Post on 21-Jul-2020
By: Kristina Yegoryan
and
Fatema Baldiwala
What do these signs
mean?
How do we read them?
What does this mean?
"In urban terms the 'shoes on a wire' signifies drug houses or places
where you can purchase drugs.
Yet, in Texas, it indicates the starting line for the walking path for an
over-50 group well known as the 'Legends'.
Soldiers leaving the military paint a pair of combat boots near the
barracks they are assigned to.
In Muslim cultures it is a means of an insult to a particular person or a
group of people.
It also sign to commemorate a gang-related murder, death of a gang
member or making of a gang turf wars.
Less criminal explanations include the commemoration of an end of
school year, forthcoming marriage or a rite of passage as started by the
militarily to indicate completion of basic training or leaving of service.
Some hold this practice as a way to keep property safe from ghosts or in
some neighborhoods they indicate someone leaving for bigger and better
things.
Finally, only the individual shoe thrower knows why his or her shoes are
actually hanging on that wire :)"
Semiotics
Way to study (“read”) images …
•Denotation & Connotation
•Sign = signifier & signified
–Depends on social, historical and cultural context
–Depends on context of presentation
–Depends on viewers reception
Rhetoric of the Image
•How an image (and its linguistic elements) produce
signification – or meaning
•How an image provides particular arguments, discourses
and ideologies
•How images are constructed toward a particular reading
(encoding to decoding)
Semiotics of Advertising (6:32)
1. Representation •“The signs that stand in for and take the place of something else” •“To stand for; symbolize. To depict or portray subjects a viewer might recognize as a likeness.” •How advertising, television and movies help define or reinforce stereotypes along the lines of gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.
Ferdinand de Saussure •Studies the signs and types of representation
used by humans to express feelings, ideas,
thoughts and ideologies.
Signified: a mental concept
Signifier: the verbal or image manifestation of
the idea
Ferdinand de Saussure •Signs are arbitrary •Signs are relational •Signs constitute our world •Meaning lies in the interpretation of signs •Meaning changes according to the context and the rules of language
Roland Barthes •French Literary Theorist, Sociologist,
Philosopher and Social Critic (1915-1980)
Semiotics •Studies the signs and types of representation used by
humans to express feelings, ideas, thoughts and
ideologies.
•Study “texts” (can be images, words, or both)
•Text is an assemblage of signs (words, images, sounds)
constructed and interpreted with reference to
conventions of a genre and in particular medium.
Barthes
Myths Hidden set of rules and conventions
through which meanings, which are
specific to certain groups, are made to
seem universal and given for a whole
society. Second order or connotative
signs that serve “Bourgeois Society”
Myth •A form of language
•How language forms an alternative
reality
•“Language object outside of reality”
•Using failure of language as tool in
this process – excess of reality
2. Ideology A set of doctrines, beliefs, or ideals that form the basis of a
political, economic, or other system which attempts to put
experience of the world into some order. The result,
particularly in Marxist thought, is a distortion of reality to
maintain authority over it. Various applications of this sense
of the word can be found in feminism and other types of
critical activity, often very politically oriented. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling idea: i.e., the class
which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force.”
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas
Three Levels of
Interpretation •semantic: relationship between signs and the things to
which they refer. Based on cultural ties and shared
meaning. (meaning)
•syntactic: relation among signs in formal structures
(rituals, occasions, trends)
•pragmatic: relation between signs and the effects they
have on different people that use them (differential
connotations)
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URtgt2c7Udc&feature=related
3. Interpellation Louis Althusser (French Philosopher)
•Images “interpellate” users
–Images & media texts “hail” us
–Ideologies “hail” subjects and enlist them as
their authors; hail views as individuals: “just for
me”
•Paradox: member of social groups that shares
codes & conventions that make image
meaningful but also touches person individually
•Process by which ideology pre-defines
individuals (constructs before they exist)
Interpellation:
Group Activity
Way an ad/text draws you in as if it’s just for you
Watch: AT&T “You Will” Ads
Questions (for group)
What interpellation strategies are used here?
Are they effective?
Can you think of other strategies in ads/movies?
Think of three other examples
Interpellation •How is the image personalized?
–Construct within the “You” of ad
–Questions
–Idealized future (or shared aspirations)
–Identifiable characters and situations
–Photographic/Filmic codes and conventions
(close-up, point-of-view, over shoulder)
–Romantic fantasies of intimacy
4. Hegemony Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
•“The political, economic, ideological and
cultural power exerted by a dominant group
over other groups”
•The creation of a “common sense” that
supports the interests of the dominant class
while seeming to benefit all
•Through “civil society” (media, schools, etc.)
YouTube: How TV Ruined Your Life
Rhetoric of the Image
1)Linguistic Messages: denotation & connotation
2)Signs of an image:
a)Linear or Discontinuous
b)Signifiers/Signifieds
c)Iconic Signs?
3)Necessary cultural knowledge
4)Codes
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it speaks.” John Bergen
“The ability of a visual language to express more than one meaning at once is also its limitation” Umbero Eco (1994).
In looking, power generally given to person who is looking (subject) over the person being looked at (object).
In advertising, the Male Gaze is used to encourage men to want a girl (and by extension, the product she is selling) and women to want to be her, in order to attract the same gaze
Suggests that women can be made to view the world - and themselves - through the eyes of men, and that women raised within this dominant paradigm expect to be the gazed-upon, not the gazer.
A direct female equivalent of the Male Gaze
with male figure (body) as object of the gaze
Or strong woman ( in men position)
Appropriation •The use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new
work.
•Re-vision, re-interpret, variation, version, interpretation,
proximation, supplement, increment, improvise, prequel,
pastiche, parody, satire, etc.
•“cultural borrowing”
Forms of CounterHegemony •Transcoding: e.g., queer, black is beautiful
•Bricolage: mode of adaption where commodities are put to a
uses not intended or in ways that dislocate them normal
context.
•Textual Poaching “Fan Culture”
•Appropriation: subcultures
–Signifying Practices: giving new meaning to commodities
(create new sign)
-Emotional
-Aspiration (lifestyles)
-Sexual
-Familiar
-Exotic
-Enticing
-Informational
Rhetoric of Images •Ethos: perceived credibility
•Logos: the logical appeal
•Pathos: the emotional appeal
• Subliminal messages are messages hidden in media that try to appeal to your subconscious
• Most subliminal messages are sexual.
• Your subconscious controls everything your conscious does.