Courses: Visual Rhetoric, Visual Communication, Multiplatform Journalism, Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations. Objective: This unit activity requires that students analyze and produce imagery with the help of semiotic theory. Students will: (1) learn to connect theory with practice holistically by simultaneously practicing visual analysis…

Supported by critical theoretical frameworks, this book is a purposeful engagement with bodies of knowledge rooted in popular culture, yet routinely excluded from "common sense" visions of curriculum. Aimed at teachers as well as teacher-educators, the book examines areas such as Disney, African American stand-up comedy, intersections of…

Describes a course in semiotics (the study of signs and systems of communication) taught for the past 10 years by the author. (DD)

Reports on a study designed to find out what scientists and science students actually do when they are reading familiar and unfamiliar graphs. Describes changes in ontologies of scientists and science students as they engage in the reading tasks assigned to them. Theorizes a transition of graphs from things to signs that come to stand for natural…

Discusses teaching visual literacy by teaching students how to decode advertising images, thus enabling them to move away from being passive receivers of messages to active unravelers. Shows how teachers can use concepts from semiotics to deconstruct advertising messages. (SR)

Discusses the use of visual materials in second language instruction to produce verbal utterances. (AM)

Contends that play scripts are written to be performed and that a critical response to a play should reflect the fact that the script is a blueprint for a live happening. Proposes that students need to study a play both in the theatre and as written text. Explores aspects of Shakespeare's plays as performed theatrical works. (PM)

Uses central ideas from Roland Barthes's essays on connotative semiotics as a rationale for directing students in technical and professional writing classes to develop the critical reflex to analyze and then make judgments about the values implied by connotative systems. (SR)

A series of French language classroom exercises to be used over four class sessions applies principles of semiotics to literary textual analysis. The session themes include decoding and interpreting, reconstructing meaning, sociocultural connotations in the text, and sense of time and space. (MSE)

Proposes a study of "Citizen Kane" in high school using a somewhat simplified version of post-modern literary critical theory. Chooses this film because of its familiarity and accessibility and because the ambiguity and indeterminacy of its text allow room for exploration by students. (NKA)

Offers an analytical model to assist teachers and students in decoding social and cultural meaning embedded in the visual track of any given television program. To illustrate the model, the Public Broadcasting System's production of "The Scarlet Letter" is analyzed. (MBR)

Presents a multipart exercise developed to facilitate a semiotic approach for teachers of journalism courses concerned with feature writing and photography, in advertising copywriting classes, and for public relations projects involved with image development. Notes that the lessons for each sequence are based upon a process of discovery through a…

An approach to literary analysis of foreign language texts uses the tools provided by the study of semiotics. The technique is illustrated in the analysis of an excerpt from a French novel. (MSE)

Urges the use of new developments in structuralist and poststructuralist theory as the basis for a new practice in the teaching of composition. (CRH)

Reviews some of the basic notions of semiotics to show how they can be applied to composition teaching. (FL)