AHSS*1060 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Post-Structuralism, Semiotics, Main Source
Mass Communication - AHSS 1060
Chapter 4: Media Content: Studying the Making of Meaning
I. Representation: the act of putting ideas into words, visuals, audio, or any other
medium of comm.; simplifies and interprets the object or event being described.
II. Signification: using signs to make meaning
-Sign: anything with meaning (e.g. words, images, sounds, objects)
-Signifier: the aspect of a sign that we experience
-Signified: the idea or mental concept drawn from the signifier
-Icon: a sign that looks like the object it describes (e.g. map: city)
-Index: a sign that is related to the object it represents (e.g. smoke: fire)
-Symbol: sign that has no direct resemblance to the object it represents
(e.g. apple = knowledge, company)
III. Indeterminacy of Representation: one sign can represent multiple things + one
thing can have multiple signs
IV. Intertextuality: our interpretation of a sign depend on meanings drawn from other
sets of signs
V. Polysemy/polysemic: signs have more than one meaning and are open to a
variety of interpretations; systems of representation can overlap, but never fully
encompass another
VI. Communication studies: concerned with rhetoric (how things are said) and
hermeneutics (how things are interpreted)
Encoding/Decoding Model (diagram on pg 94)
1. Shared field of social institutions, knowledge, and culture.
-The social setting in which we live and the field in which the media
operates
-Each media producer and consumer draws upon this field in a different
way (ex. Fashion magazine vs. The Simpsons)
-Provides a common field of reference for people to infer and interpret from
2. Political and economic processes
-Political: e.g., laws, acts, and regulations
-Economic: e.g., commercial considerations, competitiveness of American
products
3. Institutional/organizational context - organizational mandates and imperatives
4. Professional values - the values of those who create media. Institutional and
cultural ideas of how media works or should operate
5. Medium: each medium will have an effect on the form and structure of the idea
being communicated
6. Context of Consumption: personal history and experience will affect how a
message is decoded.; personal history is drawn from social institutions,
knowledge, and culture (step 1)
-A common set of referents (ideas, situations and circumstances that can be
referred to in media products) allows many people to understand a common idea.
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