MS 112 Theories/Schools

Semiotic Theory

Saussure: semiology; showing how signs work on the level of language

• Arbitrary signs link works and ideas together

Barthes: applies Saussure’s linguistic semiotics to culture

• A new layer of signifiers and signified is added, reaching the layer of muth

Marxist Structural Theory

Althusser & Gitlin

• hegemony, ideology, articulation, relative autonomy, self contradiction, ISAs, RSA, reproduction of the conditions of production

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies / Birmingham School of Cultural Studies (1964)

Founded by Stuart Hall & Richard Hoggart

Theoretical Approaches:

• Political analysis, psychoanalysis, sociology, history, ethnography, French Theory

• Includes Althusser, Bourdieu, and Foucault

Stuart Hall

Encoding and Decoding Model

• Believed audiences were active and capable of decoding messages differently than producers may have intended

• But, interpretation is highly dependent on audience’s social and cultural positions/experiences

Cultural Studies

Hall, D’Acci, Du Gay

The Public Sphere Debates

Habermas, Eraser, DeLuca & Peeples