John B Thompson Analysis

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1. What John B. Thompson meant by the “symbolic forms” these forms are generally mainly under the rulebook of the notion of culture. Therefor linking symbolic forms with a concept of culture. According to Thompson “many analysts would agree that the study of cultural phenomena is a concern of central importance for the social sciences as a whole” (Thompson 1990: 123). This lead to the understanding that the significance of culture is a concern.

A matter of significant actions and expressions for instance utterances, as a phrase that can be sung; symbols within the text such as staff notation; musical text within a piece for example dynamics, lyrics and the lead score; and artifacts of diverse kinds such as musical instruments for instance …show more content…

These symbolic forms are ‘produced, constructed or employed’ (Thompson 1990: 138) by a topic who is producing or employing such forms is practicing certain goals or determinations and is pursuing to express himself or herself, or what is intended. In regard symbolic forms fluctuate from ordinary arrangements of “stones on the seashore or clouds in the sky” (Thompson 1990: 138). In certain animistic theories, ordinary arrangements may obtain a symbolic attractiveness and may be regarded as significant in some appreciation, though ordinary configurations obtain this attractiveness in so far as they are seen as the communication of an intentional, determined subject. Thompson did not suggest that the meaning of symbolic forms or of the essential rudiments of symbolic forms that can be analyzed singularly or systematically in terms of what the artist anticipated or what was meant by …show more content…

The third characteristic within Thompson’s book is the ‘Structural approach’. The Symbolic form shows how cultural symbolic forms are constructed and how all elements are related to each other for in visual art forms we talk about the arrangement of the subject matter. Structure consists out of different languages such as the angle of the shot, what is included and excluded in the shot, composition, background and lighting. The structure of visual art forms such as photographs, art works such as paintings and how they look; what you see and how you interpret it (Thompson 1990: 141).

According to Thompson he meant that symbolic forms are formations, which demonstrate an expressed structure and these structures consist out of rudiments that are in determinate associations with one another (Thompson 1990: 141). These rudiments and their interrelations contain a structure, which can be formally analyzed, for instance collocation of words and images in a representation or the description structure of a fairytale (Thompson 1990:

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