Week 8 - Semiotic Print Advert Analysis

Over the past few classes, we have looked at many different aspects of semiotic analysis in mediated content. This week, we have been given an assignment to analyse a print advert in a semiotic approach. The print advert I have chosen is; Levi's "Who do you want to unbutton" promotion. A series of adverts from the Levi's in 2009. We are asked to consider different theories that have been addressed in class, such as;

• Types of Signifiers
• Paradigmatic Relationships
• Syntadigmatic Related Signs
• Narratives and Myths within our Culture

Analysis of the Advert

Straight off, we see a picture of a beautiful woman standing leaning on a counter on a street corner, with the text "the boy who makes my morning latte" and the promotional text underneath. These are the signs, the images that are most pronounced in the image, its denotative level of meaning. Basically, the "it is what it is" of the image, no arguments can be made against that. There are many different types of signifiers, on a connotative level. The underlying meaning of the image, The woman with her arm up, leaning against the counter, signifying confidence and beauty, while wearing casual jeans and top, her head tilted to the side. It all signifies a casual nature. She is easy going, free, her fashion suggests she is casual, and gives off a spontaneous attitude. The fact that she is in a dream like state, suggests there is a certain sexuality or prowess about her. These features conveyed by Erving Goffman's 1979 study of "Gender Advertisements", and how women are portrayed in print adverts.

The text next to her in large free-hand typography fills up more than half of the image. The fact that it is in red, in this context and with what she is saying, suggests passion, lust, sex. With the text being in free-hand suggesting that this woman wrote the piece of text, and with the colour, conveying the possibility that it was written with lipstick, furthering the thought of sexuality within the image.

As for the area within in the image, on a denotative level, this is just a street, with a few cars in the background and a bike in the right foreground, that could be anywhere in the world. But because of the colour of the cars in the background, straight away, from our own cultural upbringing, we know that this is a street in New York City, simply because of the architecture and style of the buildings and street, and colour of the cars. The cultural associations with New York, the city of opportunity, where you can do make anything of yourself, its young, vibrant, the city that never sleeps, with lots of interesting and different people there. It suggests that she is an active and outgoing young woman.

The condiments on the counter beside the woman suggests that she is at a cafe, and along with the text in the picture, "The boy who makes my morning latte", leads us to believe that she is at this cafe where the boy works, and he is currently getting her morning latte. Which would indicate that the narrative of the story is set in the morning. The bike leaning against a pole to the right, just out of frame, suggests that she is active, possibly concerned for the environment, possibly on her way to work, as getting a latte coffee in the morning would suggest that she needs to get a kick and wake up before a long day ahead.

These connections of events and signifiers are defined as the narrative. This narrative is communicated to us in such a way as to seem familiar, which is does. We can all associate with what is going on in the image, perhaps not location wise, but as in contextually. By piecing together the story, bit by bit, we realize that all aspects of this advert have been thought out very carefully by the advertiser, as so not to be misunderstood by an advert that will be promoted worldwide, as many steps as possible have been taken as to not do any harm that may potentially arise, if an advert has an underlying message, unnoticed by the advertisers. With this advert, the advertiser wants to be associated with an easy going nature, for young people, in fashion, who take things in their stride, who have or want to have sex appeal.The advertisers intended message and their viewers cultural upbringing and  is important to understand as an analyst. 

Week 6 - Semiotics

*Stucturalism to Semiotics

This week, we discussed more in depth about semiotics and different levels of meaning in media and media messages.Semiotics can be deifined as a study of signs, but can also be applied to all sorts of human endeavors, eg. Cinema, Theaters, paintings, politics etc.

We use a variety of gestures to signify a sign. We need to think of texts as a system of signs. Which gain their effect via the constant clashes between these systems. For example, everybody knows what hand signs mean when driving when a garda flags you to move on, or stop. Or even when we are playing sport, like football, when the referee signals different hand gestures, we know what he is doing, it is something basic, but its because we have learned these over time, that it becomes instinctive. But with that being said, different cultures have different values, and one gesture may mean another in different countries, or what a person has grown up and learned through a different background.

Written texts involve the sequence of letters and words, images involve arrangement of shapes and colours. Music involves the composition of sound, but ultimately they all can be regarded as amalgamations of signs.

An example of how signs can be perceived differently is in the videos we watched, of "Mary Popins" and "The Shining", where they had been edited to be the exact opposite of the original movies, eg. Mary Popins was edited to be a horror movie, and The Shining had been made to look like a happy romcom style of movie, just by using editing techniques, the style and story were drastically changed and no outside footage had been used other that the original shots from each movie. The use of music/editing/narration/imagery/cuts, can be very misleading, this is due to the semiotics.

The successful communication of meaning is reliant on shared societal systems of understanding.

Levels of meaning can be seen in two ways:

Denotative: refers to the most immediate level of meaning eg, what a dictionary would do. It is what it is, and cannot be argued. A photo of a street is a photo of a street, but there are so many signifiers and representations within this photo, that to someone who is looking at it may have a memorable meaning, and may possess emotion to the picture, based on there feelings and memories of that particular street, which leads us to:

Connotative: This is the second order, associated meanings. They are more likely to be culturall specific, like what I just discussed about the photo of the street.

The communication is unlikely to be successful unless the audience is well versed in the particular cultural conventions by which they operate.

We discussed Paradigms & Syntagms.

Pardigm: is a vertical set of units, from which the required one is selected.

Syntagm: is the horizontal chain into which units are linked, according to the agreed rules and conventions, to make a meaning whole.

An example of this, is the classic... A terrorist bombed a government building this morning. There are so many cultural specifics in that sentence. Substitute, "Terrorist" with the word "Freedom-Fighter", then the sentence has completely new meaning. Just like taking out the "this morning" part of the text, then we have no time boundaries and are unknown to the time that this event took place. There are many substitutions that can be made to any text, to give it a whole new meaning. This is something that, as a media analysist, I am learning to become aware of.

Week 5 - "Approaches to Media Analysis"

Week 5 continues, "Approaches to Media Analysis", which delves into the Analytical side of media. 3 topics discussed:

1. Linguistic and Socio-Linguistic Analysis.
2. Conversational Analysis.
3. Semiotic Analysis.

Linguistic Analysis:

Ways of looking at how language, used within the media, can be of interest to linguists for their own purpose. Eg, Newspaper Headlines. We I mean is, The way in which a newspaper uses the front page, and what words go onto the front page are all selected with good reason, and there are many factors that are dependant on how a headline is worded. Even something as arbitrary as spacing on the front page is important as to what wording can be used.

The choice of language is dependent on the audience that the text is aimed at. Such as, skilled workers, professionals, office workers, manual labourers etc. This effects the type of language used, as in the words that the person uses, but also, the accent plays a key role in how the piece of media is presented. Eg, Dundalk FM being delivered by a person with a Cork or strong inner Dublin city accent would not have the same affect, because of the area of the radio station.

Conversational Analysis:

Ethnomethodology, an interpretive approach to sociology which focus upon everyday life as a skilled accomplishments and upon methods people use to produce it.

Formulation: A widely used device interviewers use to summarize what interviewee's have said.

John Heritage (1985), sees Formulation as a technical device which interviewers use to manage interviewers within constraints under which they are forced to operate.

• One constraint is the presence of a listening audience. The need to keep an audience interested, by drawing out/clarifying what the interviewee says.
• Another constraint is the requirement on interviewers to maintain a stance of formal neutrality. Gearing an interview one way rather than another.

Interviewees don't always answer the question, a case more commonly associated with politicians. Sometimes they answer the question by introducing topics of their own. As we discussed in class, politics is a hard area for an interviewer, you need to be stern, but without startling the interviewee away from answering more in-depth questions, and if something comes their way that they do not like the sound of, then they will divert the question and word it in a way that doesn't answer it, but introduces another question which they then answer themselves. Evading they critical questions, for what reason, probably to save their own skin, or that of a party or party member. No other thought comes to mind than that of Irish presidential candidate, Sean Gallagher. Just watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOAHJ6y94DY

Semiotic Analysis:

John Hartley conducted an important study of news in 1978 and focused upon the semiotic codes and conventions which underlie both linguistic and visual aspects of news stories.

-Categorization of stories into smaller number of major topics.

-The effect of news values on the treatment of topics (is it news worthy? Valuable?)

-Audience address, The operation of broadcasters as "mediators" who translate news into common sense terms of audience.

-Use of conventional communication style.

-The Structuring of the news stories.