How I Would Prepare for this Assignment
Keep in mind, there are no right and wrong answers with this test. I do not have a sheet saying that you must give specific answers. What I’m looking for is your ability to analyze, unpack and give an appraisal of how a piece of advertising works.

Before the Test:
-First off, do the readings, particularly the week three and four readings. If you’ve done them properly, this assignment will make a lot more sense. If you haven’t done them, I’d estimate your chance of failing goes up 50%.
-If you’re nervous about it, look at the test questions and apply them to some ads. Talk it over with other people, talk about advertising and think about what the ads are doing.
-Familiarize yourself with the key concepts. Again, this involves doing the readings and looking at the definitions I’ve put up online.
-Remember that what I’m looking for is your ability to think critically and analyze a piece of advertising. As long as I can see that you can look at an ad and see that it's doing more than simply presenting you with a product, you’ll probably pass.

Once You Get The Test Paper and See the Example:
(1) Look for the Signs. Look at everything in the ad and take note of everything you can see. If it was me, I’d bring in some note paper and write it down. This isn’t tricky – just look at the ad and write everything you see.
(2) Think about the ‘discourses’ involved. If you find the term confusing, look at this way: What themes do you see?
(3) Think about how those themes tie the signs together to create a ‘myth’ or story.
(4) Think about what that story says about the world – what is it trying to make you think, whose interests is it working for? What is it implying is good or bad? With that in mind, you should be able to pick the ideologies behind it.

Here's some examples:

First Assignment Questions

Question One: 5 Points
How could hegemony be said to be operating in this text In answering, suggest the ideologies or dominant interests whose value system underpins the text?

The question is asking you to locate and discuss how the concept of hegemony is at work within the text and what ideology/ideologies this hegemony is related to. As such, you need to relate your response to both of these concepts. In order to answer this question, consider:

-What specific beliefs and ideas are presented in the text?
-How does the text construct a particular perspective, viewpoint or belief on the issue that is being ‘correct’ or ‘dominant’?
-How does the text convince you to accept a particular viewpoint or perspective as being the correct one?


Question Two: 4 Points
Identify the key discourses at work in this text.

This question is asking you to identify what particular discourses are used within the text, and thus which ideologies are present and at work within the text. As such, consider:

-What language and imagery is used within the text? Is this language or imagery specific to a particular genre/institution/media form?
-How do these discourses work to create stories and ideals that underpin the dominant ideologies presented within the text?

Question Three: 6 Points
Offer preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings of this text.

For this question, you need to provide a reading of each type. Consider:

-How can I read this text in a way that accepts both the message and the belief supporting it?
-How can I read this text in a way that, although it might reject the message, still accepts the beliefs and social structures that gave rise to it?
-How can I read this text in a way that rejects both the beliefs inherent to the text and the social structure that gave rise to them?

Examples for First Assignment

Here are some examples for the first assignment, with some comments from Roland Barthes.

Barthes talks about ideology as supported by ‘myths’ – ideas that teach us to interpret the world in a particular way. He says such ‘myths’ are a “prohibition for man against inventing himself.” By that he means that they provide a sort of framework through which we understand the world. What’s he’s interested in is who that framework benefits and how we not only accept it, but accept it without even thinking about it.

These examples all from his book Mythologies.

Example One:
“I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness)…"
-Barthes



Example Two:

“Such is the world of Elle: women there are always a homogenous species, an established body jealous of its privileges, still more enamored of the burdens that go with them. …the feminine world of Elle, a world without men, but entirely constituted by the gaze of man…. Love, work, write, be business women or women of letters ,but always remember that man exists, and that you are not made like him; your order is free on the condition that it depends on his…” -Barthes










This is an image from a fashion magazine from the late 1920s. Note the car in the background.

This is another article from a French fashion magazine. Note both the similarity of all the models and the fact they're all doing housework.

This comes from a later edition of Petit Echo de la Mode. A good way of figuring out the ideology behind something like this is to think of what 'story' the image is attempting to impart. Note the inclusion of the boat and the varied ages of the women in the picture.





What do all these images have in common?
What signs they're all using?
What are they trying to sell?
Who benefits from those sales?


Example Three:
Here's some more contemporary examples.


These are less obviously trying to sell clothes. What is the point of magazines like this? What are they trying to sell and to whom?

Note the mass of text on the cover, surrounding the model. If we take each of these as signs, connecting to each other, what meanings is this cover trying to convey? Those meanings are obviously trying to convince you to buy something, but what exactly?

There's less text on the cover, but this magazine definitely provides an image of 'right' and 'wrong'. Again, what is it trying to sell and to whom? And how is it doing that?

This is a French edition of Marie Claire. Even without being able to read the text, is it possible to guess the meanings the cover is trying to convey and identify which audience its aiming at? It's obviously not trying to sell clothes.

In the week three reading there's an overview of Louis Althusser's notion of 'interpellation'. The reading defines this as:

"Individuals are interpellated (have social identities conferred on them) through ideological state apparatuses from which people gain their sense of identity as well as their understanding of reality."

How can we apply that idea to these images?


Example Four:

The last images were all covers from magazines aimed at women. Playboy is obviously aimed at men - yet its cover shares one basic simularity with the above images. Why is a magazine aimed at men, ostensibly a totally different audience, using the same central sign as magazines aimed at women?











Think about those things in relation to the questions for the first assignment and answer the following:

(1) What 'myths' or ideas are these magazines trying to sell you? In other words, why would you want one of these magazines?
(2) Who benefits from you buying these magazines?
(3) What do you think of these magazine covers? Are there parts you agree with? Are there parts you disagree with?

Definitions of Semiotics, Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony

Definitions of Semiotics, Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony

Here's some basic definitions of the major terms we've used over the first few weeks of the course.


Semiotics and Language
Really Basic Definition:
Semiotics is the idea that we communicate through a system of signs. Those signs can be words, pictures, sounds etc etc. They take on meaning by connecting to each other.

“Language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated and the medium through which conceptions of ‘truth’, ‘order’, and ‘reality’ become established.”
-Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin



Discourse
Really Basic Definition:
Discourse describes the ‘environment’ in which words, pictures, objects and images get used. All communication takes place within discursive environments.

"Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity… we will say for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation…”
-Michel Foucault


Ideology
Really Basic Definition:
The word ‘ideology’ describes the belief systems through which we understand the world.

“The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx’s Capital: “they do not know it, but they are doing it.”
“…reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification.”
-Slavoj Zizek

“In ideology ‘men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form’”.
-Louis Althusser

Hegemony
Really Basic Definition: Hegemony describes the way belief systems are subtly made to benefit certain social groups.

“Originally, hegemony referred to the way that one nation could exert ideological and social, rather than military or coercive, power over another. However, cultural theorists tend to use the term to describe the process by which a dominant class wins the willing consent of the subordinate classes to the system that ensures their subordination.”
-John Fiske

Week 3: Discourse, Ideology and Hegemony Examples

Here's some examples of media exhibiting clear signs of discourse, ideology and hegemony.

Last week we learned that Saussure says communication takes place through 'signs'. A sign is constructed of two parts:

(1) A signifier, which is a word, object, image or sound.
(2) A signified, which is the concept that signifier triggers off.

A signifier can trigger off multiple concepts. It will also change its meaning depending on the discourse in which it appears. Here's a couple of examples:


Example One:
This is the original trailer for the 1986 film Top Gun, one of the great examples of mid-eighties Cold War propaganda:



Example Two:



The Cultural Studies academic Stuart Hall says there's a couple of basic questions to ask yourself when trying to decipher work like this:

(1) Within these texts, which elements are operating as signifiers and what concepts - signifieds - are they evoking? In other words, what images, sounds or words are being presented and what meaning do you think they're trying to impart?

(2) Now consider the ideology of behind this film. What is this film trying to make you think? Who benefits from making you think in that way?


Now let's consider some examples that high light the importance of 'discourse'.

Foucault says that nothing is meaningful except within discourse. Let's consider an example in which the images from Top Gun are put into a different discourse.



What has this text done that changes the meaning of the film? A good way to identify this is to think about the different discursive understandings it employes in relation to gender, sexuality, the military and popular film.