Understanding Media Semiotics

✍ Scribed by Marcel Danesi

• Publisher: A Hodder Arnold Publication
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 264
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Media semiotics is a valuable method of focusing on the hidden meanings within media texts. This book offers students an in-depth guide to help them investigate and understand the media using semiotic theory. It assumes little previous knowledge of the field, avoiding jargon and explaining the issues step by step. The two basic features of the methods used are the historical study of media and their genre and the analysis of the meaning structures that such genres encode. Semiotic analysis is sometimes seen as complicated and difficult to understand; Marcel Danesi shows that on the contrary it can be readily understood and can greatly enrich students' understanding of media texts, from print media right through to the internet.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Introduction......Page 8
1 The mediated world......Page 12
What is a medium?......Page 13
Development of the mass media......Page 18
Basic notions......Page 28
Semiotic method......Page 34
2 An outline of semiotic theory......Page 39
Background and general notions......Page 40
Narrative......Page 56
Metaphor......Page 59
3 Print media......Page 65
The development of print media......Page 66
Books......Page 72
Newspapers......Page 80
Magazines......Page 85
Recorded music......Page 92
Rock music......Page 99
The radio......Page 109
5 Film......Page 118
Motion pictures......Page 119
Cinema and postmodernism......Page 133
Cinema genres......Page 139
6 Television......Page 145
The advent of TV......Page 146
The impact of TV......Page 153
TV and social change......Page 161
7 The computer and the Internet......Page 168
Computer media......Page 169
The Internet......Page 176
The computer and the mind......Page 182
8 Advertising......Page 189
What is advertising?......Page 190
Creating a signification system......Page 195
Advertising textuality......Page 199
9 Social impacts of the media......Page 212
Overview......Page 213
Mediation......Page 218
Concluding reflections......Page 227
A......Page 229
C......Page 230
E......Page 232
H......Page 233
M......Page 234
N......Page 235
O......Page 236
P......Page 237
S......Page 238
W......Page 240
Bibliography......Page 241
C......Page 256
D......Page 257
G......Page 258
L......Page 259
N......Page 260
R......Page 261
S......Page 262
W......Page 263
Z......Page 264