MDSA01H3 Lecture 5: lec5
Document Summary
Overview of today: representation and signification, making meaning. Importance and role of theory: encoding/decoding model, perspectives on the study of content. The act of putting ideas into words, visuals, audio, or any other medium of communication. Simplifies and interprets the object or event being described. Receiver must decode or interpret the communication to understand the idea. These concepts developed in the linguistic theory of ferdinand de saussure. Sign: anything with meaning (e. g. words, images, sounds, objects) Signifier: the aspect of a sign that we experience. Signified: the idea or metal concept drawn from the signifier. Icon (or an iconic sign): a sign that looks like the object it represents (e. g. map: city) Index (or indexical sign) a sign that is relate to the object it represents (e. g. smoke: fire, or a photo) Symbol (or symbolic sign): a sign that has no direct resemblance to the object it represents (e. g. name: the actual person, or written lang. itself)
