...WHAT IS VISUAL SOCIAL SEMIOTICS? Semiotics is generally described as the “study of signs.” For a sign to exist, there must be meaning or content (the signified) manifested through some form of expression or representation (the sign). Figure 1 is a well-known painting by Rene Magritte that demonstrates this relationship in a striking and explicit manner. By putting the sentence This is not a pipe below a highly realistic representation of a pipe, Magritte reminds viewers that the image is not reality but artifice–in other words, a representation or sign. A thoughtful viewer might note that the word “pipe” itself is an arbitrary combination of four letters that conveys the concept of “pipe” through the form of written expression–once again, a sign. Signs exist within semiotic systems. For example, the green light in a traffic signal is a sign meaning “go” within the semiotic system of traffic control; words are signs in the semiotic system of language; gestures are signs within the semiotic system of nonverbal communication; and so on. Because semiotic systems encompass the entire range of human practices, Semiotics provides us with a potentially unifying conceptual framework and a set of methods and terms for use across the full range of signifying practices, which include gesture, posture, dress, writing, speech, photography, film, television, and radio…. As David Sless notes, “we consult linguists to find out about language, art historians or critics to find out about paintings...
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...Semiotics: Signs, Syntax, and Linguistics Describe Advertising Mickey Mouse ears, sleigh bells, snowflakes, dog houses, mail boxes, and stop signs; chances are you know at least one of these things if not more. How do we describe them? In what way are they described to us? And above all How do we recognize and accept these things? The theory of semiotics aims to explain how we recognize these symbols in our lives and, more importantly tries to describe the way we communicate to, with, and around objects. The theory of semiotics has been around since the late 1800’s. A Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure developed the theory and explained it early on as the use of language and how certain symbols and objects obtain meaning. The theory or science of signs and their meanings became known popularly as semiotics. Language is something of a system of mutually defining entities. Saussure distinguished between diachronic and synchronic linguistics. Simply put the use of linguistics defines objects and the way that we, as a culture, see and describe the world with which we interact. From its inception the theory of semiotics has been useful in regards to all different aspects of communication. It can be used to examine persuasion, social interaction theory, media cultivation and penetration theories as well as interpersonal communication. This wide range of applications for this theory make it particularly pertinent to the discipline of communication. Large companies...
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...THEORY OF VISUAL RHETORIC In this article, we are dealing with a meaning and representative reality of pictures. In todays world there are many pictures, shown and done in many different ways. We have various kinds of pictures in rich colours and textures. The objective of this article is to reorient the study of advertising images by advocating the development of a theory of visual rhetoric. When we are taking about rhetorical theory, we say that it is an interpretative theory that frames a message as an interested party’s attempt to influence an audience. The sender’s message must be send as obvious one. It is also important how the message is sent – style of delivery. It is important that audience understand the message, therefore he uses shared knowledge of various vocabularies and conventions. Receiver/s use this same body of cultural knowledge to read the message, infer it, evaluate the argument and formulate a response. If we want to explain advertising images as a rhetoric one, we need to understand that visuals must have certain capabilities and characteristics. Visual elements are for representing concepts, abstractions, actions, etc. There must be an ability to guide the order of argumentation and visual elements need to carry meaningful variation in manner of delivery. To explain a visual communication complex we would need a symbol theory of pictures: one in which visuals signify by convention and not by resemblance to nature. Author claims, that visual arguments...
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...following research was conducted both practically, and theoretically, to overtly annunciate the social and democratic problems associated with advertised female subordination. The relative research involves a semiotic analysis of two sources, coupled with a survey of 40 candidates of varying ages. Furthermore, theoretical mechanisms of media framing and cultivation have been deconstructed throughout this article to uncover the impact of magnified female subordination on the domestic expectations of children and young adults. Through the collection of data, it was able to be conclusively recognized the impact of objectification on social attitudes. Results had shown the many conceptions concerning the female purpose, these include; a woman’s role as a domestic and sexual slave to her male partner. Through the convergence of data, semiotic analysis and academic theory, it may be meticulously understood how female objectification in the mass media is a social complication in the construction of an egalitarian future. ‘Women’s bodies are predominantly valued for its use to others’ Fredrickson & Roberts 1997 During the past decade, society has witnessed the progression of information technology, and has been a part of a global communication network that surpasses domestic and moral boundaries. This network has fabricated a sharp impact on national discourse, political policy, and the social attitudes of society, particularly children and young adults. As our society becomes more commercial...
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...* ------------------------------------------------- Text analysis provides some insight into media messages but only a critical political economy approach can adequately explain how the media work today * * Whoever Controls the media, controls the mind. This is an interesting quote by Jim Morrison that shows the power of the media and its messages at the present day. Media has played a huge role in the cultures it inhabited. Starting from the Printing Press, and then evolving into the radio, the television till the World Wide Web. The evolution of the mass media took many different shapes and with this evolution, it shaped our cultures and understandings differently, which caused its effects to be more influential. Throughout the history the mass media molded our ideologies by its messages and changed the way we look at things around us. “When we consume mass media, there are a lot of physical and mental activities going on” (Fourie, 2001, p.283). At the present time when we decide to sit and watch a movie, there are millions of messages being interpreted to us as audiences that shape how we speak, dress, and behave. It is believed that the media determines what we should know and how we should think. But the vital question is who controls the media and controls its messages, and how does the media work today. This essay will therefore attempt to discuss the different approaches that are used to analyze and evaluate media messages, and how these various approaches operate...
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...in which individuals deduce meaning from. Contrary to previous belief, communication is now seen as a means of self-development and establishment of individual and group identity in the seemingly ephemeral nature of communication trends. Semiotics and visual representation mediates our social worlds as we accord them high authority in the transmission of information and creation of meaningful experience. Similarly, intercultural communication provides shared understandings of the world and is a significant influence on individual and cultural identity formation. Through cross-cultural communication analysis, one can learn of how cultural and social interaction can shape a person’s micro and macro worlds through communicative processes. The study of semiotics has shed light on the nature in which individuals deduce meanings from mass media texts or visual signs. ‘Social and cultural life is invested with meaning and value by regular symbolic representations’ (Coupland & Gwyn 2003, p. 1). In a world increasingly dominated by visual signs, we find ourselves looking to these to construct meanings (Hall 1997). Through the study of semiotics and the notion of sign systems, I gained an understanding of the authority that people accord to visual representations that enables them to shape the mediated world and influence patterns of socialisation. Looking at the world from my own experience as a communicator, I realised the potential of conventional signs to construct meaning and...
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...Signs appear in everyday contemporary societies. Signs are saturated with a lot of meanings and they relate to any language and are there to make us understand things through relating words with concepts like the word ‘silence’ which is a sign of communication that is indicative of meaning and it is ideological, it is also power to talk. Sign theory is an eccentric war of communication. It focuses on the discourse analysis where it focuses on language, power and ideology. Intelligence services are a key component of every state and their mandate is to ensure the security of states and they make use of the sign theory to supply the policy makers with information or intelligence which is fundamental in the policy making process. Evaluation and analysis’ role is to cast information into its proper intelligence framework and in the process minimising being biased. If evaluation and analysis is quality the intelligence given to policy makers will help policy makers to come up with quality policies and if the evaluation and analysis is poor obviously the policy makers will come up with ineffective policies. There are repercussions if intelligence services fail to analyse. Sign theory help in deductive, inductive and abductive types of reasoning. In this discourse I will define the sign theory, evaluation, analysis, four tools of analysis and the implications of sign theory to evaluation and analysis as a process which is scientific, logical, methodological and verifiable. Theory is...
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...LITERATURE IN ‘MY FATHER’S BLOOD’ NAME: OJEBODE, AYOKUNMI OLADELE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH POSTGRADUATE STUDIES IN LITERATURE REDEEMER’S UNIVERSITY, EDE COURSE CODE/TITLE: ENG 871/ LITERATURE AND MEDIA LECTURER: DR. OFURE AITO THE STILL PHOTOGRAPHY AS LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY USING TY BELLO’S WORKS Introduction “Art is about collecting experiences and expressing them. For me music and photography are similar art forms. I collect experiences, stir them in myself and express it in my own language. Just like my photography, music is my language.” Ty Bello Today people live in a visually intensive society and a world of spectacular and exciting images. They are bombarded with an orderly and continuously stream of visual stimulation from all manner of media every day. They see mediated images more often than they read words. Images sell everything. This paper offers an analytical framework for understanding how still photography is Literature in the 21st Century, using TY Bello’s still pictures. According to Aristotle, “There can be no words without images”. The world is surrounded with mediated images in such a way that has never been witnessed in the history of mass communication. Every era has expressed itself in its own way since the beginning. Antiquity was the time of legends, epics and mythical narratives. During the sovereignty of this era, meaning was constructed with ‘the word’ and its peculiar rules. Though the permanency of ‘writing’ as opposed...
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...THE IDEA OF Tangible and Intangible Estrangement NAME- RANJANA NAGAR SUPERVISOR- RAJAN KRISHNAN COURSE- ADVANCED READING IN SIGN THEORY PhD LITERARY ART/ STUDIES Report on the Advanced Readings in Sign Theory course From the discussions and readings in the class, I have tried to accumulate different ideas and debates and develop my own understanding of the process of semiotics. Taking up the examples of painting by MF Husain and Van Dyke, I will illustrate several points that I have understood. Let me begin with a general definition of “semiotics” that I had at the beginning of the course: Semiotics can be understood as a process involved with meaning making. It explains how various words, objects and images generate meaning or in other words how do we comprehend or attribute meaning to them. In the process semiotics does not limit itself within symbolism but even questions the naturalistic and realistic realm i.e. images or objects depicts things objectively. Semiotics also challenges intentionality of the artist or maker as a principle source that define the meaning. Semiotic explanation complicates the way we understand the...
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...industries – television is culture but it’s also an industry. If we think in Hollywood as a dream factory we have also a culture industry. Nowadays popular culture is a part of our life. Common sense and TV – resisting the analysis of television is also a consequence of commons sense. But there is a paradox: it is so easy to watch that it becomes difficult to analyze. TV is inscribed in daily life. TV is transparent. Popular culture, namely TV, has a supposed transparency: what I see is what it looks likely to be. It’s so easy that it resists analysis, but what is easy to watch is as complex as any other phenomenon. Kracauers perspective – “The Mass Ornament”, 1931 * Analyses of widely read books are an artifice to investigate social strata whose structure cannot be determined by a direct approach”. * Their editorial success would result from the creation of a “wide portrait of the...
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...communicate their branding strategy differently and have set up the following hypothesis and questions: In Nike and Adidas commercials the organisations make use of complex multimodal choices in order to communicate their branding strategies. 1. Which multimodal choices do Nike and Adidas employ in order to communicate their branding strategies? 2. Which personality traits are similar and different in Nike and Adidas product and value commercials? Due to the complexity of our hypothesis, we will employ three frameworks: social semiotics, film theory, and branding. These frameworks will help us to analyse and make meaning of the four commercials: Nike’s “Master Accuracy. Hit The Target” and “Is talent all it takes?” and Adidas’ “The Spark” and “Chelsea FC – Every Team Needs The 12th Man”. In order to answer the first question, we will analyse the four commercials by applying multimodal concepts and film theory. The multimodal analysis derives from social semiotics and M.A.K. Halliday’s...
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...Impact of Visual Communication in Rural Markets Submitted By: Name: Sujit Mishra Course: PGDM- Marketing Roll No: 056 Under the guidance of: Dr. Ramkishen. Y Faculty in Marketing K J SIMSR K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research IV Trimester, 2012 Abstract: Rural marketing involves addressing around 700 million potential consumers, over 40 per cent of the Indian middle-class, and about half the country's disposable income. According to a NCAER study the consuming class households in rural equals the number in urban and awareness The recent NCAER publication "The Great Indian Middle Class" further reveals that the Indian middle class consisted on 10.7 million households or 57 million individuals of which 36 per cent lived in rural areas. Companies are always looking for tools and ways to increase the brand visibility and communication. Brand communication to the consumers is always an important marketing goal of marketers. In doing so, they spend a lot through their marketing services firm, which provides the advertising and communication services to the client firms. Promotion of brands in rural markets requires the special measures. Due to the social and backward condition the personal selling efforts have a challenging role to play in this regard. Going by some of the characteristics of the rural public, which are high brand loyalty, low income influenced by seasonal fluctuations, low...
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...Semiotic analysis of gender in advertising * * The Purpose of this paper is to write a semiotic analysis of the advertisement ' Kylie Minogue, ‘Inverse for men', that addresses the representation of gender. That is, how is femininity and masculinity is “constructed” within the advertisement? The advertisement was taken from a press release for this fragrance on sofeminine.co.uk, within the 'Him' section. SoFeminine.co.uk is a top UK website for women it is typically aimed at a target audience of ‘today’s busy women as they search the site for lifestyle information’ (http://www.sofeminine.co.uk/). My analysis of this advertisement will look at the key signifiers and what they are signifying, the denotation and connation’s in the advertisement and the technical codes – photographic imagery, in the visual image and how they represent and reinforce gender stereotypes. In the advertisement one female stands between two males. One of the males is fully clothed and stares into the camera the other male is semi nude. The Female in the picture stands with her back to the clothed male. Her arm is around the shoulder of the semi nude male, the other arm loops on top of the semi nude models arm that is reaching down her thigh. This denotative analysis is based on what is actually in the picture, “'denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign” (Chandler, Daniel (1994)). Given this is, it is important...
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..."Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey In her "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey utilizes psychoanalysis theory as a "political weapon" to demonstrate how the patriarchic subconscious of society shapes our film watching experience and cinema itself. According to Mulvey the cinematic text is organized along lines that are corresponding to the cultural subconscious with is essentially patriarchic. Mulvey argues that the popularity of Hollywood films is determined and reinforced by preexisting social patterns which have shaped the fascinated subject. Mulvey's analysis in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" combines semiotic methodology of cinematic means of expression with psychoanalytic analysis of desire structures and the formation of subjectivity. The semiotic end of Mulvey's analysis enables the deciphering of how films produce the meanings they produce, while the psychoanalytic side of the article provides the link between the cinematic text and the viewer and explains his fascination through the way cinematic representations interact with his (culturally determined) subconscious. Mulvey's main argument in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is that Hollywood narrative films use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men. The narrative film structures its gaze as masculine. The woman is always the object of the reifying gaze, not the bearer of it (this has something reminiscent of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing") ...
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...Film Language Film language written by Turner. In his article, he stated that film is the same as words which contain connotative meaning. Also, the film will be influenced by culture. The shooting angle, the position of character in the image and the special light settings to emphasize some kinds of features are all have social meanings. When the film is being edited, its way of presentation is also being edited. Visual appearance has its own language system that the way audience understand the film. There is a way called semiotics to help us to understand this special language system. Semiotic treats social meaning as the production of “signs”, and sign could be anything which is important. Meanwhile, sign could be two parts, one is “signifier” such as images and words, another is “signified” which means a kind of concept in our mind. As long as we understand how the semiotic works then we are able to use it to produce the signifying practices of films. Film requires to combine camera, lighting, background setting, sounds and many other independent elements together to make film meaningful, which means the signifying system. Due to this feature, it different from simply writing. As this background, to understand films rely on the capability of decoding from audience and the ability of producer to construct the different scenes. The signifying system is basically made up by camera, lighting, sound, mies-en-scene and editing. The camera positioning is important...
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