Media Language

• Roland Barthes - Semiotics

  • Texts convey messages through signs and symbols
  • Denotation: literal meaning of a sign
  • Connotation: additional meanings associated with a sign
  • Hermeneutic Code: enigmatic information kept from audience
  • Proairetic Code: suggesting consequences of actions
  • Cultural Code: references to pre-existing historical, social, psychological or literary texts
• Tzvetan Todorov - Narratology

  • 3 stage narrative: equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium
  • 5 stage narrative: equilibrium, disruption, recognition of disruption, attempt to solve disruption, new equilibrium
• Steve Neale - Genre

  • Genres are formed through repetition of relevant content
  • Genres are fluid and vary, borrowing from and overlapping one another
  • Genres exist within specific economic, institutional and industrial contexts
• Claude Levi-Strauss - Structuralism

  • Texts are understood best through their underlying structure
  • Meaning is produced through binary oppositions
  • Resolutions of binary oppositions can have ideological significance
• Jean Baudrillard - Postmodernism

  • Boundaries between the real world and the media have collapsed
  • Impossible to distinguish between reality and simulation
  • Texts immerse people into images that no longer offer or refer to anything real
  • Hyperreality: media images seem more real than the reality they supposedly represent