Includes index.

Contents: Introduction: What is communication?: Communication theory: Origins -- Shannon and Weaver's model (1949) -- Redundancy and entropy -- Channel, medium, code -- Feedback -- Suggestions for further work -- Other models: Gerbner's model (1956) -- Lasswell's model (1948) -- Newcomb's model (1953) -- Westley and MacLean's model (1957) -- Jakobson's model (1960) -- Models and modelling -- Suggestions for further work -- Communication, meaning, and signs: Semiotics -- Signs and meaning -- Categories of signs -- Convention -- The organization of signs -- Suggestions for further work -- Codes: Codes: Basic concepts -- Analogue and digital codes -- Presentational codes -- Non-verbal communication -- Elaborated and restricted codes -- Broadcast and narrowcast codes -- Codes and commonality -- Convention and use -- Arbitrary codes (or logical codes) -- Aesthetic codes -- Suggestions for further work -- Signification: Denotation -- Connotation -- Myth -- Symbols -- Metaphor -- Metonymy -- Suggestions for further work -- Semiotic methods and applications: "A grief ago": poetic metaphor -- Pasta: visual metaphor -- Notting hill: realistic metonym -- Suggestions for further work -- Structuralist theory and applications -- Categorization and binary oppositions -- Anomalous categories -- Structured repetition -- Boundary rituals -- Nature and culture -- The structure of myth -- The structure of mass culture -- Application 1: ''The searchers" -- Application 2: the ''Weekly World News" -- Myth and social values -- Suggestions for further work -- Empirical methods: Empiricism -- Content analysis -- Content analysis and cultural values -- Semantic differential -- Uses and gratifications theory -- Audience ethnographies -- Suggestions for further work -- Ideology and meanings: Signification and culture -- Ideology -- Signs: ideology: meanings -- Understanding ideology -- Ideological analysis -- Resistances -- Suggestions for further work -- Conclusion