How to set about analysing a text
- A 'text' (such as a printed advertisement, an item of furniture, a set of clothes, an interior, a painting, a beer can, an animated cartoon or a web
site) is in itself a complex sign containing other signs.
First task: Identify the signs within the text and the codes within which these signs have meaning (e.g. 'textual codes' such as camerawork; codes
relating to sub-group preoccupations or 'social codes' such as body language).
Second task: Within these codes you need to identify paradigm sets (such as in the case of camerawork shallow depth of field and other related
DofF effects, cropped image and other framing devices, panning, long shot, mid shot, close up, in the case of a sub-group preoccupation it may
be dress code or a particular language used).
Third task: To identify the structural relationships between the various signifiers (syntagms) Syntagmatic relations are possibilities of combination.
You could point to how a written text is used to ‘anchor’ a photograph’s meaning or the way polari (gay slang) was interwoven into British comedy
routines during the 1960s.
Forth task: To discuss the ideological functions of the signs in the text and of the text as a whole. For example a text may presume a certain set
of class relationships and individual signs may either reinforce these or operate as potential levers for change . (As in the case of the use of polari)
Fifth task: Determine what sort of world view the text constructs and how it does so?
Finally: What assumptions does the text make about its readers?
- By working your way through to the readers (social class etc.) you can then embed the analysis into the Shannon and Weaver Communication
model.
- This is a useful ploy if you are to demonstrate application of differing research methodologies
