Media Language

Question 1

Semiotics

Answer 1

• Roland Bartes
• “texts communicate their meaning through a process of signification”
• “signs can function at a level of dennotation, the literal or common sense meaning of a sign”
• “or a level of connotaion, the meaning with or suggested by the sign”

Question 2

Genre Theory

Answer 2

• Steve Neale
  -“all genres abide by a set of codes and conventions and are dominated by repetition, but are also marked by variation, difference and change”
  -“genres change, develop and vary, as they borrow from and overlap with one another”
  -“genres exist within specific economic, institutional, and industrial contexts”

Question 3

Structuralism

Answer 3

• Claude Levi Strauss
  -“texts can be best understood through the examination of their underlying structure”
  -“the meaning is dependent upon (and produced through) pairs of oppositions”
  -“the way in which these binary oppositions are resolved can have particular ideological significance”

Question 4

Narratology

Answer 4

• Tzvetan Todorov
  -“all narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another”
  -“these two states of equilibrium are seperated by a period of imbalance”
  -“way in which the narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance”

Question 5

Post Modernism

Answer 5

• Jean Baudrillard
  -“in postmodern culture, the boundaries between the ‘real’ world and the media world have collapsed and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between reality and simulation”
  -“the postmodern age of simulacra, we are immersed in a world of images which no longer refer to anything ‘real’.”
  -“the media images have come to seem more ‘real’ than the reality they supposedly represent (hyperreality)”