SELECT AN EDITION:
9th EDITION   10th EDITION   11th EDITION
A First Look at Communication Theory Reveal main menu
 

The screen on this device is not wide enough to display Theory Resources. Try rotating the device to landscape orientation to see if more options become available.

Resources available to all users:

  • Text Comparison—theories covered in A First Look and ten other textbooks
  • Theory Overview—abstract of each chapter
  • Self-Help Quizzes—for student preparation
  • Chapter Outlines
  • Key Names—important names and terms in each chapter
  • Conversation Videos—interviews with theorists
  • Application Logs—student application of theories
  • Essay Questions—for student prepatation
  • Suggested Movie Clips—tie-in movie scenese to theories
  • Links—web resources related to each chapter
  • Primary Sources—for each theory with full chapter coverage
  • Further Resources—bibliographic and other suggestions
  • Changes—for each theory, since the previous edition
  • Theory Archive—PDF copies from the last edition in which a theory appeared

Resources available only to registered instructors who are logged in:

  • Discussion Suggestions
  • Exercises & Activities
  • PowerPoint® presentations you can use
  • Short Answer Quizzes—suggested questions and answers

Information for Instructors. Read more


CHANGE TO: View by Type

Resources
by Theory

 VIEW BY THEORY HOME
For the full list of resources
see View by Type

Instructors can get additional
resources. Read more





CONVERSATION VIDEOS



SUGGESTED MOVIE CLIPS





TEXT COMPARISON

Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions are
available in Resources by
Type. See list

New to Theory Resources?
Find out more in this
short video overview (3:01).


Semiotics
Roland Barthes

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA AND CULTURE

Chapter 26
 Media Ecology
Cultural Studies 
Chapter 26
 Media Ecology
Cultural Studies 

Chapter Outline 9th Edition

  1. Introduction.
    1. The goal of semiotics is interpreting both verbal and nonverbal signs.
    2. Roland Barthes held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France.
    3. In Mythologies, he sought to decipher the coltural meaning of visual signs, particolarly those perpetuating dominant social values.
    4. Semiology is concerned with anything that can stand for something else.
    5. Barthes is interested in signs that are seemingly straightforward, but subtly communicate ideological or connotative meaning.
    6. Barthes had an unusual style for an academic and was extremely influential.
  2. Wrestling with signs.
    1. Barthes’ true concern was with connotation—the ideological baggage that signs carry wherever they go.
    2. The structure of signs is key to Barthes’ theory.
    3. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiology to refer to the study of signs.
    4. A sign is the combination of its signifier and signified.
      1. The signifier is the image; the signified is the concept.
      2. In Barthes’ terms, the signifier isn’t the sign of the signified—rather the sign is the combination of signifier and signified, which are united in an inseparable bond.
      3. These distinctions come from Saussure.
      4. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a verbal sign is arbitrary.
      5. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a nonverbal sign is based on affinity and is therefore quasi-arbitrary.
    5. A sign does not stand on its own:  it is part of a system.
      1. A structural analysis of features common to all semiotic systems is called taxonomy.
      2. Barthes believed semiotic systems function the same way despite their apparent diversity.
      3. Significant semiotic systems create myths that affirm the status quo as natural, inevitable, and eternal.
  3. The yellow ribbon transformation: from forgiveness to pride. 
    1. Not all semiological systems are mythic.
    2. Mythic or connotative systems are second-order semiological systems built off of preexisting sign systems.
    3. Within mythic systems, the sign of the first system becomes the signifier of the second.
  4. The making of myth: stripping the sign of its history.
    1. Every ideological sign is the resolt of two interconnected sign systems.
    2. The first system is strictly descriptive as the signifier image and the signified concept combine to produce the denotative sign.
    3. The second system appropriates the sign of the denotative system and makes it the signifier of the connotative system. 
    4. This lateral shift transforms a neutral sign into an ideological tool.
    5. The original denotative sign is not lost, but it is impoverished.
      1. The mythic sign carries the crust of falsity.
      2. The mythic communication is unable to imagine anything alien, novel, or other.
  5. Unmasking the myth of a homogeneous society.
    1. Only those who understand semiotics can detect the hollowness of connotative signs.
    2. Mythic signs don’t explain, defend, or raise questions.
    3. Mythic signs always reinforce dominant coltural values.
    4. They naturalize the current order of things.
  6. The semiotics of mass communication: “I’d like to be like Mike.”
    1. Because signs are integral to mass communication, Barthes’ semiotic analysis has become an essential media theory.
    2. Kyong Kim argues that the mass signification arising in a response to signs is an artificial effect calcolated to achieve something else.
    3. Advertisements on television create layers of connotation that reaffirm the status quo.
  7. Semiotics goes to the movies
    1. More than one hundred years ago when Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was describing a sign as the combination of the signifier and signified, American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was independently developing his own model of how signs work.
    2. Peirce included nonverbal signs in his semiotic theorizing right from the start.
      1. Symbolic signs show no resemblance to the objects they reference.
      2. Iconic signs have a perceived resemblance with the objects they portray.
      3. Indexical signs are directly connected with their referents spatially, temporally, or by cause-and-effect.
  8. Critique: do mythic signs always reaffirm the status quo?
    1. There is question over whether the theory has a community of agreement—some students of signification disagree with Barthes’ view that all connotative systems uphold the values of the dominant class.
    2. Scholars such as Anne Norton and Douglass Kellner expand Barthes’ semiotic approach to argue that signs can subvert the status quo or exemplify a countercoltural connotative system.
    3. Barthes’ semiotic approach to imagery remains a core theoretical perspective for communication scholars, particolarly those who emphasize media and colture.

CHANGE TO: View by Type

Resources
by Theory

 THEORY HOME
For the full list of resources
see View by Type

Instructors can get additional
resources. Read more





VIDEOS



MOVIE CLIPS





TEXT COMPARE

Archived chapters (PDF)
from previous editions
are available in
Resources by Type.
See list

New to Theory
Resources?
Find out more in this short
video overview (3:01).


Semiotics
Roland Barthes

MASS COMMUNICATION: MEDIA AND CULTURE

Chapter 26
 Media Ecology
Cultural Studies 
Chapter 26
 Media Ecology
Cultural Studies 

Chapter Outline 9th Edition

  1. Introduction.
    1. The goal of semiotics is interpreting both verbal and nonverbal signs.
    2. Roland Barthes held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France.
    3. In Mythologies, he sought to decipher the coltural meaning of visual signs, particolarly those perpetuating dominant social values.
    4. Semiology is concerned with anything that can stand for something else.
    5. Barthes is interested in signs that are seemingly straightforward, but subtly communicate ideological or connotative meaning.
    6. Barthes had an unusual style for an academic and was extremely influential.
  2. Wrestling with signs.
    1. Barthes’ true concern was with connotation—the ideological baggage that signs carry wherever they go.
    2. The structure of signs is key to Barthes’ theory.
    3. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiology to refer to the study of signs.
    4. A sign is the combination of its signifier and signified.
      1. The signifier is the image; the signified is the concept.
      2. In Barthes’ terms, the signifier isn’t the sign of the signified—rather the sign is the combination of signifier and signified, which are united in an inseparable bond.
      3. These distinctions come from Saussure.
      4. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a verbal sign is arbitrary.
      5. The relationship between the signifier and the signified in a nonverbal sign is based on affinity and is therefore quasi-arbitrary.
    5. A sign does not stand on its own:  it is part of a system.
      1. A structural analysis of features common to all semiotic systems is called taxonomy.
      2. Barthes believed semiotic systems function the same way despite their apparent diversity.
      3. Significant semiotic systems create myths that affirm the status quo as natural, inevitable, and eternal.
  3. The yellow ribbon transformation: from forgiveness to pride. 
    1. Not all semiological systems are mythic.
    2. Mythic or connotative systems are second-order semiological systems built off of preexisting sign systems.
    3. Within mythic systems, the sign of the first system becomes the signifier of the second.
  4. The making of myth: stripping the sign of its history.
    1. Every ideological sign is the resolt of two interconnected sign systems.
    2. The first system is strictly descriptive as the signifier image and the signified concept combine to produce the denotative sign.
    3. The second system appropriates the sign of the denotative system and makes it the signifier of the connotative system. 
    4. This lateral shift transforms a neutral sign into an ideological tool.
    5. The original denotative sign is not lost, but it is impoverished.
      1. The mythic sign carries the crust of falsity.
      2. The mythic communication is unable to imagine anything alien, novel, or other.
  5. Unmasking the myth of a homogeneous society.
    1. Only those who understand semiotics can detect the hollowness of connotative signs.
    2. Mythic signs don’t explain, defend, or raise questions.
    3. Mythic signs always reinforce dominant coltural values.
    4. They naturalize the current order of things.
  6. The semiotics of mass communication: “I’d like to be like Mike.”
    1. Because signs are integral to mass communication, Barthes’ semiotic analysis has become an essential media theory.
    2. Kyong Kim argues that the mass signification arising in a response to signs is an artificial effect calcolated to achieve something else.
    3. Advertisements on television create layers of connotation that reaffirm the status quo.
  7. Semiotics goes to the movies
    1. More than one hundred years ago when Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure was describing a sign as the combination of the signifier and signified, American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was independently developing his own model of how signs work.
    2. Peirce included nonverbal signs in his semiotic theorizing right from the start.
      1. Symbolic signs show no resemblance to the objects they reference.
      2. Iconic signs have a perceived resemblance with the objects they portray.
      3. Indexical signs are directly connected with their referents spatially, temporally, or by cause-and-effect.
  8. Critique: do mythic signs always reaffirm the status quo?
    1. There is question over whether the theory has a community of agreement—some students of signification disagree with Barthes’ view that all connotative systems uphold the values of the dominant class.
    2. Scholars such as Anne Norton and Douglass Kellner expand Barthes’ semiotic approach to argue that signs can subvert the status quo or exemplify a countercoltural connotative system.
    3. Barthes’ semiotic approach to imagery remains a core theoretical perspective for communication scholars, particolarly those who emphasize media and colture.

 
 
 
Home  McGraw-Hill—How to get copies of A First Look  Information for Instructors  Meet the Authors
Compare Comm Theory Texts  Viewing Hints & Troubleshooting 
Contact Us  Instructor Login 
 
 

Copyright © Em Griffin 2025 | Web design by Graphic Impact