DANNY'S BLOG

Media content consists of data and meaning.  Different medium transmits data in print, sound or pictorial image, which the receivers can directly observe and is in a sense ‘fixed’.  While the meanings, which are claimed to be embedded by the producers are variously received by the audience, and therefore not fixed, are largely unobservable. The most important question perhaps concerning media content is how it is received by the audience.  Mc Quail (1994) states that most early research into media content tended to assume that content reflected the purposes and values of its originators … and that receivers would understand messages more or less as intended by producers.10  Further, the content of mass media has often been regarded by social commentators as more or less reliable evidence about the culture and society in which it is produced. Some writers use the term media ‘text’ instead of media ‘content’.  And the term ‘text’ itself has been used in two sense...

Other than Saussure, key figures in the early development of semiotics were the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (sic, pronounced ‘purse’) (1839-1914) and later Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who developed a behaviourist semiotics. Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992), Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941). A number of linguists other than Saussure have worked within a semiotic framework, such as Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1966) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. Writing in 1967, Barthes declared that “Semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or publi...

Semiotics is one of the most popular subjects today, especially in relation to media.  It is because this subject provides: a clear idea of what to look at when analyzing the meaning of media messages; explains why the media have differential effects; enables the observer to analyze the structure of media messages without ignoring the interpretive processes of the audience. What is Semiotics?1  The shortest definition is that it is the study of signs2. But that doesn't leave enquirers much wiser. ‘What do you mean by a sign?’ people usually ask next. The kinds of signs that are likely to spring immediately to mind are those which we routinely refer to as ‘signs’ in everyday life, such as road signs, religious signs and public utility signs. If you were to agree with them that semiotics can include the study of all these and more, people will probably assume that semiotics is about ‘visual signs’. You would confirm their notion if you said that signs can also be drawings, pain...

We live in a world of signs and symbols – of past and present. The science of symbols - Semiotics or semiology – helps us to understand deeply and somewhat fully the world of signs and symbols. Many thinkers – beginning with the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure – contributed  to the development of this science, which by the very nature of signs and symbols, is in a dynamic state. This in itself is the beauty, attractiveness and relevance of this science. One of the  areas where semiotics comes in handy is in the field of the media – books, newspapers, magazines, television, cinema, radio, social media and so forth – to understand how media content is produced by the sender, consumed and interpreted by the audience. Advertisements is one content which transcends all media. Hence the paper would take a special look at a semiotic  understanding of advertisements. Media content consists of data and meaning. The content of an  advertisement yields/gives rise to many m...