Qualitative Analysis: Session 4

1. Qualitative Analysis: Session 4 Aims: • Outline how semiotic and narrative analysis may be developed in relation to moving imagery • Explore the handling visual data for analysis • Develop group 'qualitative analyses' of a television drama programme Structure • Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Narrative analysis of moving imagery • Practical session: analyse 'Monarch of the Glen'

2. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Can you apply semiotic methodology used in analysis of still images to moving imagery? • Sketch out denotative elements • Consider their paradigmatic and syntagmatic significance • Draw up a 'denotative inventory' • Work through elements in inventory and consider what meaning(s) are conveyed • Look for associations of meanings (lexicons) • Look for paradigmatically and syntagmatically relations creating myth(s)

3. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery 'A semiotics of television provides us with a set of problems different from those we encounter when we study written or spoken language … Unlike language, television does not conveniently break-down into discrete elements or building blocks of meaning' (Seiter, 1992, p. 43) • Key issue is selecting unit of analysis: • Frame 'One of the perennial problems plaguing the semiotician … of television … [is that] each segment, each image, can produce an enormous (some would say preposterous) amount of analytical text' (Sieter, 1992, p. 54) • Shot • Scene • Sequence • The programme • The genre

4. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • What denotative elements are there? • Moving image is also a sound track • Diagetic - appears to emanate from scene 'I mean sometimes the sound I hear, that's been [recorded] on location, to me it's great. But it is bland. There's nothing on it. From the television audience's point of view, they're going to sit at home watching two people chatting and they would expect to hear woodland atmosphere ... So you think, 'I'll put a bit of sheep on that, 'cos the sheep are there but they're being mysteriously quiet'! ... It's what people expect to hear ... So you're highlighting them, if you like ... I've got a ... terrific library of effects which I've built up over the years ... In a country atmos[phere], it's open and you get an open feel, and you get dickie birds all around. In the woodland, in the woods, its a different sound ... kind of with the canopy, and the trees, its got a different ambience with it" (Sound technician, quoted in Phillips et al, 2001) • Non-diagetic sound - music and voice-overs

5. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Visual 'symbolic' elements • Newbold (1998) highlights: • colour (including black and white) • costumes and objects • stars and performances (or 'characters) • mise-en-scene • sound • Plus technical elements like, type of shots, camera angle and movements, depth of field, lighting, framing, duration of shots etc.

6. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery Rurality as a social-spatialisation Spaced out and sparsely populated Small-scale, bounded settlement

7. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery Rurality as a social-spatialisation Agricultural area Space of nature

8. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery Rurality as a social-spatialisation Historical Timeless

9. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery Rurality as a social-spatialisation Idyllic

10. Semiotic analysis of moving imagery Rurality as a social-spatialisation Classed

11. Cagney and Lacey Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Focus often on paradigmatic/ syntagmatic relationships E.g. Fiske (1989) • Denotative analysis of character 'A character is a paradigmatic set of values that are related through structures of similarity and difference to other characteristics' (Fiske, 1989, p. 160) Similarities – gender, nationality, place, time, age Differences – class, home character, money, plus race

12. Street Urban America Cagney and Lacey Them (evil, danger, out there) Female Traditional Lacey Love Vocation Cooperation Male Change Cagney Power Career Competition Precinct house Us (good, safety, in here) Home Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Fiske (1987) explores syntagmatic links between characters and settings • What syntagmatic relations can you identify?

13. Landseer's 'Monarch of the Glen) Semiotic analysis of moving imagery • Syntagmatic relations not only exist 'intra-textually' but also 'inter-textually' • Syntagmatic relations also work temporally within moving images

14. Narrative Analysis 'One could … say that every moving image product has a relationship to narrative' (Newbold 1998, p. 130) • Range of narrative types: • Serial • Series • TV Programmes and films often have multiple narratives • How many in the television drama you have seen ? • Narrative theory points to temporal 'syntagms' and can be used to extend semiotic analysis • E.g. Importance of opening sequences and link shots

15. Narrative Analysis • More formal narrative analysis • Concerned primarily with how narratives work • See paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships as being key to creating narratives • Many also quite structuralist in focus • E.g. Propp 'Propp provides the most extreme example of syntagmatic structuralist analysis' Fiske (1987, p. 135) Analysed 200 Russian folk tales and found an identical narrative structure in each of them

16. Propp's narrative analysis • Identified 32 'narrative functions', grouped into 6 narrative sections • Preparation • Complication • Transference • Struggle • Return • Recognition • Identified 8 character roles • Villain • Donor (provider), • Helper. • Princess and her father • Dispatcher • Hero • Fallen hero • In each function, particular characters do certain things to advance narrative

17. Propp's narrative analysis

18. Moving image analysis • Tasks for next week • In groups of 3-4 conduct a semiotic or narrative analysis of Monarch of the Glen • Prepare a 5 minute presentation of your analysis • Copy of programme available from Geography Resource Centre • Details of programme can be accessed from my website