ABSTRACT
This chapter considers semiotics/semiology as an approach to media language and media products as texts for analysis. It offers a detailed guide suitable for someone with little or no knowledge of the semiotic approach and is illustrated with examples from a range of media products from iconic album covers to television advertisements. The chapter includes work on the composition of signs and their organisation within codes, the operation of signs as elements within syntagms and paradigms and the different levels at which signs can have significance (denotation, connotation, myth, ideology). It also explores C. S. Peirce’s ideas about sign categories (icon, index and symbol) but all in the context of finding material that aids analysis.
