by Katarina Kuruc
Abstract:
In this article, I demonstrate the phenomenal role that fashion, as a form of communication, plays within contemporary society specifically in television media. This paper makes use of semiotic and fashion theory in order to analyze the popular television show ‘Sex and the City.’ Despite its reputation as an innovative program that allows women a distinct ‘voice’ within a male dominated society, ‘Sex and the City,’ reinforces gender-based stereotypes with the use of fashion. This article is divided into three sections. First, a brief history and definition of fashion is provided in order to establish a basis for analysis. Second, the significance of fashion and branding is outlined. Third, ‘Sex and the City’ is examined in detail. Notions about how fashion contributes to the overall character development are discussed in relation to how the show perpetuates gender-based and cultural stereotypes.
This one from our "is semiotics linguistics?" dept. I've been reading a lot (more) of semiotics (then I probably should) recently so you might see a smattering of these types of abstracts. Semiotics is, more or less, a field which has been credited with spawning the foundational ideas that transformed the field of linguistics from being composed of dictionary writers and historical text analysts into a field composed of Chomsky's and Jackendoff's. And while many semiotics articles do focus on language (what words and phrases truly symbolize), some are a hell of a lot more fun than that.
The word "dog" is a sign which represents the symbol:
but the item:
is also a sign that represents something that it does not resemble. And what it represents is for this author to tell you.
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