The week five lectorial focused on ‘text’ analysis within the media realm. ‘Texts’ are not always written, such as books or newspapers, but every form of communication (vehicles for meaning, as was discussed in the lectorial) such as TV shows, films, advertisements in magazines and billboards. All of these texts have a purpose to communicate a message to the audience, who then ‘decode’ this message by understanding and recognising common ‘signs’ and codes (e.g. popular tropes), before ultimately responding to and understanding the message.
The process seems complicated, but can happen in a matter of seconds. Whenever we walk down the street, we are communicating with the messages all around us. We see the advertisement on the bus stop for a perfume, the image of a bottle surrounded by red rose petals, and we know that roses, especially red roses, are socially understood to mean romance (roses are the sign/signifier). We as the audience then interpret this to mean that this bottle of perfume evokes romance, that it is a scent that could be worn on a candle-lit date in Paris. The simple image of the red rose petals has certain culturally agreed upon qualities associated with it (the signified being those qualities) – romance, love, beauty, passion. And all this decoding is being done by us every second. It’s fascinating.
Another interesting thing we touched on in the lecture was that while we culturally may understand a signifier to mean one thing, around the world these meanings can be vastly different. It got me thinking a lot about how signifiers differ so greatly from culture to culture. An example of this would be the colour red once again – in Western culture this can mean love, passion & anger, but in some Asian cultures red is considered a ‘lucky’ colour, and it’s common for Chinese brides to wear red wedding dresses to bestow luck and happiness upon their marriages, and it is considered culturally offensive and ‘off-limits’ to wear red at a funeral. Conversely, in South Africa red is a colour of mourning.
Why are the meanings so very different? Is it simply that different countries have formed their own meanings for signs in isolation from common Western notions of colours and objects? It also begs the question; how do cultures come to a consensus on what something signifies? If you go to England, the United States or Australia, the meanings for things are more often than not the same, yet these three countries all hold the same or similar meanings for signs. Is it simply because Australia and the USA were British colonies and have always had a similar way of life and customs, or does it come down to something else? These differences (and similarities) may seem like quite a minute thing to fuss over, but when operating in the media world can actually be quite significant. If you are producing something for an international audience – which, with the perceived ‘downsizing’ of our world through the internet, is more than likely – then knowing that certain codes or ‘signs’ will differ and being aware of this when producing texts is vital.
Some interesting food for thought.
