Basic revision tools for the exam

Theoretical framework

Media language

how the media communicates meaning through codes, conventions and techniques. 

Creators of media products encode messages and meanings within their products through media language, the audience then decodes these messages and responds to them in different ways. 

You must study the following aspects of media language and be able to apply them to your understanding to the forms of set for each exam component. 

Technical Codes 

you must confidentially be able to discuss technical codes in a range of products. You must discuss and analyze the purpose and effect of a particular technique employed by the text 

Technical codes in a moving image/films:

• camera angle/shot/composition and movement
• editing 
• mise-en-scene
• sound

Technical code for sound:

• non-diegetic
• contrapuntal 
• voiceover/narration
• ambience
• dialogue 
• sound effects 
• synchronous/asynchronous 

Technical code for editing:

• continuity?
• pace?
• cutting?
• cutaways?
• transition?

Visual codes

• clothing
• expression 
• gerstures
• colour 
• expression
• images(mise-en-scene)
• iconography
• graphics 

For example: When a new character enters a frame in a forensic crime and is earning a white suit and plastic gloves, the audience by then would have already understand the role and have expectations of their behavior. 

Languages and mode of address

• The Lexis: the actual words used in the product
• Language features: puns and alliteration 
• Hyperbole: exaggerated features
• Colloquialism
• informal mode of address = formal tone and and complex vocab and writing style
• indirect mode of address = audiences do not expect a direct mode of address 

Audiences

• Target Audience 
• Secondary/Primary Audience
• Positioning 
• Preferred Reading 
• Dominant Ideology 
• Negotiated reading/oppositional reading

Narrative

• Linear/Non-Linear 
• Binary Oppositions
• Equilibrium/Disequilibrium 
• Multi-strand
• Barthes codes

Steve Neal Genre Theory 

• Genres with a set of codes and conventions are an advantage to the media institutions that produce them as they have a predetermined audience and are therefore easy to market thus reducing the economic risks
• In your exam you must discuss the connotation, use of the codes and how this is used for the audience to deconstruct the genre

Roland Barthes Semiotics Theory

• Audience interpretation is influenced by by other forces - culture and context 
• Barthes introduced the idea that signs can function at the level of denotation (literal meaning) and connotation (the meaning)
• Signs take on the ideology of a specific theory, and their meanings become accepted and appear natural through repetition over theory

Other Key Terms 

• Hegemony 
• ideology 
• Intertextuality 
• Connotation 
• Denotation 
• Polysemy