ENCODING / DECODING program encoding (structures of meaning) From Stuart Hall program encoding (structures of meaning) decoding (structures of meaning) relations of production relations of reception DOMINANT NEGOTIATED OPPOSITIONAL

Respond to this picture: When was it shot. How does it make you feel Respond to this picture: When was it shot? How does it make you feel? Does it remind of other photographs?

Lewis Paine Executed on July 7, 1865 for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Which one is “real?”

President Bin Laden

C C – O C – O – W

= SIGN Signifier Signified Semiotics The Study of Signs and Their Meanings Signifier SIGN = Signified Symbolic = arbitrary Iconic = structural Indexical = copresence

The construction of myth Semiotics The Study of Signs and Their Meanings The construction of myth Roland Barthes Denoted image: what it is; tautology Connoted image: Rhetoric and the floating chain of signifiers Linguistic messages: anchorage & relay

The layers of signification Semiotics The Study of Signs and Their Meanings The layers of signification Roland Barthes First level= self-contained (man) Second level = motivated meanings, derived from culture (wisdom, learning, etc.) Third level = cohere into a comprehensive whole (knowledge society)

Semiotics Paradigmatic Analysis The Study of Signs and Their Meanings Paradigmatic Analysis vertical metaphor selective/associative bipolar oppositions meaning by context (media, genre)

Semiotics Syntagmatic Analysis The Study of Signs and Their Meanings Syntagmatic Analysis horizontal metonymy combinative composed of paradigms narrative

Semiotics The Study of Signs and Their Meanings PARADIGMS PARADIGMS NARRATIVE SYNTAGMS AURAL AND VISUAL IMAGES

Tony Schwartz “The critical task is to design our package of stimuli so that it resonates with information already stored within an individual and thereby induces the desired learning or behavioral effect. Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our communication evoke meaning in a listener or viewer. That which we put into the communication has no meaning to itself. The meaning of our communication is what a listener or viewer gets out of his[/her] experience with the communicator’s stimuli. The listener’s or viewer’s brain is an indispensable component of the total communication system. His[/her] life experiences, as well as….expectations of the stimuli he/[she] is receiving, interact with the communicator’s output in determining the meaning of the communication.” From The responsive chord (1973)