Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives (The R&L Series in Mass Communication)

Review

Marcel Danesi brings his background in semiotics and the study of youth culture to this perceptive analysis of popular culture. Highly detailed and engagingly written, his book is comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, accessible to all students, and full of remarkable insights into various aspects of popular culture. An important contribution to the subject and a must-read for everyone interested in popular culture, media, and communication. (Arthur Asa Berger, San Francisco State University)Marcel Danesi is a giant in the field. Since Roland Barthes, nobody has promoted the semiotics of popular culture so vigorously. In this new book, he provides an overview on 'pop' that encompasses the major media while analyzing the reasons for popular culture's power and pervasiveness. Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives will offer an invaluable entrée into the awareness of pop's vicissitudes for the student and the general reader alike. (Paul Cobley, London Metropolitan University)Marcel Danesi's remarkable synthetic ability and his keen analytic insight are everywhere apparent in his outstanding new book Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives. This informative, entertaining, perceptive, and articulate treatise on popular culture provides a penetrating investigation of the print and non-print manifestations of our ubiquitous "pop culture." By exploring its origins and examining its ever-evolving manifestations, Professor Danesi presents the reader with an absorbing compendium of popular culture including definitions, theory, and practice. This book explains popular culture's diverse forms and formulas in clear and precise language. Written by an internationally acclaimed expert in the field, this text will provide the reader with a lucid interpretive overview of the entire domain. (Frank Nuessel, University of Louisville)

About the Author

Marcel Danesi is professor of anthropology, semiotics, and communication theory at the University of Toronto. His books include My Son Is an Alien: A Cultural Portrait of Today's Youth and Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence, and he is the editor-in-chief of Semiotica.