Discursive Analysis, Discourse And Signification

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Mustakoski 1 Kai Mustakoski Philip Clover Culture and Representation 22 Oct. 2010 Discursive Analysis, Discourse and Signification: an Analysis of a Piece of Visual Culture “Proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition.” is the definition for the word Discursive; The word originated from Latin and subsequently from the word in Middle English, discours, meaning process of reasoning ( Dictionary ). In this paper I am going to explain the concept of discourse and signification in the context of the book: Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. I am going to do this by analysing a picture of my own choosing: The picture (see appendix) is an add for the TV channel Russia Today. First I am going to dissect the picture on the level of denotation and then moving on to the signification, discourse and Discursive analysis. The picture under scrutiny was among of five Russia Today's adds displayed in United Kingdom and in the US; these adds were initially banned in the United States and were later on displayed only in censored versions in the US airports on December 2009 and January 2010 (Russia Today). The picture I chose to dissect and make an analysis of displays a US soldier, yelling and looking provocative while keeping a US marine rifle in his hand, overlapping with a picture of so called presumed stereotypical image of a Islamic “terrorist” wearing a scarf (that only reveal his eyes) and holding a bazooka on his shoulder. The original adds contains a text “Is terror only inflicted by terrorists”; I am not going to concentrate on the text but the two overlapping images and their denotations and what they signify and how discursive analysis works in this quite provocative picture. In this paragraph I am going to discuss and dissect

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