Data Analysis, Rhetorical & Semiotic Methods
Week 6: Data Analysis and Interpretation
Analysis: The process of ordering data according to a prior logic by first breaking down this data into relevant elements.
Interpretation: Rearranging the elements and order of data through a process that moves from more concrete understanding (mostly descriptive) to more abstract ones that serve to enhance or develop some theoretical model.
Three Tests of Data Sufficiency:
- Taken-for-grantedness: You have taken into consideration everything; there isn’t anything else to look at (iterative process).
- Theoretical saturation: You do the study so many times that you do not obtain anything new.
- Heightened confidence: Confidence in the information you have gotten.
Dealing with Overwhelming Data:
- Take a break from your work.
- Talk to other people about the project, the findings, and doubts.
- Go back to your literature and theoretical framework to help you focus back on the important aspects of the research.
Rhetorical Analysis
Best used for when texts are there to persuade, seduce the public into believing, agreeing, or simply doing something.
3 Pillars of Rhetorical Analysis:
- Logos or rational reasoning
- Pathos or emotional appeal
- Ethos or the reputation of the speaker
The analyst should identify the following:
The structure of argumentation, the use of emotions, the mechanism through which the speaker builds and invokes credibility.
How to do Rhetorical Analysis:
Analyze the text and its components carefully. In this process, clarify the author, the main message, and the intended audience.
Once you have read the argumentative layer, read the text again with a different focus. You can start with emotions, then credibility, etc. At the interpretative stage, you will consider how the details of your analysis relate to the context of this text.
Additional Tips for Doing Rhetorical Analysis:
- Look at keywords and repetition.
- Specialized terminology.
- Multimodal analysis. (What is the background, the foreground, anything blurred, what is the model looking at, etc.?)
- Context.
Semiotic Analysis
Semiotic analysis reveals the implicit meanings of an image. Recommended for visuals like images in advertising, electoral campaign posters, or magazine covers.
Science of signs.
Sign: Something meaningful to us. A sign is the smallest unit of meaning.
Text: A collection of signs that are put together according to a series of composition rules (syntax).
Sign: Made up of a signified (the mental concept that it invokes) and the signifier (the form the sign takes).
Index: A sign that suggests a causal relationship (smoke is an index of fire).
Icon: A sign that represents what we see (passport photograph).
Symbol: Arbitrary meaning; its meaning needs to be learned (the logos of brands).
The arrangement of signs (co-presence, syntax) is important and not done by accident.
Chain of signification: Related to ideology: how the symbols are arranged according to how this set of ideas (ideology) is.
How to do Semiotic Analysis:
Identify all the signs in the text. After identifying the signs and putting them on a table (denotation), the analyst lists their connotations. Similarities and contrasts matter.
Weaknesses: However, semiotics does not look into how the consumer actually decodes the text.
Additional Tips for Semiotic Analysis
- Analyze few images in detail.
- To decode a text, you need to look at all the elements of the advertisement.
- Discuss the relationship between the text and the myth.