Media Language

Media Language is basically how a chosen medium communicates with it's audience.

Roland Barthes Signs and Signifiers Barthes argues that media texts and narratives consist of signs that are there for the audience to interpret using their own experience	Fiske Shared cultural knowledge A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the others we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did, we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is a prospectus for, and that it used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to encode it. 'denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed'	Goodwin Lyrics and framing Illustration – either a straightforward performance video or a simple narrative video that illustrates the meaning of the lyrics and visualizes the music - music video ‘denotation’. Amplification – Rather than simply illustrate the lyrics or sounds this director will ‘amplify’ both with creative interpretation, unusual ideas and surrealistic approaches. There is still a direct link to the song like a ‘connotative’ link. Disjuncture – also created by ‘auteur’ directors these videos are completely abstract and have no obvious link to the music, lyrics, song title or artist.
Archer Repeatability Music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band to show ‘real connection’ with the music. A carefully choreographed dance might be part of the artist’s performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the ‘repeatability’ factor	Saussure SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN The SIGNIFIER is the sign’s physical form in the real world while the SIGNIFIED is the mental concept evoked by the signifier. 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”. 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, is its connotation.	Stewart TV commercials and aspirations The music video has the aesthetics of a TV commercial (focus on the star’s face). Stewart’s description of the music video as ‘incorporating, raiding and reconstructing’ is Intertextuality (using familiar thing to generate both nostalgic associations and new meanings). The video allows more access to the performer and the mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.