media language theorists

Question 1

Steve Neale
Genre theory

Answer 1

-The idea that genres may be dominated by repetition, but are also marked by difference, variation and change

-The idea that genres change, develop and vary as they borrow from and overlap with one another

-The idea that genres exist within specific economic, institutional and industrial contexts

Question 2

Todorov
Narratology

Answer 2

-The idea that all narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another

-The idea that these 2 states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium

-The idea that the way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance

Question 3

Roland Barthes
Semiotics

Answer 3

-The idea that texts communicate their meanings through a process of signification

-The idea that signs can function at the level of denotation, which involves the literal or common sense meaning of the sign, and the level of connotation which involves the literal meanings associated with or suggested by the sign

-The idea that constructed meanings can come to seem self-evident, achieving the status of myth through a process of naturalisation

Question 4

Levi Strauss
Structuralism

Answer 4

-The idea that texts can best be understood through an examination of their underlying structure

-The idea that meaning is dependent upon pair of oppositions

-The idea that the way in which these binary oppositions are resolved can have particular ideological significance

Question 5

Postmodernism
Jean Beaudrillard

Answer 5

he boundaries between the “real” and “mediated” worlds have collapsed.
Signs are a process of signification with no signifier underlying them; they no longer refer to anything “real” or “literal”.
Mediated images now seem more “real” than the reality they supposedly represent (hyperreality).