Assignments: Batch One

You need to choose your first assignment from this list and your second one from the second batch. Click on each title for a reading list and guidelines. Please note that many students throw away marks by not paying close attention to the guidelines. You are very welcome to propose your own assignment topics if you have a particular interest that you would like to pursue, but you must get my written approval at least three weeks before the deadline.

For your assignment deadlines see the department's deadlines page.

• Illustrate and discuss the importance of both social and representational knowledge in making sense of a current advertisement of your own choice in any medium.
• What is 'the intentional fallacy'? Illustrate with examples from different media why it is problematic to equate the meaning of a text with its author's intentions.
• Outline and critically discuss the concept of texts having a 'preferred reading'. Illustrate with examples from different media some of the ways in which you infer preferred readings.
• Outline and discuss the role of both code and context in making sense of pictorial public signs such as roadsigns
• Illustrate and discuss the nature and significance of differences identified by researchers between the 'body language' of males and females in Western culture.
• To what extent does it make sense to refer to 'the language of clothes'?
• Illustrate and discuss denotation and connotation in relation to three photographs of your own choice.
• Illustrate and critically discuss the ways in which connotations of shape and colour can be regarded as gendered.