Semiotic Signs Analysis

The first chapter of her book analyses a class of media texts using semiotic signs and exploring the behaviour of audiences to those sign in advertisements. The extract "A Currency of Signs" introduces what semiotic signs are and how they work with media texts. Semiotic signs are meanings and interpretations humans create when observing something in Williamson's extract the semiotic signs are from her chosen advertisements. According to Ferdinand Saussure, a semiotician who laid the foundations of semiotics for society today signs only consists of two key elements. The two elements are a signifier and a signified, and this can only gain some meaning when "it has someone to mean to. Signifier, the material object, and the signified, which

A viewer's own interpretations of a text are important, as they will be drawing from their own codes and cultural values, which is what this text explores. The extract then has various visible examples of print advertisements in the media culture of that time and Williamson analyses these examples showing us the pattern that adverts have a certain way of working. Her argument and what she is fundamentally saying is that advertisements serve another purpose, that there is an advert behind the actual advertisement, to subconsciously get people ideologies with different messages. Adverts such as the Marlboro promoting cigarettes or a perfume advert also promoting how female should look and what is considered beautiful or not. For the cigarette advert, her idea is that "Connecting an object with an object" (Williamson, 1978:22) with the use of colour can then give the assumption that the cigarette and the other object have the same qualities. For example, A4 has a cup of coffee next to a pack of cigarettes which makes the cigarette more desirable creating suggestions of both being mildness and richness. The coffee "acts as an objective correlative" (Williamson, 1978:22) making the quality to invoke. Williamson explains this using differentiation where "the first function of an advertisement is to create a differentiation between one particular

Williamson was an author-tuned filmmaker who is also a professor and journalist teaching cultural studies at Maidstone College of art. The book was originally published in 1978 but has been republished more than fifteen times because the information written is still relevant to the world of media and human thinking. Williamson's to a semiotic approach media and her explanation on advertising has no meaning was praised for through her own experiences advertising is given a narrative to which it is given meaning. Jonathan Bignell a professor of film and television reinforces that by stating, "Contemporary ads do not directly ask us to buy products at all. The aim of ads is to engage us in their structure of meaning" (1997:31). One of the strengths of her book is that she identifies the structure of advertisements and how it affects people in society. People generally found her work insightful as she "drew on current semi-logical methods. The kind of cultural Marxist and structuralism which she applied has greatly influenced and persisted in other recent work" (Sinclair, 2012:6). Besides Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (1978) other notable works of hers where she analyses aspects of film and media include Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture (1988) and Deadline at Dawn: Film Writings