Media Language

INTRODUCING THE KEY CONCEPTS OF MEDIA STUDIES

The Key Concepts are the single most important framework for the whole Media Studies course. One way of remembering the Key Concepts is to use the mnemonic 'RAILING':

• Representations
• Audiences
• Institutions 
• Langauge
• Ideology
• Narrative
• Genre

However, it is important that you do not see each Key Concept as serrate and stand alone; in fact they work in unison. The best examination responses do not address each concept in turn, instead the concepts flow into each other as the text is being analysed. Looking at Language is a good place to start which it is one of the most important key concepts and it can be closely related to Narrative and Genre.

MEDIA LANGUAGE

What is a media text?

You will be used to associating the word 'text' with something written or printed. In Media Studies, the word 'text' is used to describe any media product such as television programmes, photographs, adverts, film, newspaper adverts, radio programmes, web pages etc. 'Texts' are therefore the  main point of our study in understanding how media language create meaning. One of the keys to understanding the meaning in text is the use of codes. 'Codes' are rules or conventions by which signs are put together to create meaning. The English language itself is a set of codes: letters made up into words, words made up into sentences and sentences made up into paragraphs. Just as we learn to read the letters, words and sentences, we learn to 'read' media codes and languages. We learn that sounds or images can be put together in particular sequences, working as codes, to give particular meaning. Just as there is a great variety in the form and style of media texts, so the codes used to construct meaning are varied and frequently depend upon the form of the media text. In most cases, the text will use a variety of codes - visual, audio and written - that 'fit' together in a certain way to create a particular meaning. Most of us can easily 'read' a basic printed advert, but as Media Studies students we need to learn to break down and document the image. As a Media Studies student, it is crucial your responses reflect what you have learned in class. Always think: could my response have been written by someone who has never studied the media? If so, you will need to rethink your approach.

MEDIA LANGUAGE : IMAGE ANALYSIS

Lets start by looking at some images and describing what we see which is called denotation. In theory, at the level of denotation, everyone should describe an image in exactly the same way. However as we all have a different understanding of the world (because we have learned about it in different ways, and our understanding is shaped by our experiences) this is rarely the case in practice. 

Look at the image. On a piece of paper, describe what you see in the picture. Write down what you think is happening in the picture. Your interpretation of what is happening will depend a lot on the assumptions you make about the society in which you live. Your response will also be based on codes you simplicity understand. Your second response will have taken into account the non-verbal communication (NVC) of the men in the photograph.

• Facial expression - eyebrows are important here e.g. fully raised eyebrows often indicate disbelief whereas fully lowered eyebrows communicate anger
• Gaze - the focus of a person's look. When two people's gazes meet, this is eye contact and particularly meaningful. What does the gaze of the men say about them?
• Gestures - try to talk to someone without moving your hands. Look at other people when they talk and see how they move their hands
• Bodily posture - clearly a slovenly stance communicates something different to an upright one
• Bodily contact - this is restricted in western culture as it conveys intimacy unless its in a professional context such as at the doctor's or shaking hands
• Spatial behaviour - the distance between people gives you information about their relationship
• Clothes and appearance - clothes make a statement about us. Even a hair cut tells you something about a person. What kind of haircut will a hippy have for example? Or a fascist? 
• Non-verbal aspects of speech - examples are tone of voice or grunting a response 

We would never question the need to read writing, yet we tend to assume that because photographs represent the real world they are somehow 'natural' so all we need to do is look at them. This is clearly a fallacy. In fact, the word photography literally means 'writing with light' and the first objective in Media Studies, is to move from a passive consumption of images to an active reading of them. The object of analysis in Media Studies is to understand the meaning of a text (whether it be a novel, a film, a television programme, a still image and so on). When analysing images, it is common to distinguish between the form (how the image was created) and their context (what it is the image). One of the key elements in terms of form is the framing of the image.

Framing defines the position from which the image was created e.g. it is the border between the space we are allowed to see and that which is out of our sight. All frames have a shape - such as the A4 piece of paper which words are printed on. In terms of framing a still image, you can vary:

• Angle - the angle of vision refers to the camera's angle in relation to the vertical. The most common is the 'straight on' position. Other commonly used angles are low angle, which is often used to indicate a position of power as the audience is forced to look up at the character and high angle, which means the audience has to look down on the character so often (but not always) suggests subservience
• Height - simply, this is the height at which the shot is taken, usually eye-level, just under 2 metres
• Level - this refers to the camera's horizontal angle. As with the vertical angle, usually it is 'straight on' but the camera can also be tilted on its side to the left or right to change the level
• Distance - this refers to the distance of the object from the camera. There are seven categories:

1. Extreme long shot (e.g. a landscape)
2. Long shot ( e.g. a group of people)
3. Medium shot (e.g. one or two people)
4. Medium close-up (e.g. part of a body)
5. Close-up (e.g. face)
6. Extreme close-up (e.g. part of face)

• Depth of field - this refers to the distance between the nearest and furthest area from the camera which is in focus. Deep focus photography will have the whole scene in focus, whereas a conventional photograph will focus on the main object with the background out of focus. Soft focus can be created by using special leases and layers.
• Lens type - wide angle lenses make the scene appear deeper than it is; an extreme wide angle will give a 'fish-eye' effect while a telephoto lens pulls objects closer together (e.g. two athletes may seem to be running close together but when the shot is cut you see the true distance between them)
• Film stock - this refers to the speed at which the film responds to light. A fast stock will produce grainy images wile a slow stock will require lots of light. Slow stock is the norm in cinema while most television companies use video tapes

So we all interpret the world around us instinctively. How does this relate to image analysis?

So far, we have looked solely at still images. In addition to what we've already looked at, there are six types of moving images:

1. Pan - (short for panorama) the camera moves horizontally from a static position
2. Tracking (or dolly) - the camera moves on tracks (or wheels) to give a smooth movement
3. Tilt - the camera moves up or down vertically from a static position
4. Crane - the camera is moved on a device that can move up and down and laterally (the ultimate crane shot is the helicopter shot)
5. Handheld - gives the frame a shaky look, often used as a point-of-view shot
6. Zoom - technically not movement, but the change of the focal length bringing us closer or further away from the object in the frame

To return to our still images, we can look at the form and say, for example that an image is a high angle shot titled to the right. This is description, not analysis. Analysis involves describing the features of an image and showing what these features mean. Before we can do this, we must look at the second element of an image: content

CONTENT (MISE-EN-SCENE)
Mise-en-scene literally means 'put into the scene'. Mise-en-scene refers to anything that goes into a shot, including sets, props, actors, costumes, camera movements and performances. It is often seen as the principal vehicle by which a film's meaning is conveyed. There are three main components of mise-en-scene analysis:

• the subject
• the lighting
• the setting

The subject

There may be more than on subject in an image and we bring our cultural knowledge to bear when looking at subject. For example, if the subject is a person, we would consider all aspects of NVC as we did earlier

The lighting 

This refers to how the image is lit. You will look at lighting in more detail later. For now think about:

1. Where is the lighting coming from: front, side, back, above or below?
2. Is the lighting of equal intensity? (unlikely)
3. Where is this light coming (or supposed to be coming) from?

Three-point lighting is the commonest set up, made up of a key, fill and backlight.

The key light is the main source of illustration and is directed on the subject, usually from 45 degrees above and to one side of the camera. It is a hard, direct light which produces sharply defined shadows. The fill light is the soft or indirect light that 'fills' in the shadows formed by the key light. The back light shines from behind the subject, usually to differentiate it from the background.

The setting

This is self-explanatory: we have different expectations, for example, of a tropical setting when compared to an Arctic one. So now we have the tools to be able to an image and talk about its form and content on a denotative level. Don't forget to refer to form (i.e. framing) and content/mise-en-scene (i.e. lighting, setting, NVC). You should aim to write at least half a side of A4. Now we have learned how to analyse an image on a denotative level, we need to look at connotation. Denotation describes what an image actually shows and is immediately apparent, rather than the assumption the individual reader may make about it; the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign. Connotation refers to the meaning of a sign which is arrived at through the cultural experiences a reader brings to it. As we said earlier, we have all learned about the world in different ways and therefore will have different ways of looking at it depending on our social background, age, gender, ethnicity etc. The way we interpret what we see is connotation, where we, the reader, add our own pieces of information. We fill in what is missing from the denotation stage and attempt to identify what message is being communicated. Connotations often rest on the individual 'reader's' response to a media text. 

Anchoring (or anchorage) means the fixing to limiting a particular set of meanings. One of the most common forms of anchorage is the caption underneath a photograph.

• Cropping - the advent of digital photography means many people at home now have experiences of cropping pictures on their home computers. Choosing to focus on one particular aspect of a picture so by definition missing something out, will clearly have implications.
• Juxtaposition - juxtaposition means 'being placed side by side'. By placing information, written or otherwise, near an image is likely to influence your reading of that image. For example, an image of a craggy, handsome man juxtaposed with a mansion on the cover of a novel would suggest it was a romantic story. The same man juxtaposed with a gun and  the mansion would probably suggest a murder mystery. Collage takes juxtaposition to extremes by placing numerous, usually unrelated, images together within a frame.
• Genre - you will look at this more fully later but genre provides audiences wit a clear set of expectations which are used to interpret the text. For example, if we read a horror text, we'd be surprised if it didn't include elements such as a big, creepy house, thunder and lightning, horrible deaths, monsters, supernatural powers etc.
• Iconography - is the objects we recognise as belonging to a particular genre e.g. a ten gallon hat and six shooters are linked with the western genre

SEMIOTICS

One of the key theoretical tools to help us deconstruct media texts is semiology, more often referred to as semiotics. This is an attempt to create a science of the study of sign systems and their role in the construction and reconstruction of meaning in media texts. It is an excellent tool for analysing images, but it can be problematic in the sense that some of the terminology often makes it seem obscure and difficult. What follows attempts to make basic semiotics as simple as possible for you to understand, but please bear in mind that this is a difficult topic and one you will be expected to have to work at to comprehend fully. We will look at the work of three key figures: the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Charles Peirce (1839-1914) who coined the term semiotics, and Roland Barthes (1913-1980), who applied abstract ideas to daily life and culture. Simply, semiotics is the 'study of signs' but it is important to remember that this doesn't just refer to formal signs (such as the ones found in the Highway Code) but any system of communication. Language, of course, is the most fundamental communication system used by human beings. Saussure said that a sign is the sum of the signifier and signified i.e.:

The signifier is the sign's physical form in the real world while the signified is the mental concept evoked by the signifier. So if we perceive a four legged animal with a very long neck (the signifier), this evokes the mental concept of a giraffe (the signified). This combination creates the sign 'giraffe'. In a similar way, the letter g-i-r-a-f-f-e. In a similar way, the letters g-i-r-a-f-f-e placed together are a signifier (at least for English speakers) leading to the mental concept of a giraffe (the signified). You can see here how in our own perception, the signifier and signified are inseparable, but they are separated for the purpose of analysis. The basic act of signification operates at the level of denotation.  Denotation is dealt with more fully elsewhere in this worksheet, but is simply about identifying a sign. The denotation of an image is what it actually is, rather than what meaning we give to it. For example, the colour red is the denotation. The meaning we give to red, possibly danger or love, is its connotation.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is usually arbitary (determine by chance and universally agreed upon). For example, the fact that a four legged animal with a very long neck is called a giraffe in English arbitrary. It could equally have been called an elephant or lion. It therefore follows that if the signifier determined the signified than the word for a giraffe in English would be the same in all languages: indeed there probably would be only one language. The fact that signs are arbitrary in nature. A photograph, for example, looks like what it represents. Signs such as this were defined by Charles Peirce as iconic (see later).

Our understanding of signs rarely stops at the level of denotation. Once we see a sign, we have particular associations with it which colour our understanding. For example, arachnophobes would have negative feelings about the sign 'spider' whereas a tarantula owner would have the opposite feeling. These connotations mean that the original sign has become another signifier which evokes an associated mental concept to create another sign which consists of 'sign' + 'associations'

There is social consensus for many connotations. For example, if you see a border collie dog, sitting down, tongue hanging out with its head on one side (a denotative description) it is difficult to avoid the connotation that the dog is friendly. Some signs carry particularly powerful connotations and are discussed under myths under the sections on Barthes later in this worksheet. One other thing to remember is that meaning cannot exist in individual signs because of their arbitrary nature. Meaning is derived from context. For example, the word 'dog' can mean a four legged animal or be a verb meaning 'to pursue tenaciously'. Look at the following sentences:

1. The dog barked loudly at the postman
2. The man said he'd dog Charles forever

If we used the meaning 'to pursue tenaciously' in the first sentence, it would obviously be nonsense. We understand the meaning of dog in this case by the difference between it and the other signs in the sentence. In other words, a sign gets its meaning from its relationship to other signs. To put it simply what a sign is could be said to be due to what it isn't.

Langue and parole

Saussure distinguished between:

• Langue - the rules of sign systems (e.g. grammar)
• Parole - the articulation of the signs (e.g. writing)

Langue is the supporting structure of any communication, often simplicity understood but hidden beneath the surface. Parole is the performance of the rules, referred to by Noam Chomsky as ''what the speaker does''. To use the writing analogy above, langue is the grammar of English (the rules of punctuation, for example) and parole the piece of writing produced by a person who simplicity understands the langue. It is helpful to see langue and parole as an iceberg: langue is the supporting structure part hidden under the sea, parole is the visible part

How does this relate to Media Studies? Take the Hollywood cinema industry, for example. There are certain' codes' associated with Hollywood films, such as continuity editing, use of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds etc. These codes act as the equivalent of the langue while the way these codes are actually used in a specific film is the equivalent of parole. Unless a person has learned about the media language of Hollywood films, then it is unlikely he or she would know about the rules of continuity editing, for example. However, because most people can make sense of the editing when watching films (the parole) then they simplicity understand the langue, as indicated by Chomsky.

Synchrony and diachrony
Saussure demonstrated another way of structuring meaning: considering the vertical and horizontal dimensions of sign systems: synchrony and diachrony. Synchrony is the vertical dimension of meaning and diachrony is the horizontal dimension. These are useful in the study of language . Take the quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet below:














G235: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN MEDIA - THEORETICAL EVALUATION OF PRODUCTION (1B MEDIA LANGUAGE)

The aims/objectives are to reinforce the basic media language that create meaning in texts and to ensure that we have a basic understanding of how to evaluate coursework against the media language that was used.

• 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 language because they are familiar codes and conventions that are generally understood
• 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
• Understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of media language, especially the language of sounds and visuals which can reach beyond the rational to our deepest emotional core, increases our appreciation and enjoyment of media experiences as well as helps us to be less susceptible to manipulation e.g. the example from Men's Health is so transparent once you know how to read a media text (and you can't 'grow' muscle...)
• In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and signified
• Barthes (1977) argued that in film connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation
• As John Fiske (1982) puts it ''denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed''
• Evaluating media language is an evaluation of all micro elements and how they have created meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations/ideology, targeting of audiences. This requires us to use semiotic terminology to explain our encoding of elements and codes and conventions within our texts
• We must also remember to discuss the preferred meaning (Hall, 1980) that we wanted to our audience to decode
• Mise-en-scene 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 - the fictional space and time implied by the narrative eg the world in which the story takes place. Aspects of mise-en-scene (video and print style): locations (settings, set-design and iconography) character (costume, properties, makeup, actors and gesture) cinematography (lighting and colour) layout and page design (colour, juxtaposition of elements)
• Micro elements (camerawork) - there are four aspects to camerawork that you need to understand: shot types (particularly relevant for print) camera composition, camera movement, camera angles
• Micro elements (editing) - editing is a post-production technique in which the footage shot during production is cut up and reassembled in such a way as to tell the story. TV shows are not filmed in chronological order. They are filmed out of order in short sequences, called 'takes' which then have to be assembled in the correct order

Terminology Glossary

• Codes - all media texts are encoded. The codes themselves are symbolic, technical or written. The technical code used depends on the platform
• Encoding/ decoding - meanings are encoded by producers and decoded by the audience
• Positioning - media texts attempt to place the audience in a position whereby they hold a point of view, or feel a particular emotion (in other words we are talking about manipulation)
• Preferred/dominant - a preferred meaning is one that might be put in place by the producers, or by the dominant values of society
• Resistant/ aberrant - an aberrant reading takes place when the audience is resistant to the dominant values of society and instead negotiates or resists the intended meaning
• Narrative - the media trains us to see the world in terms of narrative beginning (equilibrium) middle  (disruption and conflict) and end (new equilibrium) All media texts have a narrative structure
• Genre - a category of texts with common conventions of style, narrative and structure
• Iconography - particiular visual signs associated with certain genres ''the iconography of this text includes a deserted house and a sinister clown, both evocative of the horror genre''
• Mediation - anything we experience through the media (as opposed to directly) is mediated
• Mise -en-scene - whatever appears within the frame: setting, lighting, characters, props (''the director uses the mise-en-scene to create a sense of loneliness by framing the character against an enormous, empty landscape'')
• Regulation - laws, rules, guidelines which define and restrict the parameters within which the media work. Self-regulation describes regulation within the industry (e.g. press complaints commission) Government regulation: often operated by QANGOs! (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Govermental Organisations - like OFCOM)
• Dismemberment - in advertising especially, women's bodies are cropped/masked in order to emphasise sexualised body parts
• News values - criteria applied to determine what is newsworthy. ''News values determine the prominence given to news stories, their order and whether they are included or excluded from the new agenda''
• Stereotype - an oversimplified sometimes humorous representation which is used to categorise and evaluate members of a particular group
• Voyeurism - the practice of gaining pleasure from looking at other people whilst remains anonymous
• Audience - there are main ways of looking at audiences: hypodermic model, uses and gratifications model, reception model
• Hypodermic model - the media is powerful and influential, able to inject ideas and behaviours directly into the audience - which must be protected from its power
• Uses and gratifications - theory audience which emphasises the range of needs/pleasures fulfilled by consumption of the media
• Reception - theory of audience that emphasises the range of ways in which audiences receive and respond to media texts - including resistant or negotiated readings