Semiotic Analysis: Signs/Codes

1. Semiotic Analysis: Signs/Codes • Images/signs • Reader/viewer applies cultural codes • Language/metaphors/dialogue/white space • R/V applies genre/linguistics/discourses • Language echoes/mimics discourse (Bahktin) • Genre/story features: symbolic meanings • R/V applies conventions/rules • R/V infers deliberate patterns/intended meaning

2. Audience Analysis • Who’s the intended or target audience: Who is this text being written for? • How am I being positioned by this text? • What signs, markers, images, language, social practices imply that audience? • Do I accept or resist the way in which I am being positioned?

3. Positioning • Subjective stance within a group • Influence of discourses shaping language use and roles • Competing subject positions • Adopting positions in terms of class, race, or gender stances and practices • Reaction to and resistance of categories

4. Critical Discourse analysis • Discourses--sources of social knowledge • Discourses: ways of knowing/thinking; serves to limit/restrain ways of talking • Foucault (Stuart Hall): “madness”/hysteria • Rules for talking/defining knowledge • Subjects--represent discourse “mad” people • Social practices for dealing with people

5. Gender as Culturally Constructed • Problems with binary categories based on biological sex • Study of historical/cultural aspects of gender construction • Wearing of lace as a masculine marker • Matriarchy in Chinese myths • Gay/lesbian studies

6. Discourse of Femininity • Media construction of identity • Beauty work: sense of inadequacy • Membership in imaginary communities of consumption • “synthetic personalization” • Mass audience treated as an individual “you” • “synthetic sisterhood”

7. Discourse of class • Focus on power and social/class hierarchy • Use of the “social ladder” chart • Economic factors shaping characters • Ideological positioning of readers/audiences • Advertising as indoctrination of consumerism • Analysis of language of catalogues • Neiman Marcus • Walter Drake • Sharper Image

8. Problems with Theories of Racism: Bonilla-Silva • Psychological • focus on individual only as “racist”/”prejudiced” • Ignores ideological aspects of racism • Ignores institutional aspects • Neoconservative agendas: welfare/housing/poverty as an “individual” problem vs. government intervention • “Institutional racism” • Everything is “racist”: simplistic • Failure to challenge root causes of problem • Binary categories: “black” vs. “white” • Lack of coalition with progressive whites

9. Problems with Theories of Racism: Bonilla-Silva • Internal colonialism: white privilege • + Challenges racism simply as prejudice • + Racism as systematic and rational • + Challenges notion of curing racism through education vs. social mobilization • Does not analyze how racism is systematized or reproduced

10. Racism as “Racialized Social Systems” • Placement of people in social categories • Attaching meaning to groups • Creation of hierarchies • Top group--economic, social, political power • Conflict: maintain vs. challenge hierarchy • Application of racial ideology to explain and justify hierarchy • “Blacks as lacking motivation to work”

11. Racial Ideologies as “Interpretive Repertoires” • Common frames • Fear of the other; Token inclusionism • “Racetalk” • Avoid being seen as “racist”/Archer Bunker • Storylines used to justify hierarchy • “the past is part”/”my friend lost out on a job” • Categorizing: whiteness as normalizing • “White lives” isolated in schools/suburbs/peer group • Whites as “racial tourists”-- “others defined by what whiteness is not”

12. “Color-Blind Racism” • Collective understandings/representations • Use of “racetalk” to avoid racist label • “Everyone is equal, but….” • “I am not prejudice, but…” • Denial of structural nature of discrimination • Criticism of government race-based programs • Use of storylines • “I didn’t own slaves” • “The past is past”

13. Baby Boomers Diversity Equity of wealth Gender equality Open to “difference” Schooling as important Concern for urban blight Sesame Street Under 18 Self-esteem Building relationships Specialization Acceptance of inequity of wealth/segregation Schooling as side-show Barney and His Friends/Blues Clues Children’s Programs and Generational Values

14. Discourse of business applied to education • Standards that are “measurable” • Need for “accountability” • Value of “objective” numbers in assessment • Labeling of schools/students as “failing” • Concern with “bottom-line investment” • Need for more “productivity”

15. “Implied Adolescents/teachers” • Adolescence as “stress/strain” vs. capable of inventiveness/agency • Adopting on-line persona • Preservice teachers • In course: imaginative play related to media use/CD covers • In school: need to be in control/wary of imaginative play

16. Postructuralist Criticism • Challenge to structuralist/formalist notions of language as a “prison-house” • Language meaning a social construction • Language categories are “slippery”/need to be contested and challenged • Readers’ stances as constructed through cultural categories/codes

17. Postmodernism • Challenge to the “master narratives”/traditional beliefs of modernism • Contemporary fiction: DeLillo, Carver, Atwood • Pulp Fiction, Mulholland Drive, Run Lola Run, Memento • Challenge to traditional forms of art, music, literature, architecture • Wiseman Art Museum building • Conceptual/pop art • Atonal music • MTV: combinations of images/music

18. Postmodernism • Baudrillard: hyperreality based on simulation of reality • Focus on the image/surface/parody of mass culture • Jeff Koons statues (Michael Jackson) • All experience as mediated through language/images • Plurality/multiplicity of perspectives • Self-reflexivity/ironic humor • Cindy Sherman photos • Hypertextual fiction