Bayleys

Link your discussion to at least one of the following (as is relevant to your chosen media text and your discussion):

The portrayal of diversity in the media (for example: does the text reflect diversity in its content and/or is it a true reflection/snippet of ‘real’ society out there?)

The media plays an important role in our everyday life; they affect us through their different functions and occupy a significant part for most people. Broadly speaking, the transformations in media world are so great this led to many academic researches by applying different approaches; empirical, conceptual, etc. Semiology as a qualitative method of research was successfully transferred to media studies by researchers who needed more approaches to explain media phenomena. There is a need to study and analyse those media images semiologically in order to understand how those signs work within the meanings behind them. How is nonverbal communication open to interpretations through connotative meanings? The aim of this paper is to describe and explain how semiology is used in media analytical qualitative studies by analysing an advert from a newspaper.

Media studies need a new spirit like the semiological method to go beyond the text or the image which is open to an infinite number of interpretations. When applying the semiological method to analyse media within its messages whether verbal or nonverbal in the case of the image, Roland Barthes suggests the sign as a combination of a signifier and a signified. Accordingly, connotation is not always a means to innovate meanings because it communicates and evokes ideas as in the case of the different semiotic modes for communication. Barthes works show new semiotics doctrine that allowed analyzing the signs system in media to prove how even nonverbal communications give connotative meanings.

There is an infinite chain of messages especially in the form of visual image. Barthes suggested that’ the denotative and connotative’...