Making Meaning Flashcards
Bricolage
Taking an object and altering its meaning by changing the way it is used and creating meaning by assembling seemingly divergent symbols
Think about plastic buckets being used as drums, and the blue men in general
Institutional Critique
The location and environment of a message or object affects its value.
In a museum a painting of a comic strip may be “high art” which is “sophisticated irony and philosophically challenging” but in a low end store it is “low art” which is “sophomoric, and intellectually sterile”
Counter-Bricolage
Selling the bricolaged object back to the mainstream market as something normal
Think bleached or torn jeans
Appropriation
Taking a symbol and using it in a way in which it wasn’t originally intended, usually to make commentary or a social message
Think about the Harlem Shake being taken from a song to a dance video
Re-Appropriation
A subsequent change after the initial appropriation of a term or idea and giving it another new meaning
Think how slurs and racist words like bitch have been turned around to be empowering
5 Elements of Making Effective Messages
Knowing context, purpose, audience, expectations, and constraints
Discursive Form
A form that is Linear, chronological, and orderly. Would not make sense out of sequence.
Ex: yoda sentences, math problems, music sheets
Discursive Influences
Rule based (such as indicating proper reading), useful for building arguments, allows for varying levels of precision, emotional appeals possible but take more work/effort
Presentational Form
Complete, multifaceted, presents in whole form (so sequence is less important since you have the entire thing)
Think photographs, paintings, sculptures
Presentation Influences
More readily elicites emotion, not as obviously rule based, less overtly rational. More prone to varied interpretations, although there is still precision in its multiple meanings. It’s more challenging to make clear arguments, but it is possible.
Blended (Discursive and Presentational) From
The most memorable and effective of the forms, with simultaneous rational and emotional appeals where emotion encourages the initial action (cute animal adds influencing donation), while reason encourages commitment to that action ( initial cute factor, gone but still a worthwhile cause). Appeals to broader audiences, allows for more creativity and sometimes clarity.
Examples: front page of newspaper, advertisements, magazine covers, YouTube videos
Dominant Hegemonic Reading
One of the three positions viewers can take as decodes of images and artifacts. To identify with the majority viewpoint and thus receive the dominant message of the image without question
Negotiated Reading
Another one if the positions of a viewer in the eyes of Stuart Hall. They can negotiate from the image and it’s dominant meanings.
Oppositional Reading
The last of the positions of a viewer listed by Stuart Hall. This viewer takes the oppositional viewpoint, disagreeing with the majority accepted view and perhaps even rejecting it entirely.
