Week 4: Critical approaches/lenses

Audience analysis/rhetorical
*This approach uses language, signs and images to position audiences to adopt certain desired responses, beliefs or practices. (Abercrombie ad Longhurst, 1998)
* Can texts actually cause changes in audiences� attitudes or behaviors?
* Media texts persuade audiences to adopt certain stances or attitudes.

Semiotic analysis
*Focuses on the social and cultural meaning of signs and codes.
*Audiences draw on their knowledge of codes to interpret what the images and signs mean.
*signifier- the image, word, object or practice
*signified- the implied meaning
*referent- what the image, word, object or practice refers to

Poststructionalist analysis
*Examines how language categories in media themselves influence characters and audiences� perceptions.
*Males- value physical actions, violence, operating in public worlds
*Females- value emotion, relationships, and operating in private worlds

Critical Discourse analysis (CDA)
*Consist of more than just language uses.
*Perspectives of how people perceive the world and there own identities.
*Discourses- law, medicine, religion, business, education
* �Identity toolkits� � define one�s identity

Feminist Analysis
*Focuses on the sexist portrayals of females and males
* How are genders perceived in different cultures?
*Stereotyping?

Postmodern analysis
*How are traditional views of ideas such as art and science challenged?
*Media images challenge notions of reality and truth.

Postcolonial analysis
*This approach examines how colonial or imperialist conceptions of the world are portrayed in literature and media.


Looking more in-depth at rhetorical/audience analysis:

My class just put together persuasive speeches on men in the Renaissance era and their assignment was to persuade me why their guy was the greatest and deserved the most respect. While teaching the art of persuasion my biggest resource was the media- especially commercials. I was able to show my students how they used words, actions and non-verbals to grab our attention and get thinking about their product. We were able to analyze magazine ads, commercials, and newspaper ads and find similarities between all of them. We also came to conclusions as to what languages, actions or signs worked the best.