1. Semiotics

2. Process school
• Process approach focuses on
communication between sender and
receiver
• Laswell formula - who, says what, to
whom, in what channel?
• S.P.A.T
• Does not allow for much interpretation
from cultural perspective

3. • Semiotics sees communication as cultural
phenomena
• No longer thinking of info content of texts
but meanings
• Meaning arises from interaction between
text and receiver within differing cultural
contexts
• We will look at how we use and respond to
various signs which themselves are part of
codes or meaning systems

4. Codes
• A code is a system of communication
1. Sign (anything that expresses meaning like
words, pictures, looks)
2. Rules (so that signs go together and make
sense, like grammar)
3. Shared understanding (codes only work when
everyone understands)
In groups, come up with some examples of codes and write
down how they work with all three rules – present to the class

5. Identifying Codes
• Identifying codes in a text is vital –
• Code as organising system of
communication – it is the system that
makes meaning possible but only within
interaction is individual meaning made
• When encoded message is being offered
for decoding there is an invitation to make
negotiated meaning

6. Negotiation
• Active negotiation
between producer, reader
and text
• Meaning is not fixed when
encoded but depends on
context of decoding
• What are the most
important signs in this
image? What is your
reading of it?

8. Syntagm & Paradigm
• Syntagm = set of choices/
chain of signs which can
be visual/ textual etc. The
ask us to negotiate
meaning
• Paradigm = the set from
which individual
syntagms come from. To
take one syntagm from a
paradigm is to reject all
others
What paradigms have been used here? How would taking a different syntagm
from these sets change meaning? What are the dominant signs?

9. • Here is a set of words
and images (paradigm)
from which you have to
create an advertising
slogan (syntagm).
• New Amazing Soap
Power Your woman
Your man Cleaning
Easy Cheap Stylish
Impress Today
• When we are creating a
text, we choose what to
put in by identifying the
purpose of the text, the
audience and the type
(genre) of text so that we
know what to include.
These factors help us to
choose from the correct
paradigms.

10. Anchorage
• Written text that anchors
the preferred reading of
an image
• Often ideological
• This image might have
been advertising make-up
“Warmer, drier summer on the way”
or holidays etc. Guardian 2008
Anchorage fixes the
signifiers (girl, chair, sky,
photo)

11. How I fought to survive Guantánamo

12. Scott Brown, model politician trumps
Obamas man.

13. Prince in New Zealand and Australia on first overseas tour