Glossary

Glossary

• Drama: What is TV drama? TV drama is a broad genre. At its simplest, it is fictionalised action in narrative form.
• Long form TV Drama: Long form drama is a term coined to describe the recent shift of interest towards television series of high quality that many consider to have replaced the cinema as a locus of serious adult entertainment. Unfolding over multiple episodes, hours, and even years these TV shows are seen to provide a content, often dark and difficult, and innovative style that strain against the conventions of cinema as well as network television.
• Media Convention:  A code is a system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:technical codes - all to do with the way a text is technically constructed - camera angles, framing, typography etc. verbal codes ...

•  A code is a system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.
  In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:
  •technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography etc
  •verbal codes – everything to do with language -either written or spoken
  •symbolic codes – codes that can be decoded on a mainly connotational level
  verbal codes 
• Genre: A genre is basically the category of any type of art or literature, for example categories of movie would be comedy, horror, thriller etc.
• Genre Hybridity: Some media texts are hybrid genres, which means they share the conventions of more than one genre. For example Dr. Who is a sci-fi action-adventure drama and Strictly Come Dancing is a talent, reality and entertainment show.
  verbal codes.
• Synopsis- A brief summary of the major points of a written work
• Open Narrative: can be unravelled in a lot of ways
• Closed Narrative: there is only one obvious thread to pull on 
• Hermeneutic Code: refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader.
• Action Code:  applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will be

• Subvert: 
  undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution).

Examples of Semantic Code

Red Rose- love/passion/romance/sex/proposal/England/Valentines/Labour/War of Roses/Lust

Verisimilitude: The appearance of being true or real.  

Print Media Terminologies

Anchorage- Fixing of meaning e.g. the copy text anchors (i.e. fixes to one spot) to the meaning of an image.
Banners-Typically found at the top or bottom of a print media text.
Broadsheet-Large format newspapers that report news in depth often with a serious tone and higher level language. News is dominated by national and international events, politics, business, with less emphasis on celebrities and gossip. Examples: The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph

Byline - A journalist's name at the beginning of a story.

Captions – Text below an image that describes the image or informs the audience who

took the image.

Copy - Main text of a story.

Cover lines – Captions on a magazine front cover

 Emotive Language – the use of language to generate specific emotional reactions in the target audience

Headlines – The text highlighting the main story being given priority by the producers of the print media text. Often designed to be eye-catching.

Inverted pyramid structure - Newspaper stories start with the main events. Then they give more details and eyewitness comments in short paragraphs. The paragraphs at the end of the story are less important than those at the beginning. This allows sub-editors to shorten stories by cutting paragraphs from the end.

Layout – How the print media text has been designed and formatted.

Masthead - The top section of a newspaper which gives the paper’s title, price and date

Sans Serif font – Font type which does not have lines perpendicular to the ends of letters e.g. Comic Sans – often seen as more contemporary. Think of Apple’s advertising.

Serif font – Font type which does have lines perpendicular to the ends of letters e.g. Times New Roman – generally seen as more traditional or higher class.

Splash – The front page story

Sub-headings – Smaller, typically one line headlines for other stories.

Tabloid - Smaller newspapers aimed at a large audience. News is reported in less depth and emphasises human interest stories. The language level is lower, paragraphs and stories shorter, with more use of images. Content often includes more celebrities, media news and gossip. Examples: The Sun, The Mail, The Mirror, The Express

Text to image ratio – This involves considering how weighted the print media text is with regards to text and image – you need to ask yourself why the ratio exists.

Typography – The collective term when considering elements of print media relating to the style of the text such as the font, colour, serif, sans serif etc.