Media Language

Question 1

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Concept 1 outline

Answer 1

The media constructs meaning through a process of denotation and connotation

Question 2

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Concept 1: Deeper outline

Answer 2

• We read the media imagery the same way we read conventional language
• We decode media imagery in two distinctly different ways: first, producing a denotative reading that recognises the literal content of an image, and then producing a connotative reading that diagnoses a deeper symbolic meaning
• Image based connotations are created through; props, post-production effects, pose, costuming, composition and lighting
• Media imagery is polyvalent
• Text based elements can provide anchorage - tying down the meaning of an image for the reader
• Suggests that meaning is produced by the simultaneous deployment of hermeneutical, Proairetic, semantic, cultural and symbolic features

Question 3

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Concept 2: Outline

Answer 3

The media has an ideological effect on audiences

Question 4

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Concept 2: deeper outline

Answer 4

• The media is powerful because it has the capacity to produce a realistic portrayal of the world
• The media has a myth like capacity to guide and influence our behaviours and actions
• The media naturalises ideas through repetition.
• The media reduces or simplicities ideas, discouraging audiences from questioning its specific presentation to the world
• The media tends to reinforce the worldview of those who affect social power

Question 5

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Two theorists who challenge

Answer 5

• Claude Levi- Strauss
• Tzvetan Todorov

Question 6

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Vs. Claude Levi-Strauss

Answer 6

Would be more interested in the way that media products articulate oppositions than in the effect of any single ingredient or moment.

Levi-Strauss would also argue that media products are informed by universally shared structures; Barthes argues that media products are constructed as a result of temporal or social influences

Question 7

BARTHES SEMIOTICS
Vs. Todorov

Answer 7

Would argue that media products produce meaning through narrative features and that isolated instances of connotation are less significant.

Question 8

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Concept 1 outline

Answer 8

Media narratives use binary opposites

Question 9

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Concept 1 deeper outline

Answer 9

• Levi-Strauss offers a structuralist approach to media analysis, suggesting that humans encode and decode the world using universally shared principles.
• The media uses binary oppositions to explain and categorise the complexities of the world around us
• Oppositions can be found in the media in the presentation of characters or narrative themes
• Media markers also I apply stylistic oppositions to mis-en-scene, camera work, editing styles and image construction
• Thematic oppositions in media products can be genre driven

Question 10

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Concept 2 outline

Answer 10

The way binary oppositions are resolved creates ideological significance

Question 11

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Concept 2 deeper outline

Answer 11

• media products construct ideologies by positioning their audiences to favour one side of an opposition
• Narrative resolutions - the endings of media products - often help us to diagnose which oppositions a product favours (+ Todorov)

Question 12

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Three theorists who challenge

Answer 12

• Stuart Hall
• Paul Gilroy
• Judith Butler

Question 13

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Vs Stuart Hall

Answer 13

Would also argue that media products can be encoded using binary oppositions, but he would ass that audiences do not necessarily decode the products int he way that media makers intend

Question 14

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Vs Paul Gilroy

Answer 14

Argues that Western binary thinking has traditionally classified ethnicity in terms of simplified white/non0white and civilised/simplistic and hugely damaging binary classifications

Question 15

LEVI-STRAUSS: STRUCTURALISM
Vs Judith Butler

Answer 15

Similarly argues that conventional Western gender binaries mask the complexities nature of sexuality. She also argues that individuals have resisted gender binary using ‘gender trouble’

Question 16

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Concept 1: outline

Answer 16

Narrative patterns - equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium

Question 17

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Concept 1 deeper outline

Answer 17

• Todorov suggests that meaning in media products is constructed through narrative sequences and transitions rather than through any individual effect or single moment within a product
• Todorov suggests that an ideal narrative structure follows the narrative pattern
• The new equilibrium stage transforms characters and the world they inhabit

Question 18

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Concept 2 outline

Answer 18

The ideological effects of story structure

Question 19

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Concept 2 deeper outline

Answer 19

• the power of stories lies in their deeper symbolic meanings
• Narratives contruct ideals for the audience through the use of equilibrium
• Disequilibrium sequences represent ideas, values or behaviours that are deemed problematic - often these negative ideologies are embodied through the villain character
• Narrative transformation produces further ideals or positive models of behaviour for a media audience

Question 20

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Two theorists who might challenge Todorov

Answer 20

• Steve Neale
• Levi-Strauss

Question 21

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Vs Steve Neale

Answer 21

Would argue that story structures are continuously adapting and changing.

The idea that there exists an ‘ideal’ story structure, as such, is problematic for Neale

Question 22

TODOROV: NARRATIVE PATTERNS
Vs Levi-Strauss

Answer 22

Concerned with the way that narratives present oppositions rather than rhetoric way those oppositions are transformed or synthesised

Question 23

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY
Concept 1 outline

Answer 23

The pleasures afforded through repetition and difference

Question 24

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY
Concept 1 deeper outline

Answer 24

• The genre of a product is determined by a variety of factors
• Genres offer specific pleasures to their audience
• Audiences enjoy genre subversion as well as repetition
• genres are not fixed but are subject to constant change as a result of real world effects and the needs of audiences
• genre hybridisation is a common feature which in the contemporary media landscape

Question 25

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY Concept 2 outline

Answer 25

Industry effects on genre-driven media

Question 26

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY Concept 2 deeper outline

Answer 26

- Genre driven output is shaped by auteurs and is also subject to the effects of institutional mediation - Genre labelling is widely practised by media producers to create a narrative image for a media product - Promotion and marketing materials (intertextual relay) can fix the genre of a product

Question 27

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY Two theorists who might challenge

Answer 27

- Stuart Hall - James Curran and Jean Seaton

Question 28

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY Vs Stuart Hall

Answer 28

Would agree that products construct pleasures for audiences, but would also emphasises the potential dangers that certain genres have in effecting audience ideologies through genre specific character representations and stereotypes.

Question 29

STEVE NEALE: GENRE THEORY Vs Curran & Seaton

Answer 29

Might challenge the notion that genre hybridisation is not a significant feature of the contemporary landscape. Curran and seaton suggest that media concentration has in fact led to fewer experimental forms and that media companies are instead overly reliant on tried and tested narrative formulas that are designed to garner mass audience appeal.

Question 30

BAUDRILLARD: POST-MODERNISM Key concept outline

Answer 30

From the real to the Hyperreal

Question 31

BAUDRILLARD: POST-MODERNISM Key concept deeper outline

Answer 31

- Baudrillard suggest that there have been three distinct cultural phases: pre-modernity, modernity and postmodernity - We now live in the postmodern age which is marked by a massive proliferation in media content and media messages - Media proliferation has resulted in an implosion of meaning through the simultaneous presentation of oppositional truths - Media proliferation is enables through endless copying of pre-existing media. Media forms ‘blend’ and hybridise during this copying process - The post modern age is marked by the dominance of advertising as a media form. Advertising has also impacted on other media forms creating hyperreal inertia. - Baudrillard suggests that media blending has resulted in the construction of fictionalised reality. - Audiences yearn for authenticity in postmodernity; the media industry tries to satisfy this yearning through realised fiction

Question 32

BAUDRILLARD: POST-MODERNISM Two theorists who might challenge

Answer 32

- Roland Barthes - Henry Jenkins

Question 33

BAUDRILLARD: POST-MODERNISM Vs Barthes

Answer 33

Would argue that media products have a clear relationship with reality. Media texts represent and naturalise the world views of those who hold power in society.

Question 34

BAUDRILLARD: POST-MODERNISM Vs Henry Jenkins

Answer 34

Would contest the idea that postmodernity results in Hyperreality inertia. Contemporary digital media, he would argue, can make a positive difference in the real world through the use of participatory culture