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Preliminary Exercise 1: Barthes' Theory of Denotative and Connotative Signs Semiotic Analysis Table

   Semiotics, or semiology is how we study different signs in our culture. Semiotics can be used to help identify what a media text is saying. Semiology can be used for movies, books, and even photographs. Semiotics also refers to the process of communicating through media. The process of semiotics begins when the sender, or messenger encodes the message through the media text selected. Next, the receiver then decodes the message from the media text. Now, who was one of the pioneers of this form of analysis? The person we are talking about in particular is Roland Barthes, as well as is theory of semiotics.

  Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist who believed that there was more than one way to analyze code. Barthes also believed that a text no matter what genre, has various meanings. Furthermore, he studied the relationship between connotation and denotation. If a meaning is denotative, then it's the literal meaning. For example, green grass indicates that the grass has a green color. However, a connotative meaning shows the meaning that is evoked. For example, a red rose is a perfect example of a sign that has many connotative meanings. A red rose can symbolize things such as romance and perfection. Another belief Barthes had was that anything in culture has a meaning. Whether it was old tennis shoes, a broken door, or a fancy car...they all have meanings.



  In the poster above, I was assigned to pick three objects and find their denotative and connotative meanings using Barthes' Theory of Semiotics. I was working with a teammate, and we decided to pick a red rose, black cat, and bald eagle for our assignment. We both realized that there were more connotative meanings than denotative meanings. We then came to realize that a denotative is only going to have one meaning because it is the actual meaning, rather than beliefs that were made for these signs. If there is one thing, I can say I learned from this assignment...I learned that simple signs such as air could allow people to evoke various emotions.
  

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