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What representation is not … Media instantaneously planting images and thoughts in our heads. What representation is not … Something that takes place in a vacuum. What representation is … The production of meaning through symbolic communication ( language, images, etc.)
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What representation is not… Media instantaneously planting images and thoughts in our heads
What representation is not… Something that takes place in a vacuum
What representation is… The production of meaning through symbolic communication (language, images, etc.) A system by which all sort of objects, people, places, and events are correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations which we carry around in our heads A process that takes place and is made meaningful in specific cultural contexts
Systems of Representation Different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them. Meaning depends on the relationships between: Things in the world (people, objects and events, real or fictional) and, A shared conceptual system (our mental representations of these things) Culture, in this sense, is a set of “shared meanings or shared conceptual maps”
Signs Meaning depends on the relationships between: Things in the world, and Shared conceptual maps and… Signs Signs can be iconic(visual) and indexical (written) Signs are arbitrary, which is to say that they have no specific meaning by themselves.
Signifier • The actual word or image. For example, the wordflower
Signified • The idea, thing, or concept
But… Remember that signs are arbitrary; they have no specific meaning by themselves. So…
The word ‘flower’ can just as easily signify this:
signifier signified Similarly, an image of a flower can also function as a signifier instead of something that is signified:
Ferdinand de Saussure Two key terms in his study of linguistics Langue– Rule governed structure of language Parole– Actual speech Two features of his approach to structuralism • A concern with the underlying relations of cultural texts and practices: the 'grammar' which makes meaning possible • Meaning is always the result of the interplay of relationships of opposition and combination, made possible by an underlying structure
Denotation & Connotation Denotative = literal meaning, descriptive Connotative= inferred meaning; constructed through a reference
Codes Fix and govern the relationships between concepts and signs Stabilize meaning by giving us a way to express and interpret language
What are the denotative and connotative messages in the following advertisement? What are the signifiers and the signifieds?
Semiotic Analysis (other examples)
Myth (Roland Barthes)
MYTH is a type of speech • Myth is a system of communication and a mode of signification. • The object of its message does not define myth, but by the way in which it utters this message (context is crucial). • Myth is not confined to oral speech-it can consist of modes of representation; that is cinema, photography, sport, publicity, etc. • The science of studying Myth is semiology.
MYTH is a semiological system • Semiology postulates a relation between signifier and signified. • But myth is a meta-language that functions as a second order semiologicalsystem. Like so…
Myth naturalizes concepts • Myth is experienced as innocent speech NOT because its intentions are hidden, but because they are NATURALIZED • What allows the reader to consume myth innocently: myth seems an inductive (natural) system not a semiotic one
Myth is depoliticized speech • It makes images & ideas that are political seem not political… • It makes phenomena that are culturally and socially constructed seem ‘natural’ • “this is normal” • It erases history • “things have always been like this” • It makes contingency appear eternal • “things will always be this way” • And this entire process can take place in the amount of time it takes to view an image…
‘Myth’, in this sense, is basically a system of signification (a method of communication) through which dominant ideologiesare learned and reinforced.