Critique On chapter 5 based on hand out Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Critique On chapter 5 based on hand out - Essay Example t did not take for granted very much technical knowledge, but there was frequent mention of commercial products and advertising from an American cultural context. This is fine for readers who are familiar with this culture, but it could pose problems for readers who cannot visualise a Taco Bell advertisement, and hear its sound. 2 There was not very much in the way of new ideas in this chapter, but there was a range of technical vocabulary such as haptic, and affordance. Reference to different branches of linguistics were too brief, and more could have been done to explain Saussure’s work and the discipline of semiotics. I am still not quite sure how this fits in with media studies work and so it is difficult to judge how relevant this topic is. The analogy of a horse walking, trotting and galloping was a very good way of explaining the difference between objects, representations and symbols, highlighting how they were in some ways similar, but in other ways very different. 3 I would like to have seen a separate section on the linguistics aspect of this subject. The text concentrated on the way humans process objects, representations and symbols but there must be a significant role played by language and it was not clear what this role is. 4 There is clearly a range of possibilities in the use of symbols, and we discussed in class the Apple Mac symbol. One of the interesting things about such common symbols is that they have many layers of meaning, from the connotations with fruit of the tree of knowledge, to the nutritional value, and the pleasure of eating it, and this is tied to the culture of the people making the symbol and those using it. This is something that could be a problem in marketing, as for example in the United States a pig can be a symbol of wealth, since children save coins in a piggy bank, but in Muslim countries the pig is unclean. This shows that symbols gather their effect from the beliefs of those who use them. 5 The chapter is very