Lecture 10 Communication Theory - S. Jones

Four Candles : Two Ronnies

Meaning isn't guaranteed with everything that you say, it can be easily misunderstood or misinterpreted.

Defining Semitics- Ferdinand Saussure:

• A study of signs and systems
• Meaning isn't inherent within a sign
• He separated the act of speech from language
• Semiotics is a meta-language - a language about a language
• Signs mean what they do because there is an agreement about what they mean.

Could symbolize go, grass or cold/water

The colour along with a visual clue, the colour means something completely different.

• Meaning is established in differentiation
• Rather than establishing what it is we establish what it is not

Roland Barthes warns that denotation is NOT literal meaning but is naturalized through language

Wine is connected with sophistication and intelligence due to association. Milk is associated with strength due to association.

Syntagm and paradigm

• Syntagm is a series or collection of signifiers with a 'text' = a sentence
• Paradigm= signifiers that relate through function or relative meaning
  
  boy/ man "He hit the man / he hit the boy" signifiers in relation to other associated signs changes the meaning of the sentence.

If you change the paradigm the entire meaning of the entire image.

Metaphor and Metonym

Both non-literal forms of signification.

Metaphor is where one signifier is replaces with another similar concept

Metonym is where a signifier stands in for a the entire concept. My Wheels = my car, yellow cab = New York etc.

Here, the White House represents the entire Government or Politics.

Rhetoric

Effective persuasion using language.

Used by: Politicians, Journalists, advertisers etc.

Meta is a prefix used to alter purpose of a practice or system inwards, a story about a story.

A movie about making a movie: a meta movie.

Structuralism is the term used for the broad application of semiotics/ semiology to a range of sign systems.

Barthes analyses a range of visual media in terms of their signifying structures: The Photographic Message, The Rhetoric of the image, The Third meaning.

Post structuralism: while structuralism focusses on the structures of meaning in any signifying system, post structuralism focusses on the precarious nature of meaning, it is cynical of meaning.

Post structuralists aim to deconstruct assumptions and emphasise the plurality of interpretation.

Part of post structuralism is Differance:

Derrida disagrees with the assumed grooves of structuralism. 

The meaning that you are seeking is constantly changing by the meaning of other words

Deconstruction

Where structuralism identified structures of signification, Deconstruction aims to dismantle the structures - identifying gaps and instabilities.

Intertextuality:

e.g, Scary Movie only exists due to all the things that it references that have gone before it.

Simulacra

Jean Baudrillard introduces the idea of hyperreality in representation: a copy with an original.

We have lost the ability to recognise the difference between nature and artificiality.

We experience the real through copied images, e.g Disneyland 

Brand aren't about products anymore, they are about brands themselves