Toolkit for Reading Adverts Raz’s Revision Guide

Advice Most of the things that you will learn in this presentation you already know. I will just be giving new names to things that you already do: watch adverts, read magazines, watch films. As long as you’ve not been locked up in a cupboard, you already have the skills needed to succeed in this unit.

The Lasswell Formula The best way begin understanding the nature of a piece of communication is ask some very basic questions. The following Five questions are what are called Lasswell’s Formula: Who? Says what? To whom? In which channel? With what effect?

De Saussure – Signifier/Signified A sign is something which represents something to someone else e.g.

Signifier and Signified Saussure said that there are two parts to each sign Signifier – the label we put on a sign – the name or the sound Signified – the mental association that we have when we hear or see the sign

Look at these signs – write down the signifier (what it is) and the signified ( what you think of when you see this sign ) Saussure noticed that the link between the signifier (what you call or label a sign) and what it stands for, is a random or arbitrary thing. What is the link between these objects and their labels?

What are signs made up of? Signifier: its physical form (words; car; haircut) Signified: the ideas that you associate with a sign’s physical form. This is often a conceptual idea Signifier: a young child in a white dress Signified: Young children signify innocence and naivety. White signifies purity and inexperience. The dress is on a female child and perhaps indicates ideas about femininity as well

Polysemy You might not realise it but you use polysemy everyday, for example when you say “wicked” it can mean bad or evil, but it is also used to imply: fashionable, good, exciting and something to be admired. So a text that has many meanings is said to be polysemic. Exercise 1: In the table below make a list of polysemic words and their multiple meanings. Polysemic words: Multiple meanings:

Denotation and Connotation Denotation = What the sign shows, for example a rose is a flower. Connotation = All the things the word or image (signs that enter our brains) can stand for. For example; the rose is a flower but its connotation (stands for or represents) love and romance. Because the rose has connotations it can be seen as a polysemic image Exercise 2: make a list of polysemic images along with a list of their connotations. Polysemic Image, Denotation Connotation (how can the Image be interpreted semantically

Anchoring And Negotiated Reading. adverts contain polysemic images that are often open to interpretation. this means that they have to be anchored, this is usually done through a heading or caption. Anchoring is a technique that limits the amount of ways that an advert can be read into For example the image of the lynx product in a glass of water has the connotation that it is some sort of Alka Seltzer headache and stomach-ache product. However if we were to interpret the advert and come to the conclusion that Lynx were now selling medicine we would have misinterpreted the advert, this would be called an oppositional reading To stop oppositional reading from taking place the advert is anchored by a caption which has the denotation “shower gel” this informs you without a doubt that the product on sale here is shower gel. The connotation of a Headache/dissolvable tablet is also re-enforced by the caption “Recover Shower Gel” but because the words shower gel are clear we can make no mistake as to what the product is. Instead we can negotiate in our minds that the connotation of the polysemic image is that “Lynx Recover Shower Gel” is good to use after a night out. This process of deconstruction is called negotiated reading

Relay Many texts rely on words and images to function together to put forward a message. This is what people mean by the term RELAY, texts in which images and words have an EQUAL importance in communicating a message. Comic books rely on both words and images to create a message and eventually to tell a story. Words and images therefore have an equal relationship, for without either a comic book simply could not work. Have a look at the Audi advert again. Would it function if the words were taken out, or if the images were taken out?

C.S Peirce – Icon, Index, Symbol Peirce recognised that signs did not all work in the same way – as you noticed with tattoos and piercings when you were looking at texts. Some ‘signs’ are very closely related to the things they represent – these signs are called ICONS. All these images are iconic, some more motivated than others ICONIC signs convey truth and reality – what sort of texts tend to choose these sorts of signs?

Index An index is a sign which is related to the object it represents but not directly or in a concrete way. For example, a knock on the door – an index of arrival. The knock is not ARRIVAL, it is not a direct representation of arrival, but it indicates arrival and is connected to that event. Most facial expressions work in an indexical way – because you cannot represent an emotion, we look for signs which indicate them e.g a smile is an index (or sign) of happiness. The smile isn’t a direct representation of happiness. Indexes are used to represent abstract things – emotions, ideas etc. Most non-verbal signs are indexes.

Look at the signs below – what are the indexes of? Index of ………………? Index of……………….? Index of…………….?

Symbol Symbols are signs which have NO link at all with the thing it represents. The only reason we know what they mean is because we have learnt what they mean over time. Words are symbols – there is no actual link between the word ‘table’ and the object because if there was, the word would be the same in all languages. People decide to give objects labels in an arbitrary, random way and as long as other people agree to these labels, we all know what each other are talking about. For example pachyderm is the random label (symbol) applied to which animal? What is this symbol? Try to guess some more symbols on the sheet

Syntagm and Paradigm To put it simply: syntagm is another word for the look of something and paradigms are the choices made to create the look. Lets use these terms to deconstruct the Arsenal FC look.

This is the Arsenal syntagm. (In other words the Arsenal look.)

Paradigmatic Choices The Arsenal syntagm has been constructed out of these paradigmatic choices: Red topWhite shorts White socks with red lines Have a look at the Audi advert again. What paradigmatic choices have been made in the Audi advert and why?

The Rule of Thirds The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows. What pardigmatic choices have been made in the Audi advert and why?

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image. Not only this - but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the centre of the shot - using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

Look at the above picture where the bee’s eye becomes the point of focus

What are the points of interest in this shot?

Depth of Field Depth of field is the range of distance within the subject that is acceptably sharp. In other words, what area of a picture is focussed so that you can see it clearly.

Ideology Ideology is an impressive sounding word that basically means the underlying ideas expressed in a piece of communication. Lets look back at the Audi advert. There are a few ideologies expressed in the advert. Can you come up with at least two?