“Analysing Genderin Media Texts”

or, “Welcome to Media Studies . . .”By, Gill

Standard Critical Approaches• Content Analysis• Semiotics• Ideological Critique

Additional Approaches . . .• Discourse Analysis/Theory• Social Science Empirical Data• Postmodernism• Post-colonialism• Queer Theory

Approach: Content Analysis

• Quantitative (counting!) technique measuring specific frequency of various occurrences

• Produces raw data

Approach: Semiotics

Sign = Signifier + Signified

Signifier = the word or speech sound (rain)

Signified = mental concept (the concept of water droplets falling from the sky)

Semiotics: Types of Signs

IconicIndexicalSymbolic

Semiotics: Levels of SignificationDenotation = Literal Meaning

(1st level of signification) -- that ring is literally compressed carbon encased in platinum.

Connotation = Cultural Meaning (2nd level of signification) – that ring represents love, engagement, commitment

Semiotics: Culture Bound

• Signs are arbitrary cultural contructions

• Myth = transformation of historical into natural

Semiotics: How Ads Work

Ads construct myths about who we are and who we aspire to become

Interpellation = consumers are in the subject position and are “hailed” by the ad

Ask yourself “Who does this ad think I am?”

Approach: Ideological Critique

Ideology = a system of ideas and ideals

Ideological Critique looks at cultural power and is focused on how meaning maintains the social order

Ideological Critique: Marx

Social relationships are based on domination and injustice and these are seen as natural and inevitable by those who benefit least.

Ideological Critique: Gramsci

Hegemony = process through which a group is able to claim, through consent, leadership or power throughout a society – it is not domination.

Ideological Critique: Gramsci

Articulation = non-determinist approach (just because you’re in the military, doesn’t mean you’re politically conservative)

Discursive Phenomenon = ideology is fragmented and contradictory and in flux

Constructed Subjects = ideology creates new identities for us to occupy

Approach: Discourse Analysis

Discourse = all forms of talk and textsDiscourse analysis interested in texts themselves,

rather than seeing texts as a way of “getting at” some reality behind the discourse

Approach: Discourse Analysis(Social Psychology )

Four Main Themes:1.Concern with discourse itself2.View of language as constructive and

constructed3.Emphasis upon discourse as a form of action4.Conviction in the rhetorical organization of

discourse (all language is persuasive)

Approach: Discourse Analysis(Michel Foucault)• Power is panoptic• Ideology is a power/knowledge

nexus (representations aren’t true or false, they just show power relations)

• Disciplinary Power (self-monitoring and self-surveillance)

• Gender is a discipline and is constructed

Postmoderism

• Artistic movement• Cultural trend (mix of

high/low culture, irony)

• Historical epoch (time period since the 1960s)

• Epistemological crisis (there is no universal knowing)

Postcolonialism

Tied to political reform, nation building, global economics, marginalization – refuses a binary reading of texts.

Queer Theory

Questions the heteronormative order as “natural” – points out complexity in sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Opposes a binary reading of sexuality.