Media Language Practice Answer

I am going to discuss media language in relation to my music magazine, 'Sound' which I constructed during my Foundation portfolio. The magazine was constructed for a mostly female-based audience of 16 - 24 year olds, with a music genre of indie/festival music as the main genre. 'Media Language' is the term which defines the ways in which the media text communicates meaning to the audience. The meaning can be constructed for an audience through a variety of methods. These methods might include; semiotics, genre, narrative, mise-en-scene, sound, editing etc. Semiotics might be considered as the 'parent' method, as this is the study of signs, which is broken down into the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the form in which the sign takes, whilst the signified is the concept the sign represents. These semiotics can then take the form of everything used for construction in my magazine, such as the camerawork, mise-en-scene etc. Barthes then discussed that all cultural forms are made up of a system if signs that could be deconstructed to reveal how cultural meanings are constructed - in a sense, the meanings of signs are not fixed and depends on the readers' interpretation of the signifier.

For example, for the front cover of my music magazine, I used a gradient as a background behind my main image. The gradient of pink and yellow, was the signifier - that's all it was, just a blend of two different colours. However, my intentional signified meaning was that it would represent the idea of summer and would so reflect upon my summery-festival theme of my content. This was because it looked very similar to the colour of sunset during the summer months, and would connote a warm feeling.