Media language: analysing a media product

 

With all the discussion, commentary, opinion and expression swirling around, is there anything distinctive media students can add? 

The type of comment and criticism found in social media and everyday discussion of the media is genuinely no holds barred; there are no rules. The approach set out in media studies is much more systematic. It is based on a structuralist theory that sees all media products in the light of underlying structures and codes.

These theoretical approaches to structure should, we hope, give us some insight into the fascinating ways in which meanings are created by and around media products. Rather than death by analysis, media studies aim to enhance as well as understand the stimulation, pleasure and fulfilment of our media consumption. 

Context and code

As readers contribute to the creation of meanings, they always do so in a context or, more likely, in a range of contexts. For example, each of us brings to a text a whole set of characteristics based on our age, gender, family background, social class and education, amongst other factors.

There is also the physical context. Watching Television alone is a different experience from watching with friends or family members, and the these differences may well influence the ways in which we interact with the text. 

Then there is the context of culture. Does the reader share and understand the conventions of the text and it's values? If we look at an ad from the 1950's historical context is likely to make our readings very different to those of the ad's original target audience.

conventions 

established rules or shared understandings that are used in media products as 'they way we do things' more likely to be taken for granted than formally stated.

We have already suggested that the use of the terms 'text' and 'reader' make links between the study of language and the study of the mass media. This language/media analogy crop up very frequently in media theory.

The layout of magazines may be said to have a structure just as sentences do, and the editing of a television programme is often said to conform to a set of rules sometimes called the grammar of editing. Think for a moment of these very words that you are reading. Your understanding of them depends on your familiarity with the English language. 

As the author writes these words and the reader reads them we are both depending on a very deep reservoir of knowledge: all the rules and conventions and word meanings that make up English as we know it.

You don't need all the knowledge to interpret it, but you do need it all to be there. 

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand Saussure called this shared knowledge langue to distinguish it from abt individual example of language in use, whether spoken or written. The latter he called parole.

In media studies, especially in textual analysis, we use exactly the same distinction. The text is our term for parole and rather than langue we use the word code to suggest a system of making meanings. 

Looking at the still image from this television news, we can see numerous codes at work. These are the rules and conventions that have been used to communicate all sorts of meaning. There are technical codes of image composition, camera angles, shot selection, lighting and colour palette. There are nonverbal codes of dress, appearance and posture. The set itself uses colour and design elements to produce further variations and subtleties of meaning. And we are only considering a still image. 

If, instead, a short clip of moving images from television news is considered then even more codes come into play: camera movement, vision mixing, music, the selection of news items and the presenter's voice amongst them.

Into Semiotics

Semiotics is sometimes called the study of signs. Signs can be anything that expresses a meaning: a written word, an item of clothing or a tracking shot, for example. Anything that 'stands for' something else is a sign. 

You just have to look for examples of codes in the still from Channel Four News. Fairly obvious, dress and appearance form one of these codes; if the people in the image looked different and wore different clothes, the meaning of the image as a whole would be different. in the image, the presenter is wearing a dark suit and tie, a patterned tie and a white shirt buttoned at the neck. Each of these 'units of meaning' is a sign. Are they meaningful? just imagine the effect some very small changes such as a loosened tie and an unfastened top button. The presenter's persona would change completely and, by extension, the impression of Channel Four News would be subtly but noticeably altered. We can conclude that the knotted tie and buttoned shirt are signs because they stand for something other than themselves.

Sticking with the television news example, we can also see that the signs are not randomly assembled, they conform to certain rules or conventions. It's probably not in the presenter's contract that he can't wear a clown hat when presenting, but he would certainly be breaking the rules or conventions of the codes of television if he did so. 

As previously noted, codes only work if a group of people share the knowledge and understanding of rules and signs. All cultures are based on the shared understanding of codes, and all media products draw to a greater or lesser extent on this shared understanding.

As we get to grips with semiotics, we are entering a world in which meanings are no longer simply labels attached to objects or actions. Semiotics is a theory - an argument or idea about how communication works and how meanings are generated and shared. The semiotic argument is not about the success or failure of a text in delivering the producers' message; it is much more concerned with the interaction among producers, texts (or products) and readers (or audiences). 

Meanings, in this view, are not 'fixed' by the producer of a text. Instead, they can be slippery and unreliable, problematic and difficult to pin down. But how can this be so? We have just argued that signs are organised in accordance with the rules of a code and that these rules are shared by all. If this is the case, surely there is no room for misunderstanding or disagreement. The answer lies in one of our other key terms: context. 

Culture itself provides a context because any culture is made up of numerous subcultures, each with its own distinctive code. There is also the matter of social context based on factors such as age, gender, ethnicity and class. These are certain to affect the ways in which we attach meanings to signs and interpret the conventions of codes. 

Media codes are just as complex as the English (or any other) language, and which of us could say that our knowledge of English is comprehensive and complete? In other words, yes, shared knowledge and understanding are at work in every act of media communication, but it is rarely uniform and unambiguous except in the simplest and most basic of messages. As media students and analysts of texts, this makes our task more difficult but also fascinating.

So far, this introduction has implied that semiotics is all about how media texts generate meanings whilst at the same time acknowledging that these meanings may be difficult to pin down because of the influence of context. The next step adds another important dimension to our understanding of semiotics as a theoretical approach to textual analysis. 

The semiotic argument holds that a careful analysis of a text can tell us a whole lot more than just what meanings readers place on the text as they interact with it. Analysis of this sort can also show us how our own culture or any other culture interprets the world. It can reveal priceless insights into the value system of the culture; its sense of right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and worthless. 

Through our close analysis, texts can lead us to an understanding of what Alan McKee calls 'sense-making practices.' Drawing on John Hartley's work, Mckee invites us to see ourselves as forensic scientists as we analyse a text. Forensic scientists never witness the crime, but they rely on their skill and expertise to sift through clues in order to advance informed opinion about what has happened 

This is how textual analysis also works. We can never know for certain how people interpreted a particular text but we can look at the clues, gather evidence about similar sense-making.

 practices and make educated guesses

(Mckee, 2003)

Inside the sign

We have looked so far at a few examples of signs and given a basic definition of the sign as a unit of communications. In this section, we shall delve more deeply into the sign and how it works.

Saussure identified two components of the sign: The signifier and The signified. These definitions are central to any understanding of semiotic theory. The signifier or material signifier (as Saussure called it) actually exists on the page or the screen or as a sound, for example. It is the physical form of the sign. The is the part of the sign we perceive with our senses, usually hearing and sigh. Of course, we can only perceive something that has a physical presence as the signifier does, but it is important to note that this signifier has no inherent meaning. It is only when the code system is applied to a signifier that meaning is created. 

If I look at a word on the page, apply my knowledge and understanding of English Language to it and realise that it has a meaning, I have added a signifier to the signified. The signified has no physical form because it only exists within the mind of the perceiver.

To summarise, the sign, has two inseparable components 

SIGN = PHYSICAL FORM / MENTAL CONCEPT

If we apply this idea to something a little more complicated like the page of a newspaper, we can see numerous signifiers. These include images themselves, the composition, colours and shades of photographs and their layout on the page. As we perceive these signifiers, we also bring to bear our perception of the physical context: the newspaper itself, the captions, the stories and the page on which they appear. The interaction of our code knowledge, the understanding of context and the signifiers enables us to produce signifieds in our heads.

The next stage of our investigation of the sign looks at the different kinds of links between signifier and signified. In the case of spoken or written language, the sign system is almost entirely based on arbitrary connections between the physical form of the sign and what it stands for. 

Looking at figure 2.3 there is no connection whatsoever between the word 'elephant' on the board and the image of the elephant except for the fact that they stand for the same thing.

The thing that they stand for (the referent in semiotic theory) is a real elephant. The shape and appearance of the word 'elephant' don't correspond at all to the shape and appearance of the referent. As with most words, the connection is purely arbitrary and simply has to be learned.

The link between the two is a matter of convention and language learning is in large part a case or learning all of its conventions.

Some visual signs are also arbitrary. Images can be arbitrary in some of theirs meanings because these meanings are a matter of cultural convention. If you don't know that the red rose stands for the county for Lancashire, the signifier will not reveal this meaning however hard you look at it. The capacity of the red rose to signify romantic love is also a cultural convention. In the same way, the image of a dove is an arbitrary sign for no entry. You have no doubt realised, though, that the visual signs in these figures can have a non-arbitrary relation to their referent when the image of a red rose signifies no more or less than a red rose and the image of the dove signifies simply, a dove. 

arbitrary

an arbitrary sign is one that has no physical resemblance to its meaning. We know the meaning of these signs only because we have learnt them.

The arbitrary and non-arbitrary nature of signs can also be described as motivation. A highly motivated sign bears a strong resemblance to its referent, whilst an arbitrary sign (like a word or the no-entry sign) is unmotivated.

motivated sign or icon

A sign that bears a physical resemblance to the thing it stands for. Unlike arbitrary signs, we can often guess the meaning of motivated signs that belong to a culture that is not our own.

The idea of motivation or arbitrariness is useful to us in media studies because media language contains many arbitrary or unmotivated signs and codes. We are so familiar with the codes of media language that we tend sometimes to take for granted the meaning of the signs within these codes, assuming that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is obvious or natural.

An example of this is the code of editing in film and television. One aspect of this - elliptical editing - includes the sign that is a cut between the two scenes with the same character in two different locations. The meaning we invariably attach to this signifier is that time has elapsed, that the second scene takes place at a later time. We have learnt to attach this meaning to the cut because of the evidence drawn from the countless moving image texts that we have seen, but it is nevertheless a convention that has to be learnt. The apparent strangeness of early television programmes and films is largely because of the use of different conventions that makes them seem unnatural.

Levels of Signification: denotation and connotation

It is noticeable that signs, whether motivated or unmotivated, whether visual or verbal, are capable of creating different meanings. 

Roland Barthes addressed these different kinds of meanings in his notion of orders of signification. The first order of signification is denotation. At this level, the connection between the signifier and its referent (the thing it represents) is very much direct, obvious and straightforward. The denotative meaning is sometimes described as the literal or surface meaning- so for the red rose examples the denotation is a flower.

In the same way, the word 'rose' denotes that same flower. The denotations of signifiers tend to be relatively fixed and unchanging, but we should acknowledge that the literal meaning of words can change over time. An example is 'meat' which once meant all solid food but gradually became restricted to only animal flesh. 

Although the simplicity of denotation may tempt us to think that they are somehow 'natural' meanings, it is important to remember that denotations are products of culture and must be learnt as part of the process of socialisation.

socialisation

the process by which we learn the codes, values and expectations of the society into which we are born into or that we join. 

 

The second order of signification is connotation, which describes the way in which signs signify indirectly and by association. Going back to our red rose image