Page 169 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

NARRATIVE

The semiotic understanding of myths is one that is influenced by
the work of Barthes (1973: 117) who argued that myth was a mode of
signification. He argued that in myth, the link between the signifier
and the signified was motivated (unlike the arbitrary model that
underpins semiotics), so that a culturally constructed sign becomes a
signifier, thus allowing what is signified to be naturalised.
Contemporary examples of this form of mythical analysis can be
applied to leisure-wear brand names. The name of Nike for instance
has come to signify an attitude, status and class that are beyond what
might otherwise be signified by sports apparel (i.e. practically nothing).
In examples such as this, and in many contemporary advertisements,
myth works to mask its very own contradictions – which in the case of
Nike is largely the price of, for example, a sports shoe in comparison
to the values of those who supposedly wear them. Myth works to
naturalise contradictions such as these and attempts to turn something
that is cultural (a shoe) into something natural (‘just doing it’).
See also: Narrative, Semiotics/semiology

Further reading: O’Shaughnessy (1999)

NANOTECHNOLOGY see biotechnology

NAPSTER see MP3, online music distribution

NARRATIVE

Narrative is continuous story. It has two facets. The first is the chain or
plot. Plot tends to move between an opening equilibrium that is
disrupted, precipitating the action that goes through the usual
tribulations, towards a new or restored equilibrium. Or, as the old
Three-Act Play had it: Act One: Get a man up a tree; Act Two: Throw
stones at him; Act Three: Get him down again. The second facet of
narrative involves choice or presentation – the way the story is realised
or told. It is this facet, and the devices and surprises chosen in it, that
are often the focus of textual analysis.
Narratives are understood to reveal the work of ideology and
discourse in both plot and presentation; chain and choice. In the
former, narrative is driven by a series of questions and answers in the
movement between opening and closing equilibrium. Which
character or discourse underpins these questions is often referred to

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