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Semiotic Analysis Essay

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SEMIOTICS ANALYSIS ESSAY Advertisements are a smart tool and technique which is used to promote and sell various products. Using mass media, it aims to persuade potential consumers that there is some sort of direct correlation between the brand and a lifestyle or identity, which is considered enviable. Due to the depiction of various images and words in advertisements, debates regarding the advertisement often arise. Semiotics was initially developed by Ferdinand de Saussaure for the study of language. However, Hodge and Kress 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 …show more content…

It was implied that BIC was sexist as the advertisement portrays the idea that in order to attain success in the business world, women need to think like men, thus seeing the world through the lens of a man’s perspective. Gender inequality remains a prominent issue in South African society. Research has shown that in media, there is an intersection between gender and other social constructs such as race and class. Findings suggest that in general White men were portrayed as powerful; White women as sex objects, domesticated, and romantically successful; Black men as aggressive; and Black women as inconsequential. These representations are argued to reinforce subtle prejudice against women in general and African Americans in particular. (Luyt, …show more content…

This includes the iconic sign of a cartoon holding an oversized BIC pen. An iconic sign means that the image shown, does in fact resemble the thing in reality. The name of the product, namely BIC is an example of an indexical sign as it is printed in bold which indicates that this product is of great importance and in a sense bold. Despite the indexical sign in the bottom right corner which has a direct correlation to the message of the advertisement, the text doesn’t support it entirely. The BIC Logo, which is an example of an indexical sign as it is referring to something else, is situated in the far right bottom corner of the advertisement. The word BIC is in bold and uppercase text which is eye catching and immediately draws the viewer’s attention to the product being

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For example the words, “More”, “Doctors”, and “Camels” are not only in a large font size and all caps, but the first letter of each word is in red. This draws the reader to those words, allowing the reader to begin to associate doctors with Camels signature cigarettes. Which, in turn, gets people to trust Camels similarly to how they would trust doctors. At the top left of the advertisement the author uses ethos to describe the type of person who smokes Camel products. “The doctor is a scientist, a diplomat, and a friendly sympathetic human being all in one…”

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During Super Bowl Sunday, millions of people across the globe tune in to watch the game while also gawking at some of the most popular commercials of the year. Coca-Cola presented its commercial “Love Story” during this past Super Bowl. They are known for having memorable and popular advertisements, this past one was no different. “Love Story” persuades the average person to drink a Coke with any meal along with the ones they cherish.

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" Journal of Black Studies 39.1 (2007): 5-21. Web. 2 Mar. 2015. The studies of this article examine the images of men and women that advertisements perpetuate. Mass media is a widely accessible resource that presents positive and negative portrayals.

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Since the Civil Rights movement, activists have deemed underrepresentation the and malrepresentation of African American women in media a concern. A research report led by Joanna Schug, a professor with a Ph.D. in behavioural sciences, compiled data about six popular magazines. Her study concluded magazines underrepresented African Americans who were also “ more likely to be men” (Zagursky 14). The study itself is strictly about magazine, but the findings can be applied to other forms of media to some extent. Furthermore, the negative portrayal of African American women reinforces stereotypes in real life.

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There are numerous stereotypes within television shows; portraying black women as happy, overweight, and always in the kitchen, or as rude, loud, “gold diggers” (Adams-Bass, Bentley-Edwards, & Stevenson, 2014, n.p.). It is believed that if stereotypical images in media are replaced with realistic images, it could benefit African Americans. For example, showing them in managerial positions or positions of authority could support getting them to those positions (Stevenson & Swayne, 1999, n.p.). In a study done on African American portrayal in business-to-business direct mail, they found that the percent of ads showing African Americans were almost equal to the percent of African Americans working in the business world (Stevenson &

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The objectification of women contains the act of ignoring the personal and intellectual capacities and potentialities of a female; and reducing a women’s value/worth or role in society to that of an instrument for the sexual pleasure that she can produce in minds of another. The representation of women using sexualized images that have increased significantly in the amount and also the severity of the images that’s been used explicitly throughout the 20th century. Advertisement generally represent women as sexual objects, subordinated to men, and even as objects of sexual violence, and such advertisements contribute to discrimination against women in the workplace, and normalize attitudes which results in sexual harassment and even violence

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These texts are analysed through multimodal discourse analysis to identify how verbal and visual signs relate within the text to create a meaningful message (Kress & Van Leeuwan, 2006). Kress and Van Leeuwan (2006) provide three interrelated systems which are used in the formation of multimodal text and the meaning within the text. These systems include informational value, salience and framing. Informational value is the placement of various signs in the multimodal text and how this placement contributes to the meaning of the text (Kress & Van Leeuwan, 2006).

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