MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Semiotics, Denotation, Connotation
Document Summary
That gap can put a lot of pressure on pragmatic approaches: understanding about how media objects encourage audiences to adopt certain understandings of the world. Those understandings often shape those people"s understandings in the world. A way of understanding language as being composed of signs: the idea of dog is the signified. It might seem like there is a natural connection between a signa and the thing it signifies. But that connections is not a natural relationship. It"s a purely manufactured relationship, the meaning is applied. Ex- rabbit or bunny, we have two different signifiers for the same signified. The object doesn"t have to be present in the receivers engagement. The connection to the image is where this comes to be important for media: denotation means the literal thing itself, connotation tends to be cultural and is almost always interpreted.
