Media Language Theorists

Question 1

codes that construct a narrative an audience can decode.

Roland Barthes – Semiotics & the Five Codes

Answer 1

• The audience look for signs to help them interpret the narrative.
• Coded signs are based on expectations the audience has due to their prior knowledge (of old tales or myths)
• Barthes believed that those in power used particularly signs to promote their own cultural ideologies in society.
• Categorised narrative semiotics into ‘Five Codes’: Action (proairetic), cultural, enigma (hermeneutic), semantic, symbolic, and argued that the way an audience understands a story is through the breaking down of these codes.

Question 2

Genre conventions and subversions

Steve Neale
Theory of Repetition and Difference

Answer 2

• Genres “are instances of repetition and differences.”
• Genres must follow convections to the extent that they must be recognisable to the audience.
• Genre must also subvert our expectations to maintain our interest.
• Genres are aimed at a predetermined audience so they can be easily market and success can be predicted.

Question 3

Structure of a narrative

Tropprov’s Narrative theory

Answer 3

• Suggests that all narratives follow a linear three-part structure. Beginning, middle and end.
• Three-part structure is divided up into: Equilibrium - At the start of the story everything is normal, Disequilibrium/Disruption, Repair, and resolution.
• Sometimes, the narrative may move forwards or backwards using techniques such as flashbacks - non-linear/ circular structure.

Question 4

Character archetypes

Propp’s Character Theory

Answer 4

• Propp had analysed legendary folk tales to see if they shared a narrative, He concluded that all characters in tales could be resolved into abstract character functions.
• Villain.
  The Donor (provider)
  The Helper.
  The Princess (a sought-for person)
  Dispatcher.
  The Hero.
  The False Hero.

Question 5

Opposite constructs used to create meaning

Claude Levi Strauss’s Binary Opposition Theory

Answer 5

• Idea that we make sense of not only media products but our lives in general is through the idea of binary oppositions that end up defining each other. Binary oppositions and the way they are used by producers in narratives demonstrate their ideological significance.

opposite constructs which create meaning when put together.

Question 6

Artificial and heightened realities

Baudrillard’s Post-Modernism theory

Answer 6

• Stated that, in the modern world, what something represents is more important than what it actually is.
• We are now in a world of artificial realities.
• Simulacrum: Where a product is made to replicate the reality of something despite being fundementally different from reality.
• Audiences enjoy Simulacrum more than reality.

Question 7

Subversion of expectations

Post-modernism

(NOT BAUILLARD)

Answer 7

• Characterised by wilfuly breaking the conventions of media text. It is a movement that aims to subvert expectations.