Semiotics

Semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. It is a sign of the image/code/physical part that stands for a 'thing' or 'idea'. The thing that is the sign (the thing that means something) is called the signifier. What it means is called the signified. Signs that have literal meaning (denotation) and 'value added' meanings- things we associate with them, as individuals are as groups (connotation). The meanings signs are shared by groups of people. The understanding of the non-literal meanings of signs by a group is especially goverend by factors such as:

- Age
- Race
- Religion
- Country of residence 
- Cultural upbringing
- Schooling
- Class
- Our hobbies and habits
- Media experiences

 Meaning has to be shared by a group for the 'code' to work. 'Codes' have different numbers of people who are fluent in that 'code' 'Codes' are used everyday and include language (spoken), written language, moving images (TV, film), behavior at mealtimes, marriages, etc just to name a few. These are often called 'Discourse' in media studies. Signs can relate directly to what they re[resent. (i.e. look like what they stand for- called 'iconic') or they can be an arbitrary shape or sound that a group agrees to and not look anything like the thing they represent (called 'symbolic'). Signs that give or have meaning based on a relationship between the two are called 'indexical' (such as using smoke on warning sign to indicate fire)

OTHER FACTORS IN MEDIA STUDIES RELATED TO SEMIOTICS
Things are not usually black and white- they can be on a graded scale (called a 'Cline'), think about grades or degrees of heat/hotness. Users of the code (such as language or film) make choices relating to what happens next (called 'syntagm') This is like a sentence or the running order of scenes in a film; it's about choosing along the linear. Those same users also make choices at each point from a list of options (called a 'paradigm'), making a choice each time from a list. People associate ideas and things together and this is used to make meaning in the media. It's called contiguity (contiguous). People often use the characteristics of one thing to stand for the whole of it- so Big Ben for the Houses Of Parliament and/or for the UK Government, likewise the White House is used to stand for the president administration, or The Eiffel Tower for Paris. These meanings are called 'mentonymous' (metonsyms).
People's shared experiences, especially in media texts, allow for media text producers to refer to other media texts in their work. This is called 'intertextuality'- The Simpsons often does this when they 'do' The Simpsons versions of- for example- horror films. Theorists argue a lot about the extra meaning ('value added'- connotations). The audience or receivers of texts are often assumed to be/react or read a text a similar way. This similarity is called 'homogenous' (homogeneity). However, audiences are not the same, and they read things in different ways. They can be very diverse. Diversity in audiences is called 'hetrogeneity' (hetrogeneous). There are different types of signs as alluded to above:

- Icon: looks very like the thing being represented (e.g. Photograph)
- Index: suggests something related to the image (e.g. Smoke to indicate fire)
- Symbol: had agreed, shared meaning(s) not related to what the sign itself looks like, and those meanings can be quite 'deep'.

Signs that have more than one meaning are said to be polysemic. Because signs can have more than one meaning, the way they are grouped or places together is important- adding words for example anchors meaning. Images are places together carefully in groups to help the audience makes sense of what they're seeing.