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Magazines: Mainstream and Alternative

Semiotics, structuralism and ideology in magazine language

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 2

Overview

Reading covers through signs, myth and binary opposition; how a cover naturalises an ideology, what a spoof advertisement does, and the limits of a purely semiotic approach.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Which theorist supplies the semiotic approach used in magazine study?

Key term

Give the denotation and the connotation of a direct-address cover photograph.

Process

How does a magazine cover work as myth in Barthes's sense?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Which theorist supplies the semiotic approach used in magazine study?

    Model answer

    Roland Barthes supplies the semiotic approach. Barthes argues that texts communicate meaning through a process of signification.

  2. 2

    Give the denotation and the connotation of a direct-address cover photograph.

    Model answer

    The photograph denotes a person looking straight at the camera. It connotes intimacy and invitation, addressing the reader as someone already known.

  3. 3

    How does a magazine cover work as myth in Barthes's sense?

    Model answer

    A cover presents a constructed idea of success or beauty as though it were natural. The construction disappears behind the image.

  4. 4

    Apply denotation and connotation to a 1960s cover showing a smiling model in a kitchen.

    Model answer

    The image denotes a woman standing in a kitchen. Connotations of contentment, competence and domestic duty attach themselves to that setting.

  5. 5

    How can a magazine cover naturalise an ideology?

    Model answer

    Repetition makes one version of femininity look like common sense rather than a choice. Readers then treat a constructed role as simply how women are.

  6. 6

    Which theorist's structuralism is applied to magazines?

    Model answer

    Claude Lévi-Strauss supplies the structuralist approach. Lévi-Strauss argues that a text is best understood through its underlying structure.

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Jean made that argument.
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AWoman's Hour began on the BBC Light Programme in 1946.
BThe Light Programme became Radio 2 in 1967.
CThe programme moved to Radio 4 in 1973.

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