Language Theory

• Texts communicate their meanings through a process of signification.
• Order of signification: Denotation, Connotation, Myth, Ideology.
• Constructed meanings can come to seem self evident, achieveing myth status through a process of natrualisation.

• Genres may be dominated by repetition, but are also marked by difference, variation and change.
• Genres change, develop, and vary, as they borrow from and overlap with on another.
• Genres exist within economic, instittional and industrial contexts. 

• Texts can be understood through examining their underlying structure.
• Meaning is dependent upon pairs of oppositions.
• How these binary oppositions are resolved can have ideological significance.

• In postmodernism culture the boundaries between the `real` world and the world of the media are no longer distinguishable.

• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a momvement from one state of equilibrium to another.
• These two states of equilibrium are seperated by a period of disequilibrium
• Resolution can have ideological significance.

8 distinct character types.

• The Villain
• The Hero
• The Donor
• The Helper
• The Princess
• Her Father
• The Dispatcher
• The False Hero

5 codes that describe the meaning of a text:

• Hermuetic
• Semantic 
• Symbolic
• Proairetic
• Cultural

5 key aspects of music videos construction.

• Thought beats: Seeing the sound
• Narrative and Preformance
• The star image
• Relation of visuals to song
• Technical aspects of the Music video