Associated Resources
Analyse Rambo Poster: Media Language.doc
The Four Media Studies Key Concepts
These four ideas or concepts are at the core of your course and will, eventually, come to be at the core of all the many analyses and discussions of media texts you carry out. You’ll be covering each one in increasing detail over the next two years of your course but, for the next few lessons, there’ll be just a brief introduction.
MEDIA LANGUAGES
Any media product, such as an MP3 file, a CD, a DVD, magazine, newspaper or a film, is called a media ‘text’. The individual parts that make up these media texts are, even if they have no words, often referred to as media language. This ‘language’ can be images (moving or still) or words – or anything else that makes meaning for its particular ‘target audience’.
- If you break down any media text you will find it is made up from a whole series of parts that work both individually and together to create the overall meaning. Each of these parts are, in media terminology, called signs and the signs combine to create what is called a ‘code’.
- So, if you look at the photographic model’s face to the right, even details such as the skin qualities and tone can be thought of one of the many individual ‘signs’ that work together to make up the whole image; the girl’s eyes...
