Archetype- A repeated character type or representation which is recognisable to the

audience.
Attitudes, beliefs and values- Terms commonly used when discussing the
audience for media products and the factors influencing the reception of media
message.
Closed Text- And media text that is anchored in such a way as to restrict the
number of ways in which it can be interpreted.
Connotation- A meaning attributable to an image beyond the obvious denotational
level.
Conventions- The expected ingredients in a particular type of media text.
Demographics- Information concerning the social status, class, gender and age of
the population.
Audience profiles use demographic information.
Denotation- the first and simplest level of meaning of an image.
e.g. A picture of a rose represents the rose flower and reminds the viewer of the real
thing.
Dialogue- that which is spoken by actors/presenters.
Dominant Ideology- the belief system that serves the interests of the dominant
ruling elite within a society, generally accepted as common sense by the majority
and reproduced in mainstream media texts.
Ellipsis- the removal or shortening of elements of a narrative to speed up the action.
Empathy- the ability to share the emotions or point of view of a group or individual.
Encode- the process of constructing the media message in a form suitable for
transmission to a receiver or target audience.
Enigma Code- a narrative structure that involves the creation of riddles or problems
to be solved by the resolution.
Icon- a sign resembling the thing in represents.
Iconography- the distinguishing elements, in terms of props and visual details,
which characterise a genre.
Ideology- key concept of a set of attitudes, beliefs and values held in common by a
group of people and culturally reproduced within that community to sustain its
particular way of life.
Incidental music- the use of music to punctuate for a specific events or action, or to
provide a sound background.
Intertextuality- the practice of deliberately including references to one text in the
narrative of another, either as homage to the text referred to or as a device intended
to engage the interest of the audience by appealing to their prior knowledge and
experience of media texts.
Linear Narrative- a sequential narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end-in
that order.
Male Gaze- the male point of view adopted by the camera for the benefit of an
assumed male audience.
Mode of address- the way in which media texts talk to an audience.
Narrow Casting- the targeting of a small, carefully defined social group for a media
product; the opposite of broadcasting.
Negotiated Reading- a reading of a text which assumes that no absolute meaning
exists and that meaning is generated and negotiated by what the reader brings to the
text in terms of attitudes, values, beliefs and experience.
Oppositional Reading- a reading of a media text that rejects the ideological
positioning and apparent meaning intended by the producers of the text and
substitutes a radical alternative.
Parallel Action- the narrative technique of showing two or more scenes happening
at the same time by cutting between them.
Parody- the imitation of one media text by another for comic effect.
Pastiche- a media text made up of pieces from other texts or of imitations of other
styles.
Patriarchy- male domination of the political, cultural and socioeconomic system.
Pleasure- a motivating factor in the consumption of media texts.
Positioning- the locating of a media product in a marketplace with regard to
audience and socio economic, political and cultural factors.
Racism- practices and behaviour involving social and economic discrimination,
based on the false assumption that one particular ethnic group or race is culturally
and biologically inferior to another.
Reaction Shot- the shot devised for an interview between two people, usually
showing an interviewer responding to the interviewees answers by nodding or
reacting in some way.
Realism- a film and television style that attempts to represent the real world.
Representation- key concept of the process whereby the media construct versions
of people, places and events in images, words or sound for transmission through
media texts to an audience.
Sexism- representations that discriminate on the basis of sex, especially against
women, which is seen to derive from a sustained patriarchy.
Stereotype- the social classification of a group of people by identifying common
characteristics and universally applying them in an often oversimplified and
generalised way, such that the classification represents value judgements and
assumptions about the group concerned.
Sign- a term to describe the combination of the signifier and the signified, where the
signifier is the physical object and the signified is the mental concept or meaning that
the signifier conveys.
Social Realism- the representation of characters and issues in film and television
drama in such a way as to race serious underlying social and political issues.
Subjective Shot- a type of shot in which the camera is positioned as if looking at the
world through the subjects eyes.
Superimpose- the appearance of writing/symbols or images on top of an image so
that both are visible at once, increasing the amount of information the viewer has in
one shot.
Transgressive- a practice which transcends conventional approaches and either
subverts these existing ways of working or challenges their value.
Versimilitude- seeming to be like or to be connected to the real.