MIT 1050: Week 5

Making Meaning
 Media as Texts
o Messages that can be read
o Build out of social conventions
o Relate to culture that produces them
o Need tools to decode
o The meaning of the text is the result of shared social conventions, for example, a
traffic light or popping champagne for “celebratory” events.
 Semiotics (Semiology)
o Tool for uncovering the cultural meanings communicated and reiterated in
media messages. It derives from the field of linguistics, specifically the work of
Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Piece, and was later developed by other
analysts, notably French theoretician Roland Barthes, to analyze messages
conveyed by media texts. Semiotics regards all communication as made up of
signs. Semiologists analyze how different arrangement of signs generate
meaning.
o According to semiotics, a sign is composed of two parts, the signifier and the
signified.
o The signifier is an image, sound, word that is attached to a signified, which is the
meaning of that image, sound, or word. The connection between the signifier
and the signified is arbitrary.
o The successful communication of meaning relies upon shared societal systems of
understanding because the relationship between the signifier and the signified is
culturally specific.
 Denotative Meaning
o The denotative meaning of a sign is its simple meaning. The word “cat” conjures
up the concept of “catness” and perhaps a picture of a generic cat, any old cat.
Denotative meaning then, is the simple meaning “This is a cat.” “This is a dog.”
 Connotative meaning
o Connotative meaning is the deeper level of meaning. It is also known as second
order signification. The connotative meaning or meanings is what a semiotic
analysis explores. It’s the spot where cultural conventions meet the arbitrariness
of the sign and where interpretation happens. In second order signification, the
signified of the first order signification become the signifier of the second order.
 Connotative meaning & Denotative meaning
o The sign of the denotative meaning becomes the signifier of the connotative
meaning, and the sign is now the connotative meaning.
o Ex. The denotative meaning of the sign Cat is a domestic pet with four legs, a
long tail, and pointy faces and ears. The connotative meaning is more complex.
 You might see a cat in the street, and it will remind you of your cat at home
whom you miss.

Decoding Meaning
 The basic approach to semiotics was first devised by Fernand de Saussure, a linguist,
who was interested in written and spoken language as a signifying system – that is, a
code for conveying meaning when combined into sentences in speech and in writing.
The linguistic model originally devised by Fernand de Saussure is not sufficient to explain
how meaning is made out of visual images. Another early semiotician, Charles Sanders
Pierce, theorized a more complex variety of signs. These are better suited to analysis of
visual media of all sorts. Semioticians use them to demonstrate the constructed manner
of visual, especially photographic images, that appear to be an “accurate” reflection or
“reality”.
 Types of Signs:
o Iconic signs are those in which the signifier represents the signified by having a
likeness to it. Photographs are therefore iconic signs. This type of sign is very
important in visual images or messages that employ visual images.
 An emoji would also be a sign. That we know what they mean is an
example of shared conventions.
 The things we click on to stat a software program on our computers are
not necessarily icons as I am discussing them here. A printer icon is iconic
because it is a picture of a printer. But the Google Chrome and
PowerPoint icons are not iconic by this definition.
o Indexical signs, there is an inherent relationship between the signified and the
signifier. Can be reduced to cause and effect but is often more complication that
that. For example, if you see or smell smoke, you know something’s on fire.
o Symbolic signs have a conventional but purely arbitrary relationship between
the signifier and the signified. Corporate logos are an example, as well as other
symbols used to signify certain things. Some iconic signs are also symbols, like
the recycling symbol. Dove as a symbol of peace. The Swoosh is a well-known
symbol of Nike, the athletic footwear and apparel company.
 Paradigms
o The paradigmatic axis contains the set of things that could be used in place of
each other. The set of alternatives is called a paradigm. It’s kind of like a set. For
example, think of the paradigm “apparel”. It will contain shirts, pants, dressed,
skirts, underpants, undershirts, socks, ties, coats, blazers, sweaters, sweatshirts
and t-shirts, for example. You may have a few different types of each of them.
You may have different types of each kind of apparel, for different purposes.
 Syntagms
o Examines how the different signifiers in a text interact with each other.
Syntagms, how signs make sense together, clarifies the relationship between the
signifiers.
  Myths
o Roland Barthes theorized a third order of meaning, which he called mythology or
myth.
o According to the reading “myths are broader sets of cultural assumptions and
beliefs evoke and reinforced by media texts” which are further reinforced every
time they are invoked.
o Once again, myths make dominant ways of think appear natural and obvious.
 Codes
o Codes refer to larger systems of meaning linked to ideology. Media objects have
cultural codes built into them that members in a culture can easily decode.
o The trick for advertisers and others is to ensure that the sings, signifier,
paradigms, syntagms, and myths are decoded in the way that they intend them
to be.
o Conventionalized ways of making meaning.
o Specific to group of people:
 Professional codes
 Consumer codes
o Activated at second level/connotative signification
o Many things are coded, including colour
o Liked to wider ideologies at work in a society:
 Dominant codes
 Cultural “commonsense” about how people and things “should” be
 Interpreting/Decoding Advertisements
o Ads do not transfer signifieds between signs by themselves.
o The viewer of the ad makes the transfer.
o Without the viewer/interpreter, the ad is meaningless.
 Polysemy
o Signs can have more than one meaning
o Preferred meanings and preferred readings
o Ads encourage viewers to produce preferred readings
o Preferred readings retain “the institutional/political/ideological order imprinted
on them”.
o Other recordings are possible, but limited.

Genre, Narrative and Discourse Analysis

 Genre Analysis
o Categories – categories into which we place media objects such as films,
television series, music and game. It’s also very important to the publishing
industry.
o Sets expectations – genre sets our expectations of what we are going to see or
in the case of music, hear.
 o Helps us make choices and recognize what we like – genre helps us make
choices – for example, do we want to go see an Action/Adventure film or a
Romantic Comedy?
o Signifies and codes in recognizable ways
o Has rules and limit – genre has implicit rules about the content of media objects.
o Constructs and finds audiences
 Genre and Media Producers
o Motivated by economics
o Reduces risk
o Predictable audiences
o Genre is useful for media producers too, from pitch to marketing. Recognizable
genres draw predictable audiences, and there reduce financial risk for producers.
 Hybridization and Dynamism
 Genre Analysis – Key Points
o Sets of codes and conventions
o A way for producers of media texts to organize audiences
o A way for consumers of media to find texts that appeal to them
o Ideological in nature
o Can be used to include and exclude groups
 Narrative Analysis
o Seeks to identify conventions and devices with which narratives are constructed
o Media storytellers rely upon successful communication through signs
o Seeks to understand the ways audiences are asked to make sense of content
o Involve certain character types
o Plots are the ways that stores are told
o Are ideological
 Discourse Analysis
o Focus on the use of language in media
o How issues and groups are talked about
o Who is included and who is excluded
o The positions of the speaker and the audience
o How the audiences are invited to understand events, issues, groups and
identities
o Places texts in cultural and national contexts