For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module,
see the
general criteria.
Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment:
The most relevant lecture for this topic is
Lecture 10: The Parallax View (Pakula 1974).
You will need to apply (and demonstrate your understanding of)
key semiotic concepts including (most importantly here) paradigm and syntagm.
Your primary concern is likely to be with paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis.
Many interesting questions could
be pursued but you need to decide what is feasible for you within your word limit. Possible questions
include the following. How is meaning generated in this
sequence? What is the relation between the images and the words and/or between the visuals and the sound-track?
How does the relation between the images and the words change?
Note that many images are used more than once, sometimes in versions that are
differently cropped or with a colour filter or flipped over: how does this contribute to the shaping of meaning?
What paradigms can the images usefully be grouped into?
Some images appear in in close proximity more than once: can you spot any patterns?
Show how the whole sequence could be broken up into smaller syntagms. What is the contribution of the
cutting-rate? Since the sequence is a series of photographic stills (including some photographs of
paintings), include in your reading the semiotics of photography and of art. This is an assignment for which the
inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is likely to be an advantage: these should be
incorporated electronically rather than literally cut-and-pasted and should be labelled 'Figure 1...'
(etc.). Only some of the books on the suggested reading are explicitly semiotic and you may need to recast
their insights within a semiotic framework.
The following links offer essential resources (use the usual password). These are from a working
research archive set up by me and Nigel Orrillard: you are asked not to make these resources
available to anyone else and to use them purely for purposes of study within this module.
Some suggested reading
- Akeret, Robert U. (2000)
Photolanguage: How Photos Reveal the Fascinating Stories of Our Lives and Relationships. New York: Norton (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
- Alvarado, Manuel, Edward Buscombe & Richard Collins (Eds) (2001)
Representation and Photography: A Screen Education Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave
- Becker, H S (Ed.) (1981)
Exploring Society Photographically.
Chicago: Chicago University Press (not explicitly semiotic)
- Bignell, Jonathan (1997)
Media Semiotics: An Introduction.
Manchester: Manchester University Press [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- Bordwell, David & Kristin Thompson (1993)
Film Art: An Introduction.
New York: McGraw-Hill (not explicitly semiotic)
- Branigan, Edward (1992)
Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge (not explicitly semiotic)
- Brown, Jared (2005)
Alan J Pakula: His Films and His Life. New York: Back Stage (not semiotic but useful background material)
- Chalfen, R (1987)
Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling Green State University Popular Press
- Chandler, Daniel (1994) 'The "Grammar" of Television and Film'
[WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html
- Chandler, Daniel (1998a) 'Paradigms and Syntagms'. In Semiotics for Beginners.
[WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/sem03.html
- Chandler, Daniel (1994) 'Paradigmatic Analysis', in Semiotics for Beginners. [WWW document]
URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/sem04.html
- Chandler, Daniel (1994) 'Syntagmatic Analysis', in Semiotics for Beginners. [WWW document]
URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html
- Chandler, Daniel (1998b) 'DIY Semiotic Analysis'. In Semiotics for
Beginners. [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/sem12.html
- Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edn.). London: Routledge
- Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011)
Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Clarke, Graham (1997)
The Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press;
extract 'How Do We Read a Photograph?' [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/MC10220/reading_photos.html (not explicitly semiotic)
- Elkins, James (1998)
On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (not explicitly semiotic)
- Fairservice, Don (2001)
Film Editing: History, Theory and Practice. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, pp. 5-37 (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
- Feldges, Benedikt (2007)
American Icons: The Genesis of a National Visual Language. London: Routledge (not explicitly semiotic)
- Fiske, John & John Hartley (1978)
Reading Television. London: Methuen
- Goldberg, Vicki (1991)
The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives. New York: Abbeville Press (not explicitly semiotic)
- Gombrich, Ernst H, Julian Hochberg & Max Black (1972)
Art, Perception and Reality.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Gombrich, Ernst H (1977)
Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon
- Gombrich, Ernst H (1982)
The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon
- Goodman, Nelson (1968)
Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. London: Oxford University Press
- Hecker, Sidney & David W. Stewart (Eds) (1988)
Nonverbal Communication in Advertising. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books/D C Heath (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
- Hirsch, J (1981)
Family Photographs: Content, Meaning and Effect. New York: Oxford University Press (not explicitly semiotic)
- Hocks, Mary E. & Michelle R. Kendrick (Eds) (2003)
Eloquent Images: Word and Image in the Age of New Media. Cambridge, M: MIT Press (not explictly semiotic but useful)
- King, Graham (1984)
"Say Cheese!" Looking at Snapshots in a New Way.
New York: Dodd, Mead (not explicitly semiotic)
- Kress, Gunther & Theo Van Leeuwen (1996)
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
- Messaris, Paul (1994)
Visual 'Literacy': Image, Mind, and Reality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
- Messaris, Paul (1997)
Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Mitchell, W J T (1994)
Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Monaco, James (1981)
How to Read a Film. New York: Oxford
University Press (Part III, 'The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax')
- Newton, Julianne H (2001)
The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum (not explicitly semiotic)
- Nichols, Bill (1981)
Ideology and the Image. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press (Chapters 1 & 2)
- Olson, Lester C., Cara A. Finnegan & Diane S. Hope (Eds) (2008)
Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage [in press at the time of writing]
- O'Toole, Michael (1994)
The Language of Displayed Art. London: Leicester University Press
- Rudisill, Richard (1982) 'On Reading Photographs',
Journal of American Culture 5(3)
- Saint-Martin, Fernande (1990)
Semiotics of Visual Language. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
- Sanders, Noel (1988) 'Angles on the Image'. In Gunther Kress (Ed.)
Communication and Culture. Kensington, NSW: New South Wales
University Press, pp. 131-56
- Scott, Clive (1999)
The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. London: Reaktion
- Sonesson, Göran (1993)
Pictorial Semiotics [WWW document] URL
http://www.arthist.lu.se/kultsem/sonesson/pict_sem_1.html
- Spence, Jo & Patricia Holland (Eds) (1991)
Family Snaps: The Meanings of Domestic Photography. London: Virago (not explicitly semiotic)
- Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne & Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (1992)
New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. London: Routledge
- States, Bert O. (1988)
The Rhetoric of Dreams. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (not explicitly semiotic)
- Stephens, Mitchell (1998)
The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word. New York: Oxford University Press (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
- Stimson, Blake (2006)
The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation. Cambridge, MA: MIT (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
- Worth, Sol (1981)
Studying Visual Communication [WWW document] URL
http://www.academia.edu/2846340/Studying_visual_communication
- Ziller, Robert (1990)
Photographing the Self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage (not explicitly semiotic)
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!