Exam Essay on Communication

Write a 1250-to-1500 word argument that explores the core meaning of what the author is conveying based on your understanding of the author’s claims within the context of your class readings. In other words, the quote represents more than the words alone and you are expected to examine meanings beyond the quote. Use the quote as a springboard for your essay.

What are the author’s key points as evidenced in the quote and his or her other writings? How does she or he illuminate them (use examples from your readings)? How does the author construct meaning? What does she or he mean (use examples)? Make linkages across the author’s writings and ideas, and feel free to link with other authors you have read. Use an example from the headlines or history to describe how the author’s treatise, theories and/or assumptions are relevant to the study of communication on a broad, structural level (rather than an individual-level).

Offer your personal assessment and/or critique about the value of the author’s arguments, and end big: offer a compelling summary conclusion to your essay.

Question: Stuart Hall writes: "The level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect with the deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional more active ideological dimension…the relations of signs…reveal “a complex structure of dominance” and that decoding a message means readers reach for meanings that reflect “deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional, more active ideological dimensions”