...A semiotic and discursive analysis of Givenchy’s Gentlemen Only advertisement Advertisements are common within society and we are constantly subjected to them in our everyday lives. On the surface, it is simply the way businesses market products. However some argue it also advertises lifestyles and social identities (Dyer, 1982). Semiotic analysis is the study of “signs” to understand the underlying rules of messages we receive, and looks at the sign itself, the codes which organise it and the cultural context in which the code and sign make sense (Fiske, 1990). Discursive analysis on the other hand focuses more on the “discourses” that give meaning to representations such as advertisements, and how representations produce social knowledge (Hall 1997). Both approaches have significant differences, yet when combined can help achieve a thorough analysis of advertisements in relation to the influence it has on social identity and society. Ferdinand de Saussure contributed greatly to semiotic study. He prophesised a study of “signs within a society” and labelled it “semiology” (Hall 1997). Saussure took a structural look at how signs constructed meaning by presenting a signifier which signifies certain ideas within a cultural context. These signifiers are understood through various codes which are embedded within specific cultures (Fiske, 1990). In the context of advertising, this model allows us to decipher the signifiers and what they signify, and in essence understand the “true”...
Words: 1013 - Pages: 5
...ANALYSIS OF THE KITE RUNNER NOVEL BY KHALED HOSSEINI AN ASSIGNMENT Presented to School of Foreign Languages STBA Nusa Mandiri In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Literary Criticism Assignment Name : Danang Dwi Harmoko SID : 21120017 ENGLISH LETTERS SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES STBA NUSA MANDIRI TANGERANG 2012 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1. Plot Summary of The Kite Runner Amir recalls an event that happened twenty-six years before, when he was still a boy in Afghanistan, and says that that made him who he is. Before the event, he lives in a nice home in Kabul, Afghanistan, with Baba, his father. They have two servants, Ali and his son, Hassan, who are Hazaras, an ethnic minority. Baba’s close friend, Rahim Khan, is also around often. When Afghanistan’s king is overthrown, things begin to change. One day, Amir and Hassan are playing when they run into three boys, Assef, Wali, and Kamal. Assef threatens to beat up Amir for hanging around with a Hazara, but Hassan uses his slingshot to stop Assef. Story skips to winter, when the kite-fighting tournament occurs. Boys cover their kite strings in glass and battle to see who can sever the string of the opposing kite. When a kite loses, boys chase and retrieve it, called kite running. When Amir wins the tournament, Hassan sets off to run the losing kite. Amir looks for him and finds Hassan trapped at the end of an alley, pinned with his pants down. Wali and Kamal hold him,...
Words: 1070 - Pages: 5
...DESIGN SCHOOL SOUTHERN AFRICA BACHELOR OF ARTS IN INTERIOR DESIGN by PRECIOUS CHIRWA SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS | DESIGN CULTURE 1B:ADVERT ANALYSIS | | | JHB CAMPUSDATE : 08 SEPTEMBER 2015LECTURER : GERDA LEROUX | | | Table of contents Page 1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 3 2. What are semiotics? …………………………………………………….. 4 3. The three orders of significations ……………………………………… 4 4. Advertisement analysis ………………………………………………….. 5 - 9 4.1. Pleasures by Estee Lauder image ……………………………. 5 4.2. Connotation ……………………………………………………… 7 4.3. Denotation ………………………………………………………... 7 - 8 4.4. Myth ……………………………………………………………….. 8 5. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………… 9 6. Reference list ……………………………………………………………… 10 In this essay one will discuss the analysis of semiotics of the perfume Pleasures by Estee Lauder advertisement touching on the connotation, denotation and the myths that are employed in the advertisement presented to the viewer or the person that the advertisement is intended for. One will examine the advertisement in terms of their status as signs, whose subordinate meanings not only give an impression that is positive to the product, but will also be compatible with, and harmonizing to the feminine context in which they were situated. Although the advertisement may not physically represent the product, it provides an important iconic representation of both the product...
Words: 2338 - Pages: 10
...The COJllribllfiol/ of Stl"//('/uml Sell/iotit's 6 The Contribution of Structural Semiotics to the Design of a Hypermarket l 11'TRODUCTION On I October 1986 at Dardilly Just northwest of lhe French city of Lyon Cofradcl~ opened a hypennarket affiliated with the Mammoulh cham. lis 7500 square-metres and the shopping centre that housed it fulfilled a longstanding need in that part of the Lyon suburbs where shopping facilitIes on that scale were inadequate. Many view this hypennarkcl as a concrete illustration of the type of contribution semiOlic:l can make in defining a new type of shopping experience. I Not only \\as such an approach used in the design conception based on efforts to reconcile the desires expressed by consumers frequenting the catchment area or those taking part in discussion groups ahout their shopping bcha\iour bUI it was all implemented in accordance with the requirements drawn up by the technical starr and management teams \\ Ithm thc Mammouth company. Furthermore a semiotic approach \\as used 10 perform a discourse analysis of the consumers' wishes. \\hlch \\as then used to define the general layout of the hypcnnarket as a whole. Semiotics thus played a twin role in the conception and design of the Lyon hypermarket. Firstly. semiotics provided an interpretative model for consumers' representations and expectations of what the hypermarket should provide. The usc of such a model facilitated the identification of the dirrerel1\...
Words: 2208 - Pages: 9
...CULTURAL CONTEXT IN ADVERTISEMENTS Effective advertising is possible only when the advertisement conveys the intended message, giving consideration to underlying cultural codes. Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their meaning, offers valuable tools for analyzing advertising to uncover strengths or weaknesses of ad campaigns. In general, advertising can communicate either a solution narrative (i.e. buy our product and it will solve your problems), or an enhancement narrative (your life is already good, but if you use our product it will be that much better). Below is the comparison of the message being conveyed in both the Western and the Chinese context: * Motorcycle: Whereas in a Western context a motorcycle represents freedom, adventure, and speed, in a Chinese context it is considered dangerous, noisy, and low status. * Open Landscape: For Westerners, the open landscape portrays independence and lifestyle enhancement. From the Chinese view, the countryside may be perceived as dirty and dusty. The codes present in the advertisement convey a very different message when translated into the a different cultural context, and do not result in communicating the message which was actually intended. Some examples where companies failed due to lack of understanding of cultural nuances are: * Car ‘Nova’ in Spain-This car was introduced in Spain Nova in Spanish means it wont go which the company failed to recognize before launching the product ...
Words: 375 - Pages: 2
...The Significance of Cordelia’s Silence in King Lear Cordelia’s silence in King Lear by Shakespeare can be analyzed through different views. Here in this essay I try to criticize this matter through the principles of Kate Millet, Louis Althusser’s hegemony, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Michele Foucault’s epitome and language. Although Cordelia’s presence in this play is not much frequent in comparison with the rest of other characters, her silence can reveal exciting information about the historical roots of renaissance. In order to provide a comprehensive approach toward the revelation of the Cordelia’s behavior, I have tried to add historical perspective to all the above mentioned critical thinkers. Kate Millet in her eminent book The Sexual Politics (1969), declares that our sex is determined at the moment of birth by biology and our sexuality is determined by social conventions. For instance, the society decrees that boys must be aggressive and active whereas girls are supposed to be humble and inactive. Now let’s see how far Kate Millet’s claims can be extended to Cordelia’s silence during Renaissance era. Well as we know, Renaissance was a patriarchal period in which men attained the highest jobs such as King, Earl, Minister, and the rest. But women usually had the lowest or the most humble jobs such as cooking and taking care of children. In such a society men used to control women. King Lear was not an exception during his own time. He was the king and had full...
Words: 1300 - Pages: 6
...executing a perilous task, communication is at its uttermost importance and the way we communicate can convey a vast array of connotations, which could be the difference between life and death. A good example of such a task is skydiving and therefore, this will be the lens to aid in this essay. The overall process of skydiving is long and drawn out with multiple stages of communication practices, ranging from the time of booking to landing on the right spot. Thus, this essay will break down each stage (booking, transportation, payment, transit to airport, equipment, taking off, jumping, landing) and also the different communication stages (group, individual, indirect, advertising, denotative, non-verbal communication). In extension, this analysis will aid in one’s understanding of communication on a regular basis, based on theories from a multitude of authors from different times and places. The process involved in making the booking for such an activity is where two people must collaborate to achieve an equal outcome. In simple terms, employees and the organization they work for want to sell their product, and the consumer want to buy it. In order to successfully obtain this goal there are multiple factors; including advertising, making your product available and confirming the purchase. In modern day society advertisements are often over-looked, explained by Berger as ‘seeing comes before words’ (1972 pp 7), which in this case relates to society being exposed to these advertisements...
Words: 2141 - Pages: 9
...through relating words with concepts like the word ‘silence’ which is a sign of communication that is indicative of meaning and it is ideological, it is also power to talk. Sign theory is an eccentric war of communication. It focuses on the discourse analysis where it focuses on language, power and ideology. Intelligence services are a key component of every state and their mandate is to ensure the security of states and they make use of the sign theory to supply the policy makers with information or intelligence which is fundamental in the policy making process. Evaluation and analysis’ role is to cast information into its proper intelligence framework and in the process minimising being biased. If evaluation and analysis is quality the intelligence given to policy makers will help policy makers to come up with quality policies and if the evaluation and analysis is poor obviously the policy makers will come up with ineffective policies. There are repercussions if intelligence services fail to analyse. Sign theory help in deductive, inductive and abductive types of reasoning. In this discourse I will define the sign theory, evaluation, analysis, four tools of analysis and the implications of sign theory to evaluation and analysis as a process which is scientific, logical, methodological and verifiable. Theory is a term that is misused and used in academics cycles. Du Ploy (2008) defines a theory as an abstract generalization that seeks to explain a phenomena. A theory provides...
Words: 17243 - Pages: 69
...* ------------------------------------------------- Text analysis provides some insight into media messages but only a critical political economy approach can adequately explain how the media work today * * Whoever Controls the media, controls the mind. This is an interesting quote by Jim Morrison that shows the power of the media and its messages at the present day. Media has played a huge role in the cultures it inhabited. Starting from the Printing Press, and then evolving into the radio, the television till the World Wide Web. The evolution of the mass media took many different shapes and with this evolution, it shaped our cultures and understandings differently, which caused its effects to be more influential. Throughout the history the mass media molded our ideologies by its messages and changed the way we look at things around us. “When we consume mass media, there are a lot of physical and mental activities going on” (Fourie, 2001, p.283). At the present time when we decide to sit and watch a movie, there are millions of messages being interpreted to us as audiences that shape how we speak, dress, and behave. It is believed that the media determines what we should know and how we should think. But the vital question is who controls the media and controls its messages, and how does the media work today. This essay will therefore attempt to discuss the different approaches that are used to analyze and evaluate media messages, and how these various approaches operate...
Words: 2372 - Pages: 10
...study attempts to investigate the representation of masculinity in the printed advertisement of Mens Biore Double Scrub. All phenomena in the advertisement are described. To present more analytical description, the signs found in the advertisement are analyzed based on Barthes’ orders of signification. Besides that, this study also employs Kress and Van Leeuwen’s method of reading images and intertextual analysis in order to obtain more comprehensive analysis. The result of this study shows that Mens Biore Double Scrub advertisement represents two different concepts of masculinity. The first one is the traditional concept of masculinity. The second one is the new concept of masculinity offered by the advertisement. Generally, words that are used to represent both concepts of masculinity are power, confidence, aggressiveness, competition, challenge, and bravery. The connotative signified success, financial independence, and physical attractiveness are emphasized to change the concept of traditional masculinity to be in line with the company’s need. Keywords: advertisement, semiotics, masculinity Abstrak: Penelitian ini berupaya untuk menganalisa representasi maskulinitas dalam iklan cetak Mens Biore Double Scrub. Seluruh fenomena dalam iklan tersebut dideskripsikan. Untuk menyajikan deskripsi yang analitis, tanda-tanda yang ditemukan dalam iklan tersebut dianalisa berdasarkan gagasan orders of signification milik Barthes. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga menerapkan metode reading...
Words: 3643 - Pages: 15
...IMAGES IN ADVERTISING: THE NEED FOR A THEORY OF VISUAL RHETORIC In this article, we are dealing with a meaning and representative reality of pictures. In todays world there are many pictures, shown and done in many different ways. We have various kinds of pictures in rich colours and textures. The objective of this article is to reorient the study of advertising images by advocating the development of a theory of visual rhetoric. When we are taking about rhetorical theory, we say that it is an interpretative theory that frames a message as an interested party’s attempt to influence an audience. The sender’s message must be send as obvious one. It is also important how the message is sent – style of delivery. It is important that audience understand the message, therefore he uses shared knowledge of various vocabularies and conventions. Receiver/s use this same body of cultural knowledge to read the message, infer it, evaluate the argument and formulate a response. If we want to explain advertising images as a rhetoric one, we need to understand that visuals must have certain capabilities and characteristics. Visual elements are for representing concepts, abstractions, actions, etc. There must be an ability to guide the order of argumentation and visual elements need to carry meaningful variation in manner of delivery. To explain a visual communication complex we would need a symbol theory of pictures: one in which visuals signify by convention and not by resemblance to...
Words: 3114 - Pages: 13
...Post 1 Words - 774 Still Image Analysis Option B) Semiotic Analysis of a Personal Photograph that you have Previously posted online Issues to address: How does this image have semiotic potency? Identify and explain the signs in this image? What are the denotative and connotative signs in this image? Who is the imagined audience for this image and why? (who did you wish to see this image when you posted it?) How does the gaze operate in this photograph? To determine whether or not the above image has semiotic potency, one should be equipped with a basic knowledge of semiotics. According to Gill Branston, the author of The Media Student's Book, Semiotics "is a theory of signs, and how they work to produce meanings, or the study of how things come to have significance. This includes signs devised to convey meanings (langage, badges) as well as 'symptoms' (as in 'thats' the sign of swine flu'). (Branston 12) Potency is an evaluation of strong or weak, which in this case involves the strong or weak signs of semiotics that appear in the image. At first glance, a viewer may notice 2 noticeable subjects of the image. There is a vehicle, and there is young man next to the vehicle. This image although not an advertisment, does advertise an event or a special moment to the viewer. Upon viewing the image, a viewer would notice that the young man is not wearing casual clothing. He is dressed in formal wear. A deeper study of what he is wearing is where semiotics would start to show. He is wearing...
Words: 925 - Pages: 4
...Video Analysis Through out the course we have been wrestling with how the media is made and who influences it. A lot of time there are underlying narratives to stories produced in the media. They use everything from lighting to shot angles to make a certain impression on the viewer. In this essay I will do a video analysis on Adele’s song “Someone like you. My goal is to illustrate my understanding of the many ways media producers make meaning and how we interpret that meaning. I will use narrative and semiotic analysis to see what strategies are being used to make the video. Through a careful analysis of how the video is being made we can see what type of meaning is trying to be expressed. Theoretical Frame To be able to do a video analysis it is important to understand semiotics. Semiotics is the discipline that studies the nature of any type of communication (Grossberg p.143). Its important to understand this does not only involve language but other forms of communicating such as traffic light codes, dress codes, or rolls that men and woman play. In all these things we are communicating with each other by using a system that we all understand and can relate to. Semiotics define that system as codes and those codes are constructed signs. For example the English language is a code that we use to communicate with each other. The code consist of words or signs that arbitrarily symbolize something for us. As mentioned above the traffic light is another code of communicating...
Words: 1569 - Pages: 7
...between system developers and business owner, or between customers and the online business system. Moreover, e-commerce system should be adapted with the whole business environment such as business norms and behavior, customer practice, business rules and government policy. However, Semiotic that is ‘the science of signs’ has brought many approaches to facilitate the process of understand signs’ meaning. The approach of organizational semiotic defied the organization as a group of social norms and emphasizes on the people and their role and responsibility in order to merge them when analyzing and designing information system (Stamper et al, 2004). For e-commerce systems, there is a necessity of clear meaning for each symbol, icon and image because almost all transactions done through the web system without human agent involvement. Therefore, semiotic methodologies have been improved to obtain effective communication and interpretation between e-commerce system and user, and to be compatible with the sophisticated information system. This paper aims to apply semiotic method and organizational analysis on the design of online shopping website after giving background information about semiotic concepts and the new business generation...
Words: 2949 - Pages: 12
...SEMIOTICS ANALYSIS ESSAY Advertisements are a smart tool and technique used to promote and sell various products. Using mass media, it aims to persuade potential consumers that there is a correlation between the brand and a lifestyle or identity, which is considered enviable.(John Berger, Ways of Seeing) Semiotics, a concept developed by Ferdinand de Saussaure is a useful tool for analysing advertisements. However, Hodge and Kress (year and page number) recommended that semiotic analysis could also be used as a manner of understanding communication, including media texts. The essence of semiotics is ‘the science of signs, or the study of signs and sign systems’ (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, 2009:133). Media images often emphasize hegemonic representations of gender, race and class in the South African context, and in this specific advertisement BIC reinforced an ideology regarding the manner woman should portray themselves. Using semiotics, I will be deconstructing the advertisement and will argue, through drawing on xy’s concept of racial hegemony, that BIC created an advertisement that reinforces gemonic notions of race, class and gender. . ‘The denotative meaning of an advertisement is the most basic component. This is the most obvious meaning of a sign which can be expressed by describing what is directly seen.’ (Gottdiener, 1995:15) In the BIC advertisement, there is a woman that looks approximately 30 years old. Regarding racial classification, this woman is considered...
Words: 1606 - Pages: 7
