Question 3: Image analysis Flashcards
Define connotations
Operating on the second order of signification, connotation refers to the emotions, values, and associations that a sign gives rise to in the reader, viewer, or listener. The connotative meaning of a sign can be expressed by quickly jotting down what it reminds you of, or makes you feel or imagine
Describe polysemic
The word polysemic comes from the Greek words poly (‘many’) and seme (‘meaning’). ‘Polysemic’ thus means ‘many meanings’. While the polysemic nature (see pp. 145–6) of media texts does provide the possibility for multiple interpretations, these readings ‘correspond to the reader’s response to his or her social conditions not to the structure of the text’ (O’Sullivan et al. 1994, p. 239
Describe anchorage
Anchorage limits polysemy by articulating the preferred meaning of a text, as a caption labels an image
E.g. Without any accompanying captions, the top images of the dripping tap and the glass of sparkling water could be interpreted in many ways: as a symbol or implied narrative of slow and steady progress in which a glass is filled drop by drop, or as promoting mineral water, or as advertising the services of a plumber who fixes dripping faucets.
Describe patriarchy
A social structure in which the father or a male figure is the leader and descent is reckoned on the male line. Masculine power and authority dominate social, political and economic institutions, thereby oppressing women
Describe misogyny
Hatred of women and femininity
Describe feminism
The movement for women’s equality and liberation.
Initially feminists fought for women’s social, legal, political, and economic rights, and attempted to understand how the construction of femininity is related to the status of women.
Describe post feminism
The term can be used to suggest that feminism is in the past, outdated, no longer relevant to contemporary gender dynamics. Alternatively, postfeminism can refer to a postmodern approach to feminism and/or contemporary critiques of earlier feminisms
Describe the mode of address
Refers to the different ways in which a text speaks to or addresses its audience. In this advertisement, who is speaking to whom?
Describe masculinity
Power is the major attribute that is seen as the key signifier and definer of masculinity, in the media and in the real world. Masculinity is achieved by having physical (see, for example, Figure 21.2) and/or social power.
Describe the aspects of male violence
Destruction of others
Destruction of self
Masochism Pleasure (or perverse sexual gratification) felt when experiencing pain, humiliation, or deprivation. The term is derived from the name of erotic novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Describe meterosexuals
Young, stylish, urban men who care about and spend considerable money on their appearance, and are attractive to women (and, often, to other men).
Describe interpellation
A process in which we internalise ideologies as a response to being hailed or addressed.
The media work as a hailing, interpellating system. The way they address us (their modes of address), constantly interpellates us—as family, as citizens, as children, and so on. This is particularly true of television and radio, where there is often a ‘direct address’ by announcers to ‘you’, the listener. Such modes of address give us our identities and subjectivities
Describe Laura Mulvey’s male gaze
Women are sexualised for the pleasure of men
“One might simplify this by saying men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight (Berger 1972, p. 47)”.
Draws attention to the politics of looking and the emphasis on visual appearance that is associated with women in film.” O’Shaughnessy,
Describe Stuart Hall’s preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings
- Preferred readings—audiences accept what is being presented without question
- Negotiated readings—audiences negotiate with the text’s intended meaning and accept only some of what is being presented to them
- Alternative/oppositional readings—audiences read completely against the preferred reading.
Polysemic - multiple meanings
What does the sign do?
Communicates meaning by standing in for or representing a thing or an idea
Is made up of the signifier and the signified
