Transcript Semiotics: Encoding/decoding

ENCODING / DECODING
From Stuart Hall
program
encoding
(structures of
meaning)
relations of
production
DOMINANT
decoding
(structures of
meaning)
relations of
reception
NEGOTIATED
OPPOSITIONAL
Respond to this picture: When was it shot? How does it
make you feel? Does it remind of other photographs?
Lewis Paine
Executed on July 7, 1865 for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Which one is “real?”
President Bin Laden
C
C–O
C–O–W
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
Signifier
Signified
= SIGN
Symbolic = arbitrary
Iconic = structural
Indexical = copresence
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
The construction of myth
Roland Barthes
Denoted image: what it is;
tautology
Connoted image: Rhetoric and
the floating chain of signifiers
Linguistic messages: anchorage &
relay
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
The layers of signification
Roland Barthes
First level= self-contained (man)
Second level = motivated meanings, derived
from culture (wisdom, learning, etc.)
Third level = cohere into a comprehensive
whole (knowledge society)
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
Paradigmatic Analysis
vertical
metaphor
selective/associative
bipolar oppositions
meaning by context (media, genre)
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
Syntagmatic Analysis
horizontal
metonymy
combinative
composed of paradigms
narrative
Semiotics
The Study of Signs and Their Meanings
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NARRATIVE
A
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SYNTAGMS
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AURAL AND VISUAL IMAGES
Tony Schwartz
“The critical task is to design our package of
stimuli so that it resonates with information
already stored within an individual and thereby
induces the desired learning or behavioral effect.
Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into
our communication evoke meaning in a listener
or viewer. That which we put into the
communication has no meaning to itself. The
meaning of our communication is what a listener
or viewer gets out of his[/her] experience with
the communicator’s stimuli. The listener’s or
viewer’s brain is an indispensable component of
the total communication system. His[/her] life
experiences, as well as….expectations of the
stimuli he/[she] is receiving, interact with the
communicator’s output in determining the
meaning of the communication.”
From The responsive chord (1973)