1. In this exercise you will do a semiotic analysis for which you will need to have collected a number of advertisements featuring women. For instance, select all the advertisements for perfume from a women’s magazine. The overall concern is to gain knowledge of how meanings about gender are used, organised and produced within visual texts. For example, questions you might ask are: How are women portrayed? How is sexual difference represented? How are relationships between men and women depicted? Use semiotic concepts (sign, signifier, signified, connotation, denotation) to consider the following questions for each image (these are suggestions):

(a) What are the elements of the sign (the advertisement)? Look at images of people; settings; products; written text. Consider what they signify: What kinds of meanings and associations do they bring into the image? What kinds of codes of meaning do they draw on? How are these elements organised and related to each other (do they support or contradict each other; do they comment on each other)?

(b) How are the different meanings in the text related to the product advertised, and what meaning is thereby given to the product?

(c) Is there an overall ideological structure of meaning which emerges from the advertisement? (For example, what conclusions about gender do you think the advert leads the reader to?) How are other kinds of social difference such as race, class and sexualities intersecting with gender?

(d) In comparing the different advertisements, what can you infer about the range of possible constructions of gender available within advertising?

2. Consider each of the following research projects:

• An investigation of communication in medical consultations.
• A social history project about experiences of wartime.
• A study of children’s experiences of play.
• A study of far right ideology.