Page 142 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

KNOWLEDGE

Jerry Hall is a ‘sign of herself’ as a real person, Schwarzenegger’s
‘sign of himself’ is a persona, built up in previous film roles.
. Pastiche in advertising and music videos, which often employ already-
established visual styles and codes and will quote from or allude to
each other. Madonna’s video for Material Girl is often used as an
illustration of howrecycled images are appropriated to expand on
the meaning available with the text. In this instance the costumes,
the choreography and the outfitting of Madonna herself are a direct
copy of a routine of Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes.
Postmodern critics see this and similar moves in advertising as
evidence of the insignificance of history and the installation of the
pleasure of the spectacle. But it may be more useful to think of
intertextuality as a means of understanding the fluid relationship
among the media, the text and the audience.

See also: Representation, Star/stardom

Further reading: Fiske (1987); Taylor and Willis (1999)

KINESICS

The semiotics of movement, especially human movement and gesture.
Movement, both of the body and by locomotion, is not merely
functional but is also coded, meaningful and communicative. What is
conveyed when you wave your arms about may differ considerably
from the ‘same’ message uttered with arms folded. Walking is highly
communicative, bringing posture, speed, direction, etc. to bear on
meaning. It is further semioticised via such ‘media’ as the fashion
catwalk. Dance is the aestheticisation of kinesic codes, and some
versions of modern dance can be regarded as a mode of analysis
thereof. Kinesics was introduced into psychological approaches to
non-verbal and interpersonal communication by Birdwhistle (1970).

KNOWLEDGE

The foundation of the new economy. Knowledge, overlapping with
information, culture and creativity, provides the know-how, ideas,
intellectual property and creative works that have begun to supplant in
significance the manufacturing or industrial economy across the
developed world.

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