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Understanding Media Semiotics Marcel Danesi 2002 253 pages Complementary Texts Rudolph Arnheim Mark Johnson Glenn Stillar Keywords Media Theory Theory Semiotics and Grammars  Copyright © 2004-2009 Isabel Pedersen

Understanding Media Semiotics offers an excellent treatment of the interplay between media and human meaning-making. Danesi states the goal for this book on the first page: ...very few [theorists] have attempted to understand the 'meaning structures' that the media have helped to spread into the system of everyday modern life. The purpose of this book is to do exactly that -- to take a close look at those structures within the conceptual framework of the science called semiotics. (vii) He offers an interesting overview of semiotics in the first chapter. He pays specific attention to both Narrative theory and Conceptual metaphor theory. Subsequently, the book devotes a chapter to several 'everyday' media including print, audio, film, television, computer, and Internet. In the final chapter, Social Impacts of the Media, Danesi comments on paradox: The mediated world has allowed vast numbers of people access to the kinds of representations to which only the elite had privilege in the past; but it has also created a society-wide 'distraction mindset', whereby entertainment is pursued relentlessly by hordes of people, as is 'newness'. 'faddishness', and 'coolness'. The paradox of mediation has been the underlying theme of this book. (201) In this final chapter, Danesi offers a fascinating commentary on media and social life from his theoretical perspective as a scholar of not only semiotics, but also popular culture.