Analysing Media Texts Using Semiotics

What is this?

Semiotics

Semiotics is a way of analysing any media text to uncover the ways it creates meaning for its target audience. Some key terms in semiotics are sign, code, denotation and connotation.Media texts, like the magazine ad on the right (from a charity’s campaign against verbal abuse), can be made powerful and compelling.If you’ve been to any recent film at a multiplex cinema with an ultra-wide screen and surround Dolby 5.1 sound, you’ll have experienced how very realistic media companies can now make their ‘representations’ of the world…So believable, often, that it really does seem as if the media is able to offer us a ‘window on the world’.

Semiotics

Semiotics provides important ways for you to be able to ‘deconstruct’ a media text so you can work out how it is working on its target audience to create particular meanings and feelings.Sometimes, too, a media text will be working to create or reinforce a particular way of viewing or thinking about the world.Semioticians believe that when we, as humans, put ‘things’ together to create some kind of meaning, we end up saying far more than simply what the things in themselves ‘say’, that is, we create ‘codes of meaning’.

Signs are important because they can mean something other than

themselves

Stop means StopApple means Apple

Crown means Crown

Crown means KingApple means HealthyStop means Danger

The interpretation of a sign is dependent on the

context in which it is used, it’s relationship to

other signs, and its environment.

There are numerous relationships that can exist between signifier and signified. We can have the

same signifier with different signifieds and different signifiers with the same signified.

Signifier Signified Signifier Signified

Apple Temptation Apple Apple

Apple Healthy Pomme Apple

Apple Fruit Apfel Apple

Sign

Signifier Signified

Denotation Connotation

Three Types of Signs

• Icon - a sign that physically resembles what it stands for - a literal sign

• Index - a sign which implies some other object or event - an implied sign

• Symbol - a sign with a conventional or arbitrary relation to the signified - a learned sign CAT

IconThe signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified. A pictoral representation, a photograph, an architect’s model of a building, or a star chart are all icons because they imitate or copy aspects of their subject.

Index

An index had a factual or casual connection that points towards its object. Wet streets are a sign that it has rained recently. Smoke signifies fire. A nest image is an icon of a nest but also an index of a bird.

SymbolA symbol has an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified. The interpreter understands the symbol through previous knowledge and experience - it must be learned and agreed upon. Spoken or written words are symbols. There is no reason that the word CAT should represent a cat instead of a tree.

CAT

Clothing

Semioticians would say that a common and important ‘sign system’ is the clothing we each use to cover our bodies. They say that clothing means far more – in our culture – than merely to act as a body covering.Instead, we use clothing as a series of meaningful signs that are placed together to create an even more meaningful code, one that our ‘audience’ (i.e. those we dress to impress!) can ‘crack’ and so ‘read’ that we are trying to say… ‘I’m cool’, ‘I’m a Goth’, ‘I’m a Hippy’... serious, fashionable, clever… and perhaps most especially, that ‘I am an individual’ and ‘…not poor’, ‘street wise’… and whatever else we deem important to us in our society.The individual clothes or the fabric from which they are made don’t say this in themselves, of course, they denote merely, clothes; but the individual signs work together to create a code that connotes mush more than, merely clothes.

Sign Systems

There are, in semiotics, many such ‘sign systems’: architecture, cosmetics, home and office furnishings, restaurant menus, and so on. In fact, ‘sign systems’ are all around us if we could but see and recognise that we so often do not want to just denote literal meaning, we want to connote ideas and feelings. Yet, those ‘sign systems’ are often not noticeable simply because they seem so ordinary, so every day, so normal.

Task

Think of these three signs: a teenage boy, a teenage girl, a red rose. Are they gardeners or are they romantically attached?Can you think up more ‘signs’ that work together to create ‘extra’ meaning beyond the obvious? Here’s another to help you along: a man and a woman in their late twenties; a child of three, a child of six months, a swing, a garden, sunshine, blue sky…What was the code? A happy family – a normal family… (but are all families like this? Is it a genuine representation of reality)

Escape Advert

Look at the signs and the resulting codes thes construct in the image to the right.Can you deconstruct it into some of its individual signs and see how these seem, so very naturally, to work together to create a code that signifies or connotes meaning (and feeling) much larger than the individual meaning of the signs themselves?

LOGOMARK( SYMBOL / IDEOGRAM )

LOGOTYPEApple

LOGO LANGUAGE

BRANDThe audience’s perception of the product.

A product’s brand is influenced by, but can’t be controlled by

the companyor

the designer.

.......................................a combination of thelogo ................................................................and a visual system ..............................(typeface, colours, imagery)

.............................. ....to form a cohesive message ............................................about the product

TMIDENTITY

Joy, Intellect, Caution, Cowardice, Youth

Fertility, Money, Healing, Success, Growth

Knowledge, Tranquility, Calm, Peace, CoolRoyalty, Wisdom,

Spirituality, Imagination

Creativity, Invigoration, Warmth, Energy

Passion, Anger, Stop, Battle, Love, Blood

THE MEANING OF COLOUR

NEGATIVESPACE

Task

An ident is the symbol or logo displayed by studios to mark their work as their own.

You need one for all your work. Think about what you want to symbolise and then think about a signifier that will do the job!

Have a look at some major studio idents for inspiration. What features are common? What palette is most popular? Which is best? Why?

A good logo should

identify rather than explain

work in black and white

be the foundation of a visual system

work for a variety of media

be recognisable at a distance

Simple recap:

An important recognition is that the meaning created by a sign or a code is often of two distinct types:1All signs have a DENOTATION.

This is its ‘basic meaning’: what it ‘literally’ is on its own, away from the context of, say, the advert it is in, e.g. a red rose denotes... a flower.•Signs and codes can have a secondary suggested meaning – called a CONNOTATION.

This is the meaning that develops within a certain context, e.g. a rose can connote romance and love.

Recap

To recap: semiotics is the study of the way meaning is created within a particular culture or society… by its various sign systems. It applies not only to media texts but to all kinds of human creations. It offers a truly important way of deconstructing and analysing all kinds of media texts.1A sign is defined as any single thing that creates separate meaning on its own. Signs usually denote meaning when viewed individually.

2A code is defined as a collection or group of signs that seem – to us in our society or culture – to ‘go naturally together’ and thus to seem a part of a single thing that creates a larger meaning than the individual signs from which it is made.

•The meaning created by a code is always greater than that of the individual signsfrom which it is constructed (remember… romance is the meaning (and feeling!); the code is made up of a few signs: a boy, a girl, a red rose… a smile, bright eyes, rosy cheeks… … …)

1Of course, the signs that ‘go together’ to create a code cannot be just any signs at all: they must be composed of just those signs that we as members of a particular society or culture recognise as somehow ‘going together naturally’ to create an overall meaning.