First Lesson

September 3rd 2015

1st lesson

Semiology : The study of signs. 

In the first lesson of AS media studies we focused on Semiology, which is the study of signs. We discussed how a sign can be anything that's meaning is something other than itself. We learnt how signs are often culturally specific, for example, in the western world, a thumbs up is a sign that something is good and okay. However, in china and some other east Asian continents a thumb shown in public is a sign of disrespect and is a rude gesture. This means that the sign is Polysemic, which means they can have more than one meaning. 

We also discussed the denotation and connotation of signs. A denotation being the physical sign that is shows and the connotation being the message that is taken from a sign. 

We learnt how there are 3 types of signs:

1. Symbolic - which is a sign that does not look like what they signify. For example, a toxic sign does not look like toxic material, therefore it is a symbolic sign. 
2. Iconic - these are signs that resemble what they look like and what they symbolise. An example of an Iconic sign would be photographs, cartoons or drawings of certain objects.
3. Indexical - these are signs that act as evidence that something else has previously occurred, for example smoke is indexical of fire, footprints is indexical to the fact that someone has been walking.