媒体词汇.doc

Media Glossary Anchorage: The way words anchor the meaning of an image in a particular way. ? Arbitrary signifier: A signifier that communicates meaning through being learned, such as words in a language. They have no resemblance to what they represent, unlike iconic signifiers. ? Audience: Those who use a media text, whether watching, listening or reading. Binary Opposition: The idea that media texts and narratives work through opposing elements in conflict such as Youth and Age or Culture and Nature, a theory developed by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Code: A set of conventions through which we make sense of a media text. Various codes include visual, technical, auditory and written. ? Connotations: The ideas and feelings associated with a text- more personal than denotation. ? Conventions: Expected elements of a media text because of its genre. ? Cut: The usual way of going from one shot to another in a film or television text. Denotation: What is actually shown in an image. ? Determinant: A Media Determinant is a factor that influences the shaping of a media text. These include institutional, audience and social determinants. Diegetic Sound: Sound that arises from what is being screened (Non-diegetic sound includes super-imposed sound sources such as music and voice-overs). ? Effects Theory: A theory of Media Audiences that suggests the media can have a harmful effect on people’s behaviour, especially young people and children. This is a Passive Theory of Audience. ? Film Noir: A genre characterised by low key lighting and lots of shady characters, it started in the 1940s and was based on popular American crime novels with hard-bitten private eyes and dangerous femmes fatale. Frame: The edges or border of an image, where the producer of the image has decided to set its limits. (Note that each single image in a film is also called a frame) Genre: The categories in which we put media texts, such as Western, Comedy, and Science Fiction. Graphic