Todays lesson: semiology

In todays lesson we talked and learned about the science of semiotics. The definition of semiotics is "the signs and symbols of communiative behaviour, the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing" and "a general theory of signs and symbolism, usually divided into the branches of pragmatics, semanics and syntactics".
So basically, in the case of what i am going to do: the analysis of the sign and sybolism which comes from a photo. What a photo could tell us about a person using connotations (the meaning behind a description) and denotation (the literal meaning of that description).

Denotations often lead us onto a connotation: for example, the woman is wearing a diamond ncklace, therefore suggesting she is a very wealthy lady who likes to impress.

We did a 2 big sheets in class which one featured photos of an old lady, a youthful girl, a sexy woman and a brightly-haired young girl. With these photos we had to write what we thought aboiut them and words which we associated with these women. To do this we had to be very stereotypical and judgemental, however people need to be put into categories in order to create a target audience and to have an idea of how to target this audience.

There were also some more keys words: context and anchorage: the way that different media language elements combine to help fix meaning. Elements which finalize and certify a meaning. Print based media texts will use anchorage to help readers interpret the photos they used to illustrate their stories or articles. Basically when lots of descriptions all link into one full fixed meaning.

Here i have done my own examples of signs and signifiers, denotations, connotation and context and anchorage:

 Denotations: Black leather bikini, dark hair, centre frame, smiling, lots of make-up, action-style belt, half-naked, strong and confident persona due to hands of hips and focused eyes, attractive to men, sexy, dentermined eyes
Connotations: sexy, daring, tough personality,

FINISH