Media Language

Media Language

Media language is used all the time. It creates meaning within text.

Every medium has its own language or combination of languages and it uses this to communicate meaning. Television is an example, which uses verbal and written language as well as moving images.

We call these languages because of the familiar codes and conventions that are generally understood by the audience.

Media messages are constructed using a creative language within its own rules. Each form of communication has their own creative language (Newspapers, TV game shows, horror movies.) (E.g. horror movies has scary music)

There are formal codes and conventions, which can be generic. Media texts are split into form and content. The content stays the same but the form can change.

By understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of media language it increases our appreciation and enjoyment of media experiences. It can reach beyond the rational to our deepest emotional core.  By using certain elements it can draw the reader in.

Semiotics: The Science of Signs

Charles Sanders Pierce: ‘We think only in signs’ (1931)

Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, flavours, acts but some things have no meaning and they only become signs when they have meaning.  There are sounds that we have associated with certain things and as a society we recognize this.

‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign’ (Pierce, 1931)

Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets them as signifying something/ standing for something. We interpret things without realizing it, by relating them to familiar systems of conventions. We think and live in signs.

Three types of signs:

ICON/ICONIC: A mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified. It is similar in possessing some qualities. (Recognizable feel/sound/taste/smell)

INDEX/INDEXICAL: A mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way to the signified. This link can be observed or inferred. (E.g.: natural signs: smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes. Medical symptoms: pain, rash, pulse-rate)

SYMBOL/SYMBOLIC: The signifier does not resemble the signified but which is purely conventional so that the relationship must be learnt. (Language in general, punctuation, words, phrases, sentences)

The signifier is the thing that it is (denotation)

The signified is what you imply (connotation)

We’re living in a sea of semiotic signifiers.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1974)

He offered a ‘dyadic’ or two-part model of the sign, which are:

A signifier: The form that the sign takes

The signified: The concept it represents.

Roland Barthes (1967)

Different things would change the meaning for example, is someone was gay/ the ethnicity, the gender, ETC. He started using Pierce and Saussure’s ideas to come with his own theory

His model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and it was left to subsequent theories. He theorised about ‘the death of the author’, which means that signs carry no meanings. The audience don’t necessarily consume it in the way intended, they encode their own meaning.

(1977) Photography connotation can be distinguished from denotation. 

Roland Bathes refers to as myth. He thought that myths were dominant ideologies of our time. The 1st and 2nd orders of significance are denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology (the 3rd order of significance)

John Fiske (1982):

“Denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed”

Institutions: They all follow the same codes and conventions yet include different ideologies and represent it in different ways.  They are trying to manipulate your ideas.

Roman Jakobson (1956)

Meaning arises from the differences between signifiers. These differences are of two kinds syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic is the positioning of the audience, the oppositional, the negotiated and the preferred meaning.

The paradigms is how it changes, the medium/genre is a paradigm. Particular media texts derive meaning from the ways in which the medium and genre changes.

Evaluating media language is an evaluation of all the micro elements (Sound, editing, mise-en-scene, cinematography) and how they create meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations and ideologies. This requires us to semiotics terminology to explain our encoding. Mise-en-scene is a key aspect of the pre-production phase of the film. Editing is a post-production technique and is reassembled to tell the story.