semiotic analyses of a cultural artefact

By means of a semiotic analysis I am going to demonstrate how the cultural artefact I have chosen, in this case a CD front cover uses various signs to denote a response or feeling to its reader.

To be able to do this I need to have a basic understanding of semiotics and the inseparability of the signifier and signified which together make up a sign from which we read and derive a meaning. The signifier is the physical image or text that makes the sign, where the signified is the mental concept. The reader denotes an image from the sign by putting words onto the concepts, depending on their personal understanding. Ferdiand de Saussure1857-1913 established the study of language and gave great understanding of the sign and its work to denote, it was he who shaped the concept of the inseparability of the signifier and signified. Roland Barthes, an intellectual who was interested in the meanings from items that surround our normal lives further extended Surreses work, as this extract from Roland Barthes work, Myth Today, further explains:

Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message: there are formal limits to

Stuart Hall (1997) ‘The work of Representation’ in Stuart Hall (ed.) Representation: Cultural Representations and signifying Practices, Sage / OU Press. [Extract: pp.15-28]

Some topics in this essay:
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