1. The document discusses the importance of understanding media language and how it creates meaning in texts. It defines media language as the codes and conventions used in different media like television, newspapers, and movies to communicate meaning. 2. It emphasizes that semiotics, or the study of signs and symbols, is important for understanding how meaning is constructed through creative use of media language. Anything can become a sign if someone interprets it as representing something else. 3. The document provides terminology for analyzing media language, including concepts from scholars like Pierce on icons, indexes and symbols, Barthes on denotation and connotation, and theories of mise-en-scene and camerawork. Understanding these concepts is key for evaluating

1. G235: Critical
Perspectives in Media
Theoretical Evaluation
of Production
1b) Media Language

2. Aims/Objectives
• To reinforce the basic media language
that create meaning in texts.
• To have a basic understanding of how
to evaluate your coursework against
the media language that you used.

3. Importance of media language
• Every medium has its own ‘language’ – or
combination of languages – that it uses to
communicate meaning. Television, for
example, uses verbal and written language
as well as the languages of moving images
and sound.
• We call these ‘languages’ because they use
familiar codes and conventions that are
generally understood.

4. • Media messages are constructed using a
creative language with its own rules. Each
form of communication-- whether
newspapers, TV game shows or horror
movies-- has its own creative language:
scary music heightens fear, camera close-
ups convey intimacy, big headlines signal
significance.

5. Back to Basics - Semiotics
• According to philosopher Charles Sanders
Peirce (1931), “we think only in signs” .
• Signs take the form of words, images,
sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects,
but such things have no intrinsic meaning
and become signs only when we invest
them with meaning.

6. • Definition: using ‘media
language’.
• “Nothing is a sign unless it is
interpreted as a sign” (Peirce, 1931).
• Anything can be a sign as long as
someone interprets it as 'signifying'
something - referring to or standing for
something other than itself. It is this
meaningful use of signs which is at the
heart of the concerns of semiotics.

7. Basically this essay is a lot
like TV Drama– what is your
preferred macro meaning
(your preferred meaning –
Hall, 1980) and how did you
create it using micro
elements?

8. Link?
• Evaluating media language is an
evaluation of all the micro elements
and how they have created meaning
to inform us about genre, narrative,
representations/ ideology, targeting
of audiences (through micro
elements).
• This therefore requires us to use
semiotic terminology to explain our
encoding of elements and codes and
conventions within our texts.

9. 1. Stuart Hall (1980).
• Everything creates a meaning/ preferred
meaning.
• This means that media language of specific
mediums is encoded in texts for audiences
to decode/read/understand.

10. Task 1.
• Detail what the macro meanings were
within your text (preferred meanings
and ideologies behind representations,
or about genre, narrative).
• What micro signs do you think you
used in terms of the codes and
conventions of your medium to create
meaning? Make a list for each of the
macro meanings you can think of.

11. 2. Umberto Eco (1981)
• Texts can have open meanings
(ambiguous, not easy for the audience
to understand).
• Texts can have closed meaning (easy
for the audience to understand).
• WHICH ONE IS YOURS? AND WHO IS
IT AIMED AT?
• THIS WILL LINK WITH MODE OF
ADDRESS.

12. Task 2.
• Identify how you created an open or
closed meaning for your audience.
• How did you use the micro elements to
create structure and create this for your
audience?

13. 3. Medium Specific Theory
• With this question it would then be wise
to identify that you understand the
meaning of the form you have created:
• 1. Music video – postmodern text
(Goodwin, 1992 + McDougall, 2009)
• 2. Newspapers – sensationalist and
the creation of a newsworthy stoty
(Galtang and Ruge, + Harcup, 2001).
• 3. Documentary – never value neutral,
persuasion texts. (Rabinger, 1998 +
Edwards, 2003).

14. Task 3.
• Using some of the theory – how does
your product conform to the theorists
assumptions?
• What meaning is created?
• What other texts have you based this
on?

15. Terminology: Charles Sanders
Pierce (1931) – Three types of
sign...
• Icon/iconic: a mode in which the signifier is
perceived as resembling or imitating the
signified (recognizably looking, sounding,
feeling, tasting or smelling like it) - being
similar in possessing some of its qualities:
e.g. a portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model,
onomatopoeia, metaphors, 'realistic'
sounds in 'programme music', sound
effects in radio drama, a dubbed film
soundtrack, imitative gestures;

16. • Index/indexical: a mode in which the signifier
is not arbitrary but is directly connected in
some way (physically or causally) to the
signified - this link can be observed or inferred:
e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke, thunder, footprints,
echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours),
medical symptoms (pain, a rash, pulse-rate),
measuring instruments (weathercock,
thermometer, clock, spirit-level).

17. • Symbol/symbolic: a mode in which the
signifier does not resemble the signified but
which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely
conventional - so that the relationship must
be learnt: e.g. language in general (plus
specific languages, alphabetical letters,
punctuation marks, words, phrases and
sentences), numbers, morse code, traffic
lights, national flags.

18. Using terminology - Denotation,
Connotation and Myth: Roland
Barthes (1967)
• In semiotics, denotation and connotation
are terms describing the relationship
between the signifier and its signified, and
an analytic distinction is made between
two types of signifieds: a denotative
signified and a connotative signified.
Meaning includes both denotation and
connotation. Myth are the ideologies
behind it.

19. • Barthes (1977) argued that in photography
connotation can be (analytically)
distinguished from denotation.
• As John Fiske (1982) puts it “denotation is
what is photographed, connotation is how
it is photographed”. Link to Barthes’ editing
at stage of production we discussed.

20. • Related to connotation is what Roland
Barthes (1977) refers to as myth. For Barthes
myths were the dominant ideologies of our
time. The 1st
and 2nd
orders of signification
called denotation and connotation combine
to produce ideology - which has been
described as a third order of signification by
Fiske and Hartley (1982).

21. If you’re doing newspaper…
• Don’t forget Jonathan Bignall (1997) –
news is carefully selected and edited to
create meaning – think about linguistic
and graphic codes (words and photos)
you have used?
• Think that Barthes (1977) also said
photos in newspapers were heavily
edited to create meaning.

22. NOTES: Micro Elements: Mise-
en-Scene
• Mise-en-scène constitutes the key aspect of
the pre-production phase of the film and
can be taken to include all aspects of
production design and Cinematography.
• Mise-en-Scene creates the diegetic
world/diegesis - the fictional space and
time implied by the narrative, i.e. the world
in which the story takes place.

23. Aspects of Mise-en-Scene –
video and print style
1. Location - settings, set-design and
iconography
2. Character – Costume, Properties and
Make Up, Actors and Gesture
3. Cinematography - Lighting and
Colour
4. Layout and Page Design – colour,
juxtaposition of elements.

24. Micro Elements: Camerawork
• There are Four aspects to camerawork
that you need to understand:
1.Shot Types – particularly relevant for
print.
2.Camera Composition
3.Camera Movement
4.Camera Angles

25. Non-Continuity
1. Montage Sequence.
2. Flash Back/Forward.
3. Ellipsis.
4. Graphic Match.

26. Micro Elements: Sound
• Sound is layered on tracks in order to
create meaning. On Premiere you used
multiple audio tracks (one for dialogue and
music). You can have sound bridges and
sound motifs to enhance meaning.
• There are 2 types of sound:
• Diegetic
• Non-diegetic sound

27. • Diegetic Sound, which refers to sound whose
origin is to be located in the story world such as
the voices of the actors, sound effects etc.
• Non-diegetic Sound, which refers to sounds not
explained in terms of any perceived source within
the story world, such as mood music, or ‘voice-of-
God’ type commentaries.
• Music added to enhance the show’s action is the
most common form of non-diegetic sound.

28. • Diegetic sound includes:
1. Dialogue
2. Sound Effects and in some cases…
3. Music

29. • Non- Diegetic sound includes:
1. Incidental Music
2. Voice Over/Narration
3. Non-diegetic sound effects (which can
be asynchronous)