Interesting Article on Justifying Culture

Alain de Botton, a contemporary writer and philosopher, writes in The Guardian about justifying our views of culture.

A Point of View: Justifying Culture

Annotating a text (Communication and Cultural course)

Look: It is a leaflet about AQA Communication and Culture. My first impression is this leaflet seems very serious and attractive. The image makes people feel comfortable and the red color fans attract people’s attention.

Read: This leaflet sends by the AQA’s Company and the register is very formal. The purpose is to promote the Communication and Culture course. It says to the teachers and students who want to come and join the Communication and Culture course! The mode of address is to inform people there is a course that is about communication and Culture. I think the leaflet will appear in school’s notice board, education magazines and newspapers. The leaflet doesn’t have too many words. There is only “Communication and Culture” which is in white color type in the middle part of the leaflet. Although some words are in the same size with “Communication and Culture”, they are more difficult to see. Also, there are some small words types in the leaflet, but seems they are not so important. Therefore, I think the topic of this leaflet is about the Communication and Culture course.

Explore/Analysis: There are images and words in the leaflet. Although the image doesn’t have any sharp color on it, some people are holding the red fans, I think this mean that to learn different culture, like the Chinese culture, because red fans are famous in China. Both of the image and words are giving the topic of the communication and culture course.

Review: I think the people that design this leaflet should put more colors on the image. If not, we may only notice the “Communication and Culture” in the middle, but not also the image!

'Be a Loser'

'Be a Loser'

                

In the poster, we can see the twisted meaning. Generally, the meaning of ‘Loser’ is negative. But, in this text, Loser was used in a different way to encourage people to lose your weight if you have Special K cereal. The color of font in the text is red. Basically, the color of symbol of Special K is red. Probably, it is also used to promote to burn your fat behind meaning.

The main image of this poster is the attractive woman, who looks glamorous and healthy. Through this image, it is appealed to attract people to consume the product. And the contents in this poster provide additional suggestions how you can improve your diet.

When we look at this poster at the first time, we can know the purpose of this poster is advertisement to promote sales. And we can usually see this poster in magazine, newspaper, or printed media. Although the text’s contents are not formal because of twisted metaphor, via this poster, we can be inspired by message directly.

This poster’s syntagm is the woman with attractive body. Our first impression of it is sexy, healthy, attractiveness, and stereotype of beauty of women. This text triggers women who care about appearance.

What I felt the first impression of this poster is typical and stereotype. There are many advertisements to use women’s body to appeal their products. For example, when we have a look at cosmetics products, most images have a beautiful woman who has a perfect makeup, smile, body like icon of Greek goddess. Although it is typical and old way to show product’s image, it is still effective. I think that in this poster, the image of woman attracts people’s attention and provide fantasy that you can be like this woman if you have this. It is classic but it is still working.    

Text No.6 -Celia Chan

Look: an attractive text- with different colour of fibers mixing together in the background. A white and large font size of ‘ Culture’ in the middle. 

What is it? It’s a poster saying ‘ Here is holding a exhibition about different culture’ to the people who are interested in culture. It wants us to visit and have a look of the exhibition. The sender is the council.

 

Read: A question is in the middle of the poster. Different colors of fibers are the background. However, some of the colours are very similar/same, like purple, yellow and green. Colour is clearly very bright and sharp.

 

Explore: the dominant signifiers are the words and the fibers.  

The meaning of the colours of the fibers is very essential to the poster. Since each colour means different countries/ culture, the variety of the colours in background represent the distinct cultures. Concerning the similarity of some colours, similar cultures are revealed, for example, light yellow and pale green. On the other hand, some of the colours are used for more than 1 time, they seem to represent the widespread of that culture.

 

A very large contract is seen compare to the background. The words ‘your culture’ is especially in bold. The use of the font style is to highlight the message and draw people attention, forcing on the largest font ’culture’ .

 

Review: A very interesting and colourful text, with obviously colourful design of the different colours of fibers, meaning the differences of cultures. The right hand bottom has the logo of the council, which is the organizer of this exhibition, providing information for the reader if they have further questions. The exhibition is for who are interested in cultural history.   

 

Coursework Preparation work

Figure 6: What’s your culture? (Kris)

 

Look:

My first impressions for this picture are colorful; about identifying your own culture, everyone supposes have their unique

It is a picture with a big title ‘what’s your own culture?’ The sender is Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council.

 

Read:

The image says about ‘culture’. It is presented in administration form, which wants people, who look at the picture, to think more about their specific culture.

It consists of just a few words in form of a big bolded title in white color; and with a bright colorful background, in red, purple, orange and green.

The big title in the middle of the picture makes this text an administration.

 

Explore:

The dominant signifiers are the words and the background. The syntagm is ‘culture’, and the paradigm could be people’s countries background, religion, growing environment or education level. It is presented in semi-formal register.

The significant vocabulary is the word ‘culture’, its mode of address is very direct (telling people to think about their own culture). It doesn’t show any bias as the background is in several different color, it shows culture can have their own color and can be different with others.

 

Review:

A really good text, it shows people to think more about which culture they belong to or if they have their own specific culture. An idea may be included in the text is that people in different cultural background can be mixed together and new picture can be created when different culture are mixed together. In fact the idea of mixing the cultures and people with different culture are now already appear in most of the countries.

It can be says that my review is as what I originally thought about.

Just a little question about the color of the background, why is every color has a significant different with the color next to them but not in color that might be similar to each color?

Sammie Tsang Lok Man---analysis

My first impression of this picture is it is very attractive, because it seems to be an advertisement of food and a woman wearing a sleeveless garment who shows her beautiful body to others.

This message is from Kallogg’s Special K, the content of the message is to attract people to buy their brand’s cereal, and the receiver is the people who want to reduce their weights. The method of sending this message is using a poster to sell their brand’s cereal for breakfast. The word they use in the poster is informal. They want to send this message to people who want to lose their weight, attracting them after eating this food for breakfast everyday, people can lose their weight easily.

In this advertisement, they use red colour and a larger font size to project those three words, ‘Be a Loser’, it is especially attracting people to read the poster continually. The woman who wears the sleeveless garment in the poster owns a big space, it is also attracting people to this advertisement, just like saying to people, if people use this cereal for the breakfast, they will be as sexy as this woman. To be more convincing, there is some additional information saying that if people use this as breakfast, they can enjoy normal meal without caring about weight.

The end of this poster has an idiom, which is negative if you use it normally. But in this poster, you will find that this idiom is positivly asking people to lose weight, which is a very interesting usage of idiom.

Grace: AQA flyer for New Communication and Culture course (pp.156)

LOOK:  The purpose of making this flyer is to introduce the New Communication and Culture course to all the teachers, high school students and their parents. The effect is to let people trust in AQA Teacher support and believe this course is useful.  The sender is AQA Teacher Support.

READ:  The channel is a flyer. The flyer consists words and a picture at the bottom of the page.  Colour is not very bright but well defined and can see the words clearly. Bright red fan gives me a feeling of new, fire and energetic. 

EXPLORE:  From the dark red background, the form of writing in the bold title and subheading, it gives me an impression that this course is formal and professional. The red fans, Asian city background and the fan-dance make me feel like it is relative to different cultures, not just only British culture.  The fan represent ‘culture’ and they are brighter than the people who are holding them, which suggest that ‘culture’ is the main topic of this course.

The course name (“Communication and Culture”) and the company name (“AQA”) are in large size and the colour is white. This shows a connection between the sender and the course. It also highlighted them as the main focus in this leaflet.

The logo of the sender is in formal form. This shows that they are professional and trustworthy. There is an arrow pointing upward in the letter ‘Q’. This design symblises the idea of their company that they will help you increase you skills like rocket. Also it gives you a feeling that they are able to bring you a brighter future by study their courses.

In Asian culture, people do fan dance in the morning as an exercise (like morning-run). Therefore, having this fan dance picture on the flyer can suggest that study the New Communication and Culture course can give you a fresh start, like morning run.

REVIEW:  After a deeper study about this leaflet, I think there are more meanings than I originally thought. The reason of having fans on the flyer is to represent ‘culture’, people represent ‘communication’ and red fans show that this course is new and refreshing.

RESPOND:  I think there should have a few more pictures to represent others cultures too, not just only Asian culture. And if the flyer is more colourful, it will be more eyes catching and more attractive to students.