it.
In the humanization of animals is concealed one of the most clever
resources of the Absolute Fake industry, and for this reason the
Marinelands must be compared with the wax museums that
reconstruct the last day of Marie Antoinette. In the latter all is sign
but aspires to seem reality. In the Marinelands all is reality but
aspires to appear sign.
The Disney enterprise is much bigger. To illustrate, it should be
known that Disney "Unlimited," having taken over one of the major
US television networks, is about to purchase 42nd Street in New
York, the "hot" section of 42nd Street, to transform it into an erotic
theme park, with the intention of changing hardly anything of the
street itself. The idea would be simply to transform, in situ, one of
the high centers of pornography into a branch of Disney World.
Transforming the pornographers and the prostitutes, like the factory
workers in Smurfland, into extras [figurants] in their own world,
metamorphosed into identical figures, museumified, disneyfied. By
the way, do you know how General Schwarzkopf, the great Gulf War
strategist, celebrated his victory? He had a huge party at Disney
World. These festivities in the palace of the imaginary were a
worthy conclusion to such a virtual war.
Reality TV
The popularity of such programmes (reality tv) is located in the
shifting economics of broadcasting, which involves increasing
competition and a move from the search for a mass audience to a
niche audience. Such shows are relatively cheap, and some are
very cheap indeed. There is no need to pay writers or actors, no
endless rehearsals, no need for elaborate sets, no need for rights
clearance for music, and so on. Using ordinary people, and later
minor and declining celebrities, is a cheap way to make television:
In order to achieve dramatic narratives, the producers ruthlessly
edit the raw footage. For example, in the first Australian series
182,750 hours of material were edited down to 70 hours of
television.18 An extreme observational documentarist like Roger
Graef might have a shooting ratio of 30 to one, and a drama
perhaps three to one; the Australian Big Brother figures work out at
1,565 to one
The fact that Big Brother gains such a large and enthusiastic
audience of young people tells us something about life in modern

capitalism. We cannot assume, as do so many populist

commentators in media and cultural studies, that just because lots
of working class people enjoy a particular artefact it is therefore in
some sense progressive or oppositional. The reality is much more
complex. A show such as Big Brother offers no challenge at all to
capitalism, and indeed its structure reproduces some of the most
pernicious effects of capitalismhuman energy and initiative are
ruthlessly exploited in order to make money. On the other hand, it
does represent, in a weird and utterly unrealistic way, a dream of
escaping from capitalism, of transcending alienated labour,
escaping from conformity and flowering as an individual. Being a
contestant makes you a celebrity for the duration, and you have a
fighting chance of continuing in the role afterwards.
Lecture 7
representation: defined most simply as the activity of making texts,
Making Texts: implies producing meaning
Representation toddlers.
Representation is a unique ability that has allows us to gain
autonomy from purely sensory-instinctual ways of knowing the
world.
At the representative stage, children start exploring with their
minds rather than their bodies. They start referring to the world,
through conversation , paintings etc
Representation allows us to express our conceptual understanding
of the world. It gives us a sign to the meaning we make of the
world.
Representation externalises.
Our representational practices serve as a basic human need to
explore and understand the world in a meaningful way.
Paradoxically, by representing the world, we end up changing it,
making it virtually impossible for us to distinguish between reality
and our representations.
Representation helps us convey meaning, but at the same time
every act of representation constructs meaning.
Meaning is designed, constructed, created. It does not simply
happen.
Classification: the capacity to do this is biological, but to do it in a
particular way it is learnt

Representation and the Media

Stuart Hall
Any society tends to impose its classifications upon its social,
cultural and political world and this constitutes a dominant cultural
order.
This dominant cultural order forms an accepted ideology to which
most citizens conform. Even if a media claims it is unbiased
ideology always permeates a message.
Upside down map:
These maps are just as accurate as traditionally oriented maps,
because the position of North at the top of maps is arbitrary. Such
maps have been made in several cultures and time periods. The
convention that North is at the top (and East at the right) on most
modern maps was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy
(90-168 AD).
Ideologies are not natural. On the contrary, they arise from
particular forms of society and culture, with particular reference to
power struggles.
Decoding the text
Challenging, questioning and dismantling a text.
An analysis of signs and their relationships.
There is no right answer for semiotic analysis.
Is not about finding the answer. It is about exploring the richness of
an apparently 'obvious' text.
Signs (and also style, genre, censorship, regulation, etc) are culturespecific and thus semiotic analysis needs to cater for the culture of
the sender and the receiver.
This also means that semiotic analysis attempts at unveiling the
variety of signifieds (meaning.
A thorough analysis is one that explores all options (connotation vs
denotation, dominant-hegemonic,
Meaning of texts. Content
1. Look at both the verbal and visual cues
2. If text is dynamic, listen to the sound (music + narration)
3.Text aim and genre informational, persuasive (call to action),
educational, entertaining, shocking..etc
4. Language chosen

5. Signs and relationships between them

Appearance of protagonists
1. Age
2. Gender
3. National and racial
4. Hair
5. Body
6. Size
7. Looks
Manner
1. Expression
2. Eye-contact
3. Pose
4. Clothes
Activity
1. Touch
2. Body movement
3. Positional communication
4. Proxemics (study of a social space )
Context
1. Props
2. Settings
3. Focus
4. Close-ups
5. Lighting and colour
6. Cropping
7. Camera angle
Look a binary opposites:
what is there/ what is not
background/foreground
visual/verbal
form/content/
medium/message
tone/subject
original/copy
binary/ambiguous
Glossary of Terms

Check on the slide very good for exam

Anchorage the function of words used as captions for photographs.
Since visual images are polysemous, the decoder can be able to
choose some meanings and ignore others. Words help fix the
floating signifieds
Practice.
Dynamic Advert Fragnance one
Man seen as a God. Greek, roman statues represent why he looks
like that. Also that he is almost always in the middle of the shot.
Static advert
Michael Jackson one
The finger/ipad one.
Ambient advert
Dynamic advert
Lecture 8
Advertising
John Berger argues that seeing has never been a question of
mechanically reacting to stimuli. Determining what an image means
involves more than one level of understanding as we perceive what
is literally denoted while often simultaneously accessing cultural
codes to interpret what this may connote.
Transparency: adverts often on the surface appear to be transparent
in their production of signification. It has entered the mainstream of
life forming a vast superstructure to which we have become so
accustomed that we rarely question or notice the extent of the
impact. It has become an integral part of modern culture.
Dynamic
Ads surround us in a way similar to language, inescapable, not
limited to one medium but existing in all, giving them an
independent reality as they constitute a world constantly
experienced as real.
They give us the impression that we are static, they are dynamic
reinforced by the fact that they belong to the moment and are
constantly altered and renewed.
Possession
images necessarily and automatically reduce everything to the
equality of objects.
Claude Levi Strauss argues that for renaissance artists painting was

an instrument of possession the pictures represented a microcosm

in which the proprietor had created within easy reach and in as real
a form as possible, all those features of the world which he was
attached to.
He further argues that this avid and ambitious desire to take
possession of the object for the benefit of the owner or spectator
constitutes one of the outstandingly original features of the art of
western civilization.
Freedom of choice
Advertising is always construed as being closely related to freedom,
offering a choice, offering the customer to choose between one
product and the next.
However against the idea of consumer freedom, every publicity
image, confirms and enhances every other. Publicity is a language
always being used to make a single general proposal... that of
persuasion.
There is freedom to but not freedom from.
Commodity self
ads persuade us to transform ourselves and by extension transform
our lives, by buying something more that will make us richer while
at the same time monetarily making us poorer. The result is what
Kellner calls a 'commodity self' which sees buying and consumption
as a solution to problems and consumerism as a way of life, the
good life in contemporary capitalism. We are what we
purchase/consume.
Dissatisfaction
we need transformation, we are less than perfect. This lends power
to the ad's offer of an improved self.
Life according to ads: to live is to be visible, to be seen living.
Success Stories.
Ads work on persuasion rather than declaration. Potential customers
are persuaded of the value and power of the product by being
shown people who have apparently been transformed.
Ads are not simply transparent vehicles carrying a message, rather
they set up connections creating or making use of systems of
exchange.
Ads sell us ourselves (us-as-we-can-become)

Semioticians attempt to answer 3 basic questions about any

cultural product of inquiry:
what does it mean?
how does it encode its meaning?
Why does it mean what it means?
What: charting the various uses and functions of a sign or text
how: describing the structural features of the sign or text (icon,
index)
why: involves the following two forms of analysis: historical inquiry
or connotative analysis: delving into connotations to reveal cultural
meaning.
Semiotics of clothing
denotation: addition to body hair and skin thickness, biological
function of clothes, this is not the same as clothing as perceived in
a social context.
And of food, etiquette, fasting, rituals, preparation, what is
considered a delicacy etc
Lecture 9
content analysis: opposite of semiotic analysis
methodological approach, quantitative approach, comes up with
statistical info about the media. To collect and categorise objective
facts about data or reality.
Elimination of human element.
Rigorous, reliable and objective.
Assumes reality can be objectively studied. Assumes that events
are capable of proof/disproof.
Can process them quickly
how did it start? Originally developed to analyse written and spoken
texts. In between world wars, because of propaganda messages in
radio broadcasts that people thought was important to analyse
them but there was a lot of data to analyse them semiotically.
Krippendorff key researcher
george gerbner believed it could shed light on deeper cultural
matters, it bases on total mass media output so it is a holistic
picture of culture, whole message system is analysed not a person's
subjective view.
Units should be readily identifiable

they should occur frequently enough for statistical methods of

analysis to be valid.
Units can be used to study the form as well as the content of a text:
form number of close ups in TV drama, how something is featured
content: number of asian heroes in contemporary american movies,
what is featured
HAS to be MANIFEST not latent which is intention
Case studies:
photographic representations of non-Westerners on the National
Geographic, analysed almost 600 photos from random samples of
35 years worth of magazines.
Content analysis protects from unconscious search through the
magazine for only those things which prove your theory.
The 4 steps on how to conduct content analysis:
1. finding your images
check availability of images/text/video
representative sample (random, stratified, systematic, cluster)
2. devise your categories for coding
descriptive labels, must be exhaustive, exclusive and
enlightening, have to be unambiguous
3. coding the images
careful, consistent and systematic
4. analysing the results
used in:
politics,
1. Answer questions of disputed authorship 2. Secure political &
military intelligence 3. Analyse traits of individuals 4. Infer cultural
aspects & change 5. Provide legal & evaluative evidence 6. Analyse
techniques of persuasion 7. Analyse style 8. Describe trends in
communication content
style of tv advertising for children's toys
can be used to determine authorship
9. Relate known characteristics of sources to messages they
produce 10.Compare communication content to standards
11.Relate known characteristics of audiences to messages
produced for them 12.Describe patterns of communication

13.Measure readability 14.Analyse the flow of information

15.Assess responses to communications
quantification systems
1. time-space system: based on measurement of space (columns
on a newspaper) or units of time (minutes devoted to a news
item on the radio)
2. appearance system: searching the material for appearance of
a certain attribute, not how many time but if it appears
3. frequency system: amount of times a given attribute is
recorded
4. intensity dealing with the intensity of attitudes and values
Time in research
Synchronically frozen in time. You read a text without looking at
what came before and what will happen next
Diachronically analysing change over time. It is a historical
analysis and meaning is generated through comparison and
contrast.
The distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic is yet
another legacy from Saussure. As he uses the terms, synchronic
means analytic and diachronic means historical, so a synchronic
study of a text looks at the relationships that exist among its
elements, and a diachronic study looks at the way the narrative
evolves.
Metonym: One thing is substituted for another object that is closely
associated to it.
SYNECDOCHE
Using a part of something to stand for the whole thing, or vice
versa. Eg Wheels often used to refer to a whole car Come and
see my new set of wheels
PARATEXT
Paratexts stand outside the main body of work and comment on it,
or alter the meaning of it. Titles, dedications, acknowledgements,
blurbs, epigraphs, prefaces, introductions, footnotes, illustrations,
marginalia, endnotes, indexes, bylines, pull-quotes, page numbers
quantitative analysis is american as is content analysis
qualitative analysis is european as is semiotic analysis
Payne Fund Studies
A study on the social impact of mass media on children.

Conducted to test the effects of the movie industry of the 1920s on

the youth of that period. One of the very first scientific study in
the field of media research
The Invasion from Mars, Orson Welles,

Claude Lvi-Strauss, a distinguished French anthropologist, has

suggested that a syntagmatic analysis of a text reveals the texts
manifest meaning and that a paradigmatic analysis reveals the
texts latent meaning.

core topics for theory:

section 1
4 questions to choose 2
1.
2.
3.
4.

signs and reading (de Saussure, Peirce, Stuart Hall)

intertextuality and originality (Plato, Benjamin, Kirby Ferguson)
hyperreality, audiences and the digital age (Eco, Baudrillard)
Binary oppositions and arbitrariness (saussure, Kristeva and
eno)
include examples mention artists designers musicians and theorists
section 2: 4 texts to analyse, static ads
selection of static ads which have to be analysed in both form and
content, latent and manifest, visual and verbal, connotative and
denotative
4 to choose 2 again
choose a model journey of a message, binary oppositions,
gender,power, race, intertextuality
ambient adverts you can always talk about the structure of them as
they are displayed in environments

Examples:
kyle bean weapons of mass consumption
united colors of benetton always strove for controversial ads.

Books:
The Quest for Meaning: Marcel Danesi easier read.
This means this and this means that by sean hall
signs an intro to semiotics. By thomas sebeok