Welcome to the LBST1B06

Study Group!
Week Three:
Preparing for the in-class assignment
 Key Terms Covered So Far
(Retrieved from P.Gardner’s lectures)
• Intertextuality and Cross-fertilization • Dominant, negotiated and oppositional
• Representation positions
• Technology • Encoding/decoding
• Connotation and denotation • Context
• Mystification • Taste- as naturalized
• Photographic accuracy as myth • Interpellation
• Sign = Signifier and signified
• Hegemony
• Context/ interpretation
• Resistances: negotiation, appropriation,
• Ideology
subcultural style, poaching
• Impact of Reproduction of art
 Key Terms Covered So Far
(Retrieved from P.Gardner’s lectures)
• Intertextuality and Cross-fertilization • Dominant, negotiated and oppositional
• Representation positions
• Technology • Encoding/decoding
• Connotation and denotation • Context
• Mystification • Taste- as naturalized
• Photographic accuracy as myth • Interpellation
• Sign = Signifier and signified
• Hegemony
• Context/ interpretation
• Resistances: negotiation, appropriation,
• Ideology
subcultural style, poaching
• Impact of Reproduction of art
 Charles Pierce

What is Pierce’s method of semiotics?

 Charles Pierce

“For Peirce, meaning resides not in the

initial perception of a sign or representation
of an object but in the interpretation of the
perception and subsequent action based
on that perception. Every thought is a sign
without meaning until a subsequent thought
[‘interpretant’] allows for its interpretation.”
- Sturken/Cartwright page 28
 Charles Pierce
Three kinds of signs/representations:
• Iconic
• Indexical
• Symbolic

Pop quiz: Without looking at your textbook or lecture notes,

take five minutes to write down everything you know about
iconic, indexical and symbolic signs. Include examples!

After five minutes, check your notes and textbook. Were you
surprised by how much you already knew? Or maybe you
thought you knew it better than you did?
 Charles Pierce
Three kinds of signs/representations:
• Iconic: Signifier directly resembles signified.
“We know how to read these images, in Peirce’s terms,
because they resemble what they are representing.”
(page 31)
 Charles Pierce
Three kinds of signs/representations:
• Indexical: “Existential relationship between
the sign and the interpretant.” (P.Gardner)
Sign and interpretant “have coexisted in the
same place at the same time.” (page 32)

Examples: Footprint, finger print, photograph

 Charles Pierce
Three kinds of signs/representations:
• Symbolic: Signifier has no natural connection to signified.
“Bear no obvious relationship to their objects (…) Symbolic
signs are created through arbitrary (‘unnatural’) alliance of a
particular object and a particular meaning.”
Examples:
language
“C - A - T”
 Roland Barthes
What is Barthes’ method of semiotics?
 Roland Barthes
What is Barthes’ method of semiotics?
The sign is the relationship between the
signifier and the signified.

Signifier: sound, written word, image

+ Signified: meaning
= Sign
 Roland Barthes
• Denotative meaning
• Connotative meaning
 Roland Barthes
• Denotative meaning: Literal, face-value
meaning of a sign.
Example: Blood = the fluid that circulates in the heart, arteries,
capillaries, and veins of a vertebrate animal….
 Roland Barthes
• Connotative meaning: “Social, cultural, historical
meanings that are added to a sign’s literal meaning. Rely on
context. Brings sign into the wider realm of ideology, cultural
meaning, and value systems of a society.” (page 436)
Example: Blood =
danger, evidence, violence, ritual, sacrifice,
disease… “Out, out, damn spot!”
Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements
Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements

Try it Out!
Make two columns on your page. First write the
denotative readings on one side. After that, connect the
denotative readings to connotative meanings.
Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements
 Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements
Here’s an example of a few readings we came up with during the study group.
Denotative Connotative
Figure with breasts Female
Blond hair “Have more fun”, “Stupid”
Fair skin Innocence, purity, virginal
Black bikini Sexual readiness
Limp body She has no agency, no control
Strings attached to limbs Puppet, she is manipulated by
an unseen force (or maybe the
bottle of axe?)
Deep red tones in background Sensual, perhaps even violent
Full body view from below Viewer is a member of an audience,
she is performing (at our command
Text and small bottle in corner “The axe effect” = This is the effect
you will have on females if you buy
our product.”
…etc…
 Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements

We had a good laugh over this one during the study group.
Did you catch the double meaning?
Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements
Applying denotative and connotative
readings to advertisements

(How can appropriation

be used for adbusting?)
 Stuart Hall
• (Ideology)
• Encoding/decoding
• Ideology: The shared set of values and
beliefs that exist within a given society
and through which individuals live out
their relations to social institutions and
structures. Ideology refers to the way
that certain concepts and values are
made to seem like natural, inevitable
aspects of everyday life.” (page 445)
* Re-read page 69-72

Other theorists to keep in mind…

Karl Marx Antonio Gramsci Louis Althusser
 Stuart Hall
• Encoding/decoding: In 1973, Hall
published the essay, 'Encoding/decoding’

“Viewers decode images that are

encoded with meaning by the creators.”
 Stuart Hall
We decode cultural images/artifacts in
three ways:
1. Dominant-hegemonic reading
2. Negotiated reading
3. Oppositional reading
 Stuart Hall
What does encoding and decoding mean?
According to Stuart Hall,
Encoding: “The production of meaning in cultural
products.” Cultural producers encode cultural
products with “preferred meaning that will then be
decoded by viewers.” (page 439)
Decoding: “The process of interpreting and giving
meaning to cultural products in conformity with
shared cultural codes.” (page 437) What we do when
we view and interpret cultural products.
 Stuart Hall
We decode cultural images/artifacts in
three ways:
1. Dominant-hegemonic reading:
The viewer is accepting and passive. “Viewers identify with the
hegemonic position and receive the dominant message of an
image/text in an unquestioning manner.” (page 72)
“The reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces
the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of
any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance
the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent’”
(http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html)

(What’s hegemony? Who is Antonio Gramsci? See page 444.)

 Stuart Hall
We decode cultural images/artifacts in
three ways:
2. Negotiated reading: Viewer makes a
negotiated meaning somewhere between his/her
interpretation and the dominant meaning.
“The reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way
which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and
personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) -
this position involves contradictions”
(http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html)
 Stuart Hall
We decode cultural images/artifacts in
three ways:
3. Oppositional reading: Viewer disagrees with the
ideological meaning, rejects meaning or ignores meaning.
“The reader, whose social situation places them in a directly
oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the
preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects
this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical,
feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on
behalf of a political party they normally vote against).”
(http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html)