Test 2: Texts and Representations Flashcards
Cultural studies
an interdisciplinary field that aims to understand power and inequalities through the analysis of popular culture
political economy
focuses on economic distribution and on the relationship between the economy and democratic politics (Fenton
What do both PE and CS do?
Both Political Economy and Cultural Studies aim to understand how power functions in societies and they share some key concepts such as ideology, hegemony and social justice
What does Natalie Fenton say about CS?
“emphasizes the social agency of individuals and their capacity to resist social determination and dominant cultural agendas.”
Two people who shaped and influenced this interdisciplinary/semiotics field are:
Raymond Williams (1921-1988)
Stuart Hall (1932-2014)
What was Stuart Hall greatly influenced by?
postructuralism
What is postructuralism?
a set of 20th century about language and representation, that have been very influencial in the humanities. especially in literary critiscm.
semiotics
study of everything that can be used for communications
smallest unit of meaning
is called the sign
construct
how something has come to be accepted
sign (iconic + idexical)
signifier
signified
referent
signifer
a sign is physical form (like sound, printed word, image)
signified
meaning/idea expressed by a sign
(image that pops into head or resonates)
referent
the thing that a word/phrase denotes/stands for (the actual item)
arbitrary nature of sign
there is no logical relationship between signigier or signified
chain of signification
series of signigiers that are linked together
range of different but linked texts
each sign “sides under” the subsuequent signifer
Stuart Hall + language
languages as a system of representation
“without language nothing meaningful exists”
How can we understand language?
semiotic analysis
discourse analysis
Ferdinand de Saussure
looked at element of language and divided into two parts: sound of word signifier and what it represents: signifer the union of the two is a sign
FS: gave college lectures, died, students made a book with his notes
Jacques Derrida
(1930-2004) thinks prose has the upper hand
Marxism
Based on the theories of Karl Marx. Conflict theory states that society is in conflict with each other (rich vs poor). Political and economic philosophy.
What is the role of language in communication and production of meaning?
to convey thoughts, ideas, concepts, or even a feeling
think of Stuart Hall and postructuralism
What is the relationship between language and power?
a mutual relationship. Powerful institutions and individuals use language as both a means to construct their power and as a way to maintain it
Is language a realm of struggle?
Roland Barthe
Barthes argues that myth is the
primary way in which the mass
media communicate ideological
meaning.
myth
cultural meaning of a sign
Denotation and Connotation
denotation: literal meaning
connotation: associated meaning
What is a text?
can be almost anything that you can give meaning to: song, movie, book, painting, etc.
Ways in which the reader can analyze a text?
accept the intended meaning
negotiate the intended meaning
oppose or challenge the intended meaning
Polysemy
interpretive scope of media texts, the argument being that several interpretations coexist as potentials in any one text (more than one perspective)
Intertextuality
seeks and theorises links and connections between media texts and textualised social life
Postculturalism main arguments
Language is a system of representation and it is not independent from dynamics of power in society.
Example: In most parts of the world, the languages had an intrinsic
bias in favor of men until women started to challenge it.
Patterns in language
The concept of discourse (in Foucauldian sense) points at such
patterns in language
Discourse analysis
Discourse analytical approaches are interested in power relations in
language and what people actively do with language. They are interested in (among other things)
* ideological effects of discursive practices
* patterns of domination and subordination
What are the types of discourse analysis?
Conversation analysis (micro)
* Rhetorical analysis
* Argument analysis
semiotic analysis
the study of everything that can be used for communication: words, images, traffic signs, flowers, etc
hegemony
a type of domination based primarily on dominated people’s and groups’ consent rather than purely on a leader’s coercion and exerted force (think of dictators or veil video)
ideology
Simply put, it is the ideas behind a media text, the secret (or sometimes not-so secret) agenda of its producers.
Difference between intertextuality and discourse analysis?
IT: relationship and relations between texts
DA: taking into account both their linguistic content and their sociolinguistic context
Discourse: main points and assumptions
Language is structured in patterns or discourses
Language is fundamentally unstable
Meanings are flexible and can never be permanent fixed
Different discourses are engaged in a constant struggle with one another to achieve hegemony, that ism to fix the meanings of language in their own way
Discourse limits our horizon. It is difficult to think out of it
Sut Jhally
advertising documentary narrator: studied for 30 years, argues that we have not studied enough what advertising does to us
Stuart Hall encoding/decoding text
Encode meaning into a text
Decode meaning out of it
Decoding more popular
