The following is a very brief bit of revision on two extremely important media theories: semiotics and structuralism. These two theories are most at home tackling textual analysis, so make sure you slip them in next time you have to analyse something in media!
Roland Barthes - Semiotics: 'the study of meaning'
- Symbols, language and codes
- Codes: anything in a media product which means something. This means that audiences engage in an active process of 'reading' a media product
- Hermenutic code - anything which asks a question. Also known as an enigma code. A mystery which hasn't yet been solved
- Proairetic code - anything which suggests that something is going to happen. Checkov's gun: if we see a gun, it WILL be used. Also known an action code
- Symbolic code - something that means something else, or has a deeper meaning. "the red rose is symbolic of love, romance, England, war..."
- Referential code: something which makes reference to something else. Also known as intertextuality
Claude Levi-Strauss - structuralism: 'how narratives are structured, and how they shape the world'
- Binary oppositions: where two things in a media product conflict with one another. Conflict is interesting to audiences
- Our entire lives and also our entire perception of the world is based on binary oppositions. For example, we would have no concept of good if not for evil, of night if not for day