- FHE -- Semiotics
- Cliché and Collusion
- Car Insurance
Family Home Evening -- Semiotics
Context/Description:
I am the FHE Grandma of my ward, and this week for FHE we played an interesting game. Everyone gets a piece of paper and a pencil. Everyone begins by writing any sentence they want at the top of their paper and passing it to the right. The next person reads the sentence, draws a picture, and then folds the paper so that the next person can only see the drawing. The next person then writes a new sentence and folds the paper so the drawing cannot be seen by the next person. You keep passing until everyone in your group has had a chance to do something on everyone’s paper. At the end you pass them around the group so everyone can read them and so that everyone can see the pictures that were drawn.
Analysis:
In this activity it becomes clear that the meaning of an image can change based on who is looking at it. A sentence that started out as “Spiderman swings between the rooftops” for example led to something like “A man is punished by being chained to two buildings from each of his arms.” Meaning changes in images depending on the lens we use to perceive it; that is, we find meaning by associatively tapping into what we already know and what we can already relate to or synthesize.
In semiotics (and the theory of deconstruction) we learn from the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure that signs reside in associations represented in a simple formula:
Sign = Signifier + Signified
If you do not know the meaning behind a sign you cannot interpret it the way it was meant to be. And in general, there are many associations that can be made with one sign. If I say the word “Cat” for example, the kind of cat you think of as opposed to the kind of cat I think of demonstrates the associative nature of a sign.
Lesson Plan Ideas:
The media in many cases relies on focusing their advertising to the most popular associations. The media also creates signs and indoctrinates us through television, the internet, and elsewhere with how those signs are to be read. Most children know, for example, that when they see the great “M” arch that it is McDonald’s. Some signs become universal.
In a world that hinges on these kinds of media logos, icons, and signs it is important that students understand the nature of semiotics. But deconstruction and analyzing semiotics, and teaching the theory of a sign in general (Sign = Signifier + Signified), is a very difficult concept to teach in societies that tend to shun relativistic thinking. Semiotics is frequently taught in English classes, but it is not always explained to the comprehension of the students. I know because I have had experience both as the student trying to learn semiotics, and experience as the “specialist” trying to teach semiotics.
Use the paper and pencil activity/game described above (in the Context/Description heading) as a foundation for starting your lesson about semiotics. Explain that what has happened in the activity is that the students have engaged in both parts of the concept of a Sign. They have made signifiers (written or sound constructions; the sentences) and they have made signifieds (associated meanings; the images). Explain that a Sign is made up of the combination of those two parts. Proceed with your lesson and make it explicit what role the media plays in utilizing semiotics and marketing “signs.”
Cliché and collusion
Context/Description:
On Wednesday I went with one of my other classes to see the Cliché and Collusion exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art by Grant Stevens (it is only there till February 9th, 2008). The exhibit is an interactive experience with television screens, images and sounds. On the brochure it offers a great description: “This exhibition presents twelve video works by contemporary artist Grant Stevens that incorporate familiar excerpts from advertising, music, film, and common conversation. In their juxtapositions the works build a dialogue about popular culture as well as communication and language—their richness, power, limitations and counterfeits.”
Analysis:
One video work showed how the word “start” is more powerful than “stop” in advertising by flashing phrases across the screen. Others demonstrated the hypnosis of words as they hit the screen—or how music can make you feel things you wouldn’t normally feel about what you read or see on the television screen. I read one story about a murder, on a video work screen, while wearing the accompanying headphones and hearing happy music in the background. It was very manipulating. I found myself enjoying—enjoying!—a story about murder; I was sickened by it. Media can, and often does, manipulate our perception of their messages through such modes as music and image.
Another video work spilled T.V. acronyms down the screen really fast like how a gambling machine would do. It was titled My ADD’s I believe. This demonstrated the suggestive addictiveness of media forms.
Other video works had a person talking while showing you the spoken words on the video screen. Every once in a while the voice would change a word on the screen. This gave the spoken & written ideas completely different meanings. Many of us do not look into the fine print of things (like the actual words on those screens that I viewed) and instead we buy into the veracity of the audio advertising. There’s the advertising of products and then there is the products in real life. A Big Mac looks ten times better on the commercials than it does in real life. The voices on the commercial make it sound better too.
This exhibit is all about the media, subliminal messages, and manipulation.
Lesson Plan Ideas:
This lesson is intended to lay a concrete foundation for the internalization of media concepts by your students. It is also to reinforce a lesson on media awareness and media literacy (in a contemporary classroom) including at least one of the following emphasis’s: the analyzing of media texts from advertising, music, film, or common conversation.
Take your class on a field trip to see the exhibit Cliché and Collusion by Grant Stevens. Have students take a pencil and a notebook. Students will first tour each video work, and then choose one of the twelve video works to analyze as a whole. Students will have a half hour to preview the twelve video works and a half hour to write an analysis of one in their notebooks. Upon returning to class, students will be led in a discussion about rhetoric and persuasion. Allow students the opportunity to discuss their thoughts and opinions about the exhibit. In checking for comprehension, students will be assigned the task of watching a commercial at home and writing a one page response discussing the media elements used in the commercial to persuade and to be effectively rhetorical (or how the piece was not persuasive or rhetorically effective and why the media elements contributed to that failure). This lesson should be planned for at least two class periods.
Car insurance
Context/Description:
I basically got disowned by my Step-father this last week before he decided to divorce my mother a day later (who is currently recovering from surgery). Utah is now my permanent residence, I have to self-finance my own education (and most likely support my mother till she fully recovers too), and my auto insurance was canceled. In regards to the last issue, I sat and thought and thought about who and where and how to get auto insurance. And then a familiar phrase popped into my head:
“Geico, one call could save you 15% or more on car insurance.”
Analysis:
It was at that point that day that I realized I had absolutely no idea about car insurance, but that commercials had indoctrinated me with an answer: Geico. I do not know any other kinds of auto insurance and the option of Geico seems so easy, but is it really right for me? That is the question.
But television had anticipated that question. They provided an answer—Geico—for concerned people like me.
It was then that I started to realize that many commercials repeat their slogans or tag lines over and over so that it gets stuck in your head… embedded in your memory… and hopefully triggered in your most desperate time of need by its key words so they can take more advantage of you. Many would take the bait of Geico in that situation; I still haven’t made my choice, and I am researching instead.
Lesson Plan Ideas:
Students hate research projects usually but I believe part of that problem stems from the fact that they do not usually get to research things that can help them in their contemporary lives (knowing the predicaments of the Bay of Pigs invasion, for example, may help you on Jeopardy perhaps but how does that knowledge help the typical teenager of your classroom?). Most students desire more freedom; cars symbolize the kind of freedom that many teenagers want.
This lesson can be adapted for other situations, but for this specific lesson teach students about basic research skills including the use of the library, internet, interviews, and other forms of media. Then assign students a combined research project by splitting the students into groups of four or five. Each student in the group will research a different car insurance company for a specific model of car with information provided by the teacher (i.e. assign a car name, car year, number of cylinders, ect). Students in the group will individually write a 7-10 page research paper reporting their findings. Then have students talk about the options for their “car” in their group and come to a decision about which car insurance plan they believe is best for their “car.” Students will then participate in a fishbowl discussion presenting their findings to the class.
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