PSY427H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Image Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Psychoanalytic Theory
Document Summary
Representation: visual, written, or audio depiction of something or someone. Politics of representation: how representation matters for social groups and for society as a whole. Image analysis: approach to studying representation that examines media images in relation to questions of equity. A brief history of the study of representation. Semiotics: the study of symbols or signs and the logic of how they convey meaning. Structuralists: scholars that analyzed narratives, language, and elements of popular culture with respect to the impact of structures of meaning. Structuralism builds on the assumption that words, images, objects, and behavior within cultural systems have singular meanings, derived through their relationship with other objects within the system in a discernable structure. Levi-strauss argued that a universal system of meaning, including structuring binaries such as heroism and cowardice, informed the repeated character types and narratives he found in vastly different cultures. Barthes, in turn, brought structuralism to popular journalism and to literacy studies.
