1. Sociology of Media (2) Approaches to Media Analysis II: Semiotics (7.11.2007)

2. The System Model of Communication SENDER >> MESSAGE >> RECEIVER

3. Outline How to media messages become meaningful? What do we mean by ‘representation’? signification Representation Sign, Signifier, Signified and Referent Langue and Parole Denotation/Connotation Encoding/Decoding Intertextuality Genre Narrative Myth Discourse The Subject

4. Signification Semiology = “the science of science’. Meaning = sense + articulation Articulation = explication + association Sense ‘comes before’ meaning Signification = the attribution of meaning

5. Beavis and Butthead BEAVIS: ‘Tattoos are cool, I wish I was born with a tattoo’ BUTTHEAD: ‘ You’re not born with tattoos dumb-ass, you get them when you join the navy.’

6. Beavis and Butthead ‘do’ America Killing Having Sex With Touring The doubling of the performative and representative creates ambivalence.

7. Stuart Hall on Representation Three types of understanding representation: –Reflective –Intentional –Constructionist to describe or depict To stand in for (symbolize) Speaking for (in politics)

8. Two systems of Representation Mental concepts - Signified Language - Signifier “It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events” (Hall, 17). Sign = Signifier + Signified

9. C.S. Peirce Icon (highly motivated, not abstract) Index (intermediation: cause & effect) Symbol (arbitrary, abstract)

10. De Saussure Langue – (e.g. as in grammar) – official system of language, relationship between signifiers Parole – (as in semantics, pragmatics) – ‘language-in-use’, relationship between signifiers and signifieds.

15. Barthes Denotation Connotation Linguistic Message –Anchorage –Relay

16. Example: GO WEST What does ‘Go West’ signify - look at –(a) words, –(b) images; –(c) sound

17. Go West http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39KZ2a fBtLUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39KZ2a fBtLU

18. Hall: Encoding/Decoding Programme as meaningful discourse EncodingDecoding Meaning structures 1structures 2 Frameworks of KnowledgeRelations ofProduction Technical Infrastructure

19. Intertextuality Texts relate to other texts Bringing in different voices Reported speech Direct speech Indirect speech M.M. Bakhtin V.N. Volosinov J. Kristeva J. Derrida

20. Genre Fairclough: 1. activity type 2. Embedded sequence 3. emergent forms Primary and secondary genres

21. Genre Dayan and Katz: newsgenres 1.Contest 2.Conquest 3.Coronation

22. Narrative Analysis Structures (Todorov): 1. Initial Equilibrium 2. Turbulence 3. Disequilibrium 4. Intervention 5. Restored Equilibrium Functions (Lewis): 1. Enigma 2. Suspense 3. Closure

23. Theoretical spin-offs Myth: naturalizing what is arbitrary (cultural, historical) Discourse: Power + Knowledge: constitutes the conditions under which particular utterances become meaningful The Subject: OF versus IN representation