Lesson 01: Semiotics

Lesson 01: 

For my first week back in Cherwell as a sixth former, I've attend my first lesson with both Mr Wroe and Ms Bird. From these two lessons I've discovered that Media Studies is full of new keywords which I'll need to learn for AS.


11/09/2012
MWE

                                                    Semiotics

Semiotics- the study of signs
Signifier- an object which is used to communicate
Signifiied- the message that is being mediate by the signifier

Semiotics was brought into light by Ferdinand de Sassure in linguistics(study of language) and it was studied further by Barthes in 1950's.

There are various symbols which are used today, they are called signifiers. There are three main types of signifier: symbolic, iconic and indexical. Symbolic signifiers are the signs we have learned when we were young, it's meaning is literal but they differ depending on the culture they're from. Iconic are symbols which are frequently and its representation is not literal but it's accurate. Indexical signs are more ambiguous, they have great potential to imply more than one idea.

The Power of Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is another topic we've discussed, it's how two elements can be put together to either compliment or contrast one another. One object can connote many things but in combination of another one, it can interpret so much more, increase it depth. There are so many possibilities on what it could be interpret as.

For example:

From the picture above we have a cartoon illustration and beside it is a black background. The cartoon illustration itself connotes childhood and naturally the idea of innocence, freedom and optimism in general is associated with this word. However, if we look at the other element that is present us which is a  black background, it's a complete contrast. The colour black is commonly used to represent pessimism and corrupt. The combination of the two is quite unsettling in a way. The image above could represent unhappy childhood, so as you can see- two items put together can make quite a dubious topic depending on the audience.