Kala ma'am presentation.

My topic for kala mam's presentation is Working of a Radio Station. I will be talking a lot from my experience at Big FM, and also a lot of stuff will be unique to BIG itself. It's a topic very close to my heart. :) I didn't know where else to put this. Do we have another group mail for this? Could someone please put me on the group mail then?

FIFA 2010 in South Africa :)

Italy, the defending champions got knocked out last Thursday. Not that I'm a big fan but the fact that the SLOVAKIAN team beat them 3 -2, with the 2 goals from the Italians coming in the last 10 minutes, was just exasperating.

In each group, the team that has been labelled 'underdog' has proven otherwise.

Group A being one of the most shocking of course. France, who were the finalists last year as well, put up a rather half-hearted effort. With Anelka being sent off and the team's problems with the coach, they just didn't seem mentally fit for the tournament with no victories to show. On the other hand Uruguay made it look like cake-walk!

Group B, E and F have no surprises, just as expected..yes yes the Argentina fans may rejoice!

Group C ...*squirms*...we have one team that has the best individual players in the world but zero co-ordination - England. And the other - USA, a country that doesn't even watch 'soccer'. And the latter is on the top! I shall refrain from expanding on this...I think our class knows why :S

Group D, again well, Germany was always the favourite. And now they are through to the quarters. Ghana still survives having beaten the American team *sniggers*

And as for the group of death, group G, well, it had to come down to the either Brazil or Portugal meeting Spain, which most people said would lead to the eviction of the team playing against Spain (Aww it’s ok Ronaldo)

There are a lot of other ‘new’ introductions this year to the World Cup – the Addidas Jabulani ball. Teams like Italy and Spain have not been using the Jabulani for practice matches prior to the start of the World Cup. As far as England are concerned, the ball was never even allowed in the country due to contractual rights asserted by Nike, the official ball sponsor of the English Premier League and Umbro who is the main sponsor of the English team. The players too have complained that the ball is only good for short passes and is nearly impossible to follow the Jabulani when it’s switched to a long pass. On the other hand, if the Jabulani ball is actually lighter compared to the balls used in major leagues or past World Cups, skilled players like Cristiano Ronaldo will find it much harder to arc and dip accordingly.

But is it really the Jabulani ball which is holding back star players from scoring? Or have the weaker nations simply become stronger, making it all the more difficult to defeat them?

3 teams in the quarter finals – Uruguay, Paraguay and Ghana, could or should have been Italy, France and Portugal.

The star players haven’t scored yet! Rooney left without a goal. Messi is building amazing set ups to goals but hasn’t had his luck yet. Ronaldo, well, did get lucky but still wasn’t playing well enough. He was marked by 4 people in the Ivory Coast match…couldn’t move, let alone score. Are they losing their charm? Or is it all the injuries?

Who’s the next biggest start you see in football? Ozil? Villa? Or is Messi just going to continue his reign?

And I refrain from commenting on what a wonderful job the referees have done this Cup. I just don’t seem to know how to talk of them in manner that would be suited for this blog! You’re all welcome to though!

So fingers crossed till the semis…GO NETHERLANDS from me J

Semiotic analysis of ads: Example 2

Here we have a Panzani advertisement: some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open string bag, in yellows and greens on a red background.
If our reading is satisfactory, the photograph analysed offers us three messages: a linguistic message, a coded iconic message, and a non-coded iconic message.

The image immediately yields a first message, whose substance is linguistic; its supports are the caption, which is marginal, and the labels, these being inserted into the natural disposition of the scene, 'en abyme' . In fact, this message can itself be further broken down, for the sign Panzani gives not simply the name of the firm but also, by its assonance, a additional signified, that of 'Italianicity'. The linguistic message is therefore twofold (at least in this particular image): denotational and connotational. Since, however, we have here only a single typical sign, namely that of articulated (written) language, it will be counted as one message.

We then talk about the "image".This image straightaway provides a series of discontinuous signs. First (the order is unimportant as these signs are not linear), the idea that what we have in the scene represented is a return from the market. A signified which itself implies two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over the table, 'unpacked'. To read this first sign requires only a knowledge which is in some sort implanted as part of the habits of a very widespread culture where 'shopping around for oneself' is opposed to the hasty stocking up (preserves, refrigerators) of a more 'mechanical' civilization. A second sign is more or less equally evident; its signifier is the bringing together of the tomato, the pepper and the tricoloured hues (yellow, green, red) of the poster; its signified is Italy, or rather Italianicity. Continuing to explore the image, there is no difficulty in discovering at least two other signs: in the first, the serried collection of different objects transmits the idea of a total culinary service- on the one hand as though Panzani furnished everything necessary for a carefully balanced dish and on the other as though the concentrate in the tin were equivalent to the natural produce surrounding it. In the other sign, the composition of the image, evoking the memory of innumerable alimentary paintings, sends us to an aesthetic signified: the 'nature morte' or, as it is better expressed in other languages, the 'still life'; the knowledge on which this sign depends is heavily cultural.

Thus there are four signs for this image and we will assume that they form a coherent whole (for they are all discontinuous), require a generally cultural knowledge, and refer back to signifieds each of which is global (for example, Italianicity), imbued with euphoric values. After the linguistic message, then, we can see a second, iconic message. Is that the end? If all these signs are removed from the image, we are still left with a certain informational matter; deprived of all knowledge, I continue to 'read' the image, to 'understand' that it assembles in a common space a number of identifiable (nameable) objects, not merely shapes and colours. The signifieds of this third message are constituted by the real objects in the scene, the signifiers by these same objects photographed, for, given that the relation between thing signified and image signifying in analogical representation is not 'arbitrary' (as it is in language), it is no longer necessary to close the relay with a third term in the guise of the psychic image of the object.

The linguistic message can be readily separated from the other two, but since the latter share the same (iconic) substance, to what extent have we the right to separate them? It is certain that the distinction between the two iconic messages is not made spontaneously in ordinary reading: the viewer of the image receives at one and the same time the perceptual message and the cultural message, and it will be seen later that this confusion in reading corresponds to the function of the mass image (our concern here). The distinction, however, has an operational validity, analogous to that which allows the distinction in the linguistic sign of a signifier and a signified (even though in reality no one is able to separate the 'word' from its meaning except by recourse to the metalanguage of a definition). If the distinction permits us to describe the structure of the image in a simple and coherent fashion and if this description paves the way for an explanation of the role of the image in society, we will take it to be justified. The task now is thus to reconsider each type of message so as to explore it in its generality, without losing sight of our aim of understanding the overall structure of the image, the final inter-relationship of the three messages. Given that what is in question is not a 'naive' analysis but a structural description, the order of the messages will be modified a Iittle by the inversion of the cultural message and the literal message; of the two iconic messages, the first is in some sort imprinted on the second: the literal message appears as the support of the 'symbolic' message. Hence, knowing that a system which takes over the signs of another system in order to make them its signifiers is a system of connotation, we may say immediately that the literal image is denoted and the symbolic image connoted. Successively, then, we shall look at the linguistic message, the denoted image, and the connoted image.