Nicolai chose a male role model known for his intelligence and skills in programming who has made a large fortune through his business. Bill Gates is known world wide and has a positive impact through charities and financial support for 3rd world countries. This interests people and draws them in to the magazine. Nicolai’s work contradicts the stereotypical style of Boys’ Life magazine of an outdoor, adventurous lifestyle.
Roland Barthes: French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician.
C. S. Pierce: American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist who is sometimes known as “the father of pragmatism”
Ferdinand de Saussure: Swiss linguist and semiotician. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiology in the 20th century.
Semiotics: The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
Sign: An object or action used to signify something.
Signifier: a sign’s physical form (such as a sound, printed word, or image) as distinct from its meaning. (Saussure)
Signified: the meaning or idea expressed by a sign, as distinct from the physical form in which it is expressed. (Saussure)
an iconic sign: Always bear some resemblance to their referent ie. a photo
an indexical sign: Signs where the signifier is caused by the signified, e.g., smoke signifies fire
a symbolic sign: Represents / stands for something.
Code: Letters / Symbols
Dominant Signifier: Main sign
Anchorage: Meaning of an sign
Paradigm: a group of similar things
Syntagm: A sign within a sequence, changing it’s meaning
Signifcation: To have meaning
Denotation: The object (Barthes)
Connotation: idea / meaning of the object
Myth: A story that is believed but had no evidence of truth
Dominant Ideology,
A radical text: Challenges society
A reactionary text: supports society
Ideology – a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
