Week 3

This week we focused on semiotics. Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning. A discussion of the origins of semiotic analysis, linking anthropological, cultural and sociological research, and the use of grammar and imagery as the key mechanisms by which variables are recognised from signs as well as the popularity of semiotics.

Connotation: An idea or even a feeling of which a word invokes for a person in addition to it's literal meaning.

Denotation: The literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.

Naturalization: Codes which have been naturalized are those which are so widely distributed in a culture and which are learned at such an early age that they appear not to be constructed but to be 'naturally' given. Myths serve the ideological function of naturalization - making the cultural seem 'natural', 'normal', 'self-evident' 'common-sense', and thus 'taken-for-granted'. Denotation can be seen as no more of a 'natural' meaning than connotation but rather as a part of a process of naturalization. See also: Commonsense, Denaturalization, Ideology, Valorization. (Daniel Chandler)