Page 82 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

DIFFERENCE

artfully that the art was not noticed by the audience; everything would
appear to be diegetic, or inside the story, not dialogic, or a component
of the story-telling. Film theorist Christian Metz developed this
definition in his semiotic analysis of cinema in which he understood
diegesis as ‘the signified of the narrative’ (Stam et al., 1992: 38).
Diegesis recognises that codes and conventions give a film text its
meaning, and that these codes and conventions are shared by
filmmakers and their audiences. For example, if a character in a film
turns on a radio and music is heard on the soundtrack, we understand
that the music is part of the character’s world in the narrative – the
music is diegetic. In contrast, if music is introduced in the film without
prompting by the narrative or by the characters (e.g. the score that
accompanies action), this is understood as a non-diegetic technique.
Non-diegetic conventions also include voice-overs, credit sequences,
editing, camera work and those rare occasions when characters address
the camera directly.
Diegesis is understood to be central to realist representations, and
like realism itself, there have been many sophisticated challenges to
traditional conventions. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is a film that
employs a series of non-diegetic conventions to re-interpret a well-
known narrative. The film uses a contemporary soundtrack, an urban
setting and radical camera movement, yet retains Shakespearean verse.
In this instance, playing with diegetic conventions forms part of the
pleasure of the text, allowing an old narrative to be retold in a
contemporary format. This example demonstrates howthe concept of
diegesis provides a means of discussing the formal conventions of a text
without having to resort to the hierarchical values of aesthetics.
See also: Aesthetics, Realism

DIFFERENCE

A concept drawn from linguistic philosophy, specifically the writings
of Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Derrida, which has become a
focus for attempts to understand the fundamental capacity of language
and writing to mean. For Saussure, difference is that attribute of the
language system (langue) which allows its elements to be distin-
guished from one another and so to signify. At its simplest, the system
of difference operates at the phonemic level, allowing a very restricted
number of differentiated sounds (forty-four in English) in various
combinations to signify a potentially infinite range of meanings.

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