Week 8 - Television, Film and Video Media Reading Diary

In the lecture this week we began considering representation looking at ideology, discourse and power. We looked at the two systems of representation which are language representation and mental representations. Michael Foucault’s definition is that discourse is of practises that systematically form the objects of which they speak. He meant that discourses are ideas embedded in what we do say and think and that these create the terms upon which we know the world. (Long and Wall, 2012: 364)

This week’s key reading was by Machin, D and Mayr, A (2012) How to do a Critical Discourse Analysis, in this reading Machin has combined visual analysis and critical discourse and uses a range of semiotic tools. The reading focuses on examples of multimodal discourse analysis and how communication is seen as a set of semiotic resources. From reading this text I have been able to understand the relationship between discourse and language.

The reading I will be looking at this week is a study on a TV series called 'The L Word'. This study looks at the discourses that the show produces based on how sexual identity is represented. Within the reading, it is pointed out that there are examples ideologies of homosexuality which in the show is accepted although bisexuality is negatively portrayed, at one point referred to as 'gory'. (Davies, 2008) Another point that looks at this is shown in the way that within the show, lesbians are shown to be part of a 'team' and she references a particular character in the show who is not looked at as part of this 'team' due to her confusion on sexual identity and her exploration of bisexuality. (Davies, 2008).

In terms of my own research I think it would be interesting to look at discourses in films. It would be appealing to explore the language used by certain producers in certain films such as Anger Management. I feel that these kinds of movies have a deeper message then to just enteratain and it will consist of me looking into the life of the producer of the film in order to gather some answers.

References:

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Discourse, power and media’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp 363-369

Machin, D and Mayr, A (2012) How to do a Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Sage. pp 1-29

Davies, F. (2008) ‘Paradigmatically Oppositional Representations in The L Word’ IN Beirne, R, (2008) Televising Queer Women, London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.