Semiotics of a Magazine

Studying trucking rigotics When we are looking at the study of semiotics it means we are to analyze the habituate of signs and symbols that the snip overcome uses. When studying a picture, advertise ment or magazine cover you provide prepare almost anything as a sign or symbol, anything understructure encounter anything at the discretion of the writer or editor. It is for us to interpret what each sign or symbol is representing to the best of our knowledge. Semiotics are distinguished in a work as they give us a better insight into the content, the ideology and what to expect within the magazine.After a near(a) analysis of the semiotics of a magazine we can keep bulge more ab prohibited what it is about and can under ache it more. By schooling the signs and symbols it gives us a better sense of the type of magazine. In Barthian opthalmic semiotics, the key idea is the layering of meaning. The head start layer is the layer of denotation, of what, or who, is organism de picted here? The second layer is the layer of connotation, of what ideas and values are expressed through what is represented, and through the way in which it is represented? (Van Leeuwen, 2001) The first step of the semiotic deconstruction of the cover is to identify relevant signs and their superior aspects (Van Zoonen, 1994, p. 78) From a first glance at the magazine cover we can front that the masthead is in openhanded and bold capitals as to stand out to the audience. People testament look at the masthead and automatically recognize the magazine from the colours and font. The tone of orange and pink they use are colours that are represented as stereotypically girly colours. The cope lines on the left and right of the magazine are used to tell the audience whats include in the magazine or who is in it.It will also give an insight to the genre of the magazine by present what cordial of articles are included and what kind of artists or stack they reference or talk abo ut. They include words such as gentlemans gentleman exclusive to make the audience believe they are imbibeting nighthing that nada else has and that it is a must have. The header on this magazine ingests Britains zero(prenominal) 1 Womens magazine. This is to attract attention to the magazine on the shelf for other women to buy it other the understanding that if it is popular with everyone else consequently you should enjoy it too.The use of the white on the pink also stands out as the top is normally what you will see first on a magazine on the shelf in a shop. The primary(prenominal) pick up used in this magazine is a picture of Angelina Jolie, who Is a popular actor and fashion icon. The image takes up nearly the satisfying background and is obviously being used as a big selling point of this magazine. She is not wearing any clothes from our lot of the image and has her makeup done perfectly. This image is very sexualized by her seventh cranial nerve expression and th e amount of skin shown.The use of a pull refer with I went from Nanny to Prostitute in 24 hours , is used to trail the audience in to the magazine are want to read why this happened and gain their interest and attention . It shows that the magazine has these kind of gossip stories that some women have great interest in reading. Having isolated the major signs and aspects of the magazine we accordingly must continue to examine the paradigmusicatic of signs by asking what their hit opposites are and how they relate to each other syntagmatically. This is to say that we need to find the assumptions make by a first look at the cover and to see if they have any opposites.The main image used in the cover is of a white western woman. This is the iconography of the western world as she is someone who would be famous throughout. If they had a darker woman of little implication on the page then you would feel that the magazine would not sell as many copies. Her hair is down and her facia l expression and need of clothing is very sexualized whereas if you were to have her uptight with hair tied up and in a formal outfit then you may intend that people would not buy it as she doesnt seem as open and laid back and less likely to be free all her gossip in the interview.You feel that there is a kind of ethnocentrism related to magazines such as these as they often are associated with people associated with your own western culture and not from anywhere else. We can then being to denotate what is on the magazine cover. The colour scheme used is that of pink, orange and white. This is to associate the magazine directly to women as these are stereotypical egg-producing(prenominal) colours. The font used is a basic one and is often in bold it is easy to read and stands out on the page.The cover lines characteristic 3 sex secrets that will diverge everything, various lines about the celebrities included in the magazine and also How to get rid of cellulite or at least hid e it, all the coverlines are related to either sex, image or celebrity lives. On a connotation level we can see that the connotations gathered by analysis of this cover they are preponderantly about femininity and sexuality. Even thought his is a magazine for women we see that the main image used is a picture of, what we are made to believe, Angelina Jolie sore. She has her makeup done up and has a sexualized look in her eyeball staring at the camera.This is a confusing decision in these magazines as you would feel that if you are to judge by how male magazines are made, with semi naked pictures of women also, then you would think that they would have a semi naked man on the cover to their magazine. The 21st century has shown a change back to when women have been used as objects in magazines like this in western civilization but is serious taken to be the normality in this part of the world. The re-sexualisation of womens bodies, often displayed in public space and in near-soft porn forms, goes comparatively unremarked except by those from other, less liberated cultures. Branston, 2010) The media has a huge control on how we represent women and men in a western civilisation. From what is read and seen in magazine we get the perceptions of this is how normal people should be and act and that is completely controllable and interchangeable by what the media chooses to do. This is a high power that we should try and move onward from as it will control the world and people will unendingly be aiming to be like the celebrities and people shown in these magazines and in the media. research on media representations of gender has focused on how women are objectified and exploited in a media context and on the gap between social cosmos and media constructions of femininity and masculinity( Devereux, 2003) The idea that celebrities mean so much in our society influences on people to be like them. Celebrities are just normal people that have perhaps a talent or a different look, but once the media throws them into the spotlight then it is our numeral to idolize them. Magazines such as this one are filled with advert and fake stories and the cover shows this by showing hidden advertising for a ? 5 dress that flatters everyone. This kind of advertising draws people in to read stories that are actually just ads for different products. The point of publicity and forward motion is to turn advertising into news(Turner, 2004) References Branston, G. , & Stafford, R. (2010). The media students book(5thed. ). capital of the United Kingdom Routledge. Devereux, E. (2003). Understanding the Media. capital of the United Kingdom SAGE Publications Ltd. Turner, G. (2004). Understanding Celebrity. London SAGE Publications Ltd. Van, L. T. , Jewitt, C. (2001). Handbook of visual analysis. London SAGE. Zoonen, L. (1994). Feminist media studies. London Sage.