2MED443 Approaches to Media Week Two Structuring the Message

Session Structure Structuralism Language and Meaning Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the image’ Signifier and Signified

Structuralism [Structuralism] An intellectual approach and movement that was very influential in the humanities and social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s… it (continues) to have great resonance in the study of media… The basic idea of structuralism is that individual social or cultural phenomena have common structures…

Structuralism …The system and the relationships between them are more important than the individual elements that make up the system… Structuralism rests on a distinction between the surface appearance and the deeper (or hidden level) of structure (Abercrombie and Longhurst 2007: 329).

Structuralism Structuralism is less concerned with what ‘texts’ (cultural objects in general, not just books) are about and more with how they work… In other words, structuralism focuses on how texts mean, before being concerned with what texts mean.

Language and Meaning Structuralism can be defined in terms of three main themes: We use language to structure – and even construct – reality. Language enables us to give meaning to the world. Meanings happen only in relation to structures. Verbal and written language provides the clearest demonstration of these structural properties of meaning.

Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the image’ Barthes applied structuralism to everyday life and representations in the media and culture to show the workings of power. He criticised a number of forms and activities as producing ideological mystification. Capitalism is one of the main sources of power in Western culture. Those who have the means of production in capitalism have more power and influence than those who do not.

Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the image’ Structuralism finds that rules and conventions apply to all aspects of culture. In this way, cultural signs are governed by underlying principles like grammar in speech and writing. Barthes adopted from semiotics – the science of signs – the definition of the sign as an object, word, image, etc, together with its meaning.

Signifier and Signified Put more technically, a sign is a unit of meaning produced by the relation of a signifier to a signified: Signifier: the material object, the sounds that words make, the letters on a page, etc. For example, ‘a bunch of roses’. Signified: the concept or mental image to which the signifier gives rise. For example, the ‘romance or passion’ signified by the bunch of red roses.

Signifier and Signified Barthes saw advertising as a subtle form of propaganda designed to encourage us to buy into capitalism. Structuralism is a tool which can enable us to deconstruct advertising and reveal its true mechanisms. Adverts produce meanings which have no direct connection to reality. They establish differences between items that are essentially the same. In an advert, the product is made up of signifiers (material objects), while its signifieds are the connotations given by the structure of the advert as a whole.

http://www.sprog.asb.dk/Lma/index2-en.htm

“This image straightaway provides a series of discontinuous signs “This image straightaway provides a series of discontinuous signs. First… the idea that what we have in the scene represented is a return from the market. A signified which itself implies two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over the table, ‘unpacked’” (1977: 34).

References Abercrombie, Nicholas and Longhurst, Brian (2007) Dictionary of Media Studies, London: Penguin. Barthes, Roland (1999) [1977] ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’, in Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall (eds.) Visual Culture: the Reader, London: Sage, pp. 33-41.