Iconography in text shows the genre codes of narrative, characterization, themes and setting- a familiar stock of images or motifs, the connotations of which have become fixed; the visual things that are included are decor, costume and objects, certain 'typecast' performers, familiar patterns of dialogue, characters sound and music, and appropriate physical topography. Social realist who make films have used the term iconography of narrow streets lined with tiny urban dwellings in establishing shots of northern industrial towns to show economic hardship.

A french man called Roland Barthes introduced the concept of anchorage. Linguistic elements in a text (such as a caption) the preferred readings of an image (conversely the illustrative use of an image can anchor an ambiguous verbal text,

Denotation is defined as literal, obvious or commonsense meaning of a sign. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. So the linguistic sign " Ferrari" on an f450 spider denotate an Italian road car made by the makers Ferrari. The word connotation  is used to refer to the socio-cultural and personal associations of a sign. These are typically related to the interpreter's class, ages, gender and ethnicity. The word Ferrari would conotate high economic status and middle age because the people we see with the people you see having the cars and also the price of them. The signs are more open to interpretation in their conotation than their denotation.

Signfied(signifie): For Saussure, the sigmfier was one part of the sign. Saussure's signified is the mental concept represented by the signfier. Signfiers (signifiant): For Saussure, this was the other part of the sign. In the Saussurean tradition, the signfied is the form which a sign takes. Ferdinand Saussure proposed that a word or sign links a concept (signfied) with a sound or image (signfier). There relationship between the signfier and signfied is arbitrary. Words or signs are merely arbitrary man-made concepts sighnfiers on their own mean nothing. A sigh only has meaning as a part of a system. The meaning of words or signs emerges out of the differences that set them apart from other signs within the overarching system/structure. Modern semiotics involves the study not only of what we refer to as signs in everyday speech, but of anything which stands for something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. Comtemporay semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic sign systems. They study how meaning are made: as such, being concerbed not only with comminication but also with the construction but also with the construction and maintenance of reality. Semiotics and that branch of linguistics known as semantics have a common concern with the meaning of signs, but whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs mean.