Media Meanings Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Media Meanings - Essay Example Whether we care to admit it or not, there is a great deal of truth behind the statement that we are what the media tells us we are. â€Å"Much of what we share, and what we know, and even what we treasure, is carried to us each second in a plasma of electrons, pixels and ink, underwritten by multinational advertising agencies dedicated to attracting our attention for entirely nonaltruistic reasons† (Twitchell 468). This is achieved to great extent through the process of semiotics. Essentially, ‘semiotics’ is a term used to indicate the process of sign analysis in a given culture for indications of meaning at varying levels. â€Å"Semiology therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification† (Barthes, 19 64). Thus, it refers to any combination of contextual clues, such as language, image, color, shape, expression or placement, that are combined together in order to communicate a specific sense of meaning to a particular cultural group. Understanding the language of semiotics and myth, advertisements such as Intel’s advertisement for its Duo Core 2 processor can be analyzed for their more subtle communicative effects. Primary elements included in any discussion of semiotics include signifiers, signified and sign. The sign is the end product created through the combined forces of the signifier and the signified. The signifier can be described as â€Å"the form which the sign takes† (Chandler, 2006). This is different from the signified, which refers to â€Å"the concept it [the signifier] represents† (Chandler, 2006). Basically, the signifier is the most basic idea – the physical presence of a flower. The