Semiotics And Signs In Advertising Case Study

MESSAGES IN SISLEY’S ADVERTISEMENT – THE STUDY OF SCIENCE AND SEMIOTICS.

Submitted to

Management Development Institute of Singapore

In conjunction with

University of Sunderland

In partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Media, Culture and Communication (Top-Up)

Supervised by: Mr. Fuadi Rahmat

For: Professor Julia Knight

Name: Samuel Shane Singh Dhillon

Class No: BCCE51704A

NRIC/Student Pass: S7936648Z

Date: 8th September 2017

CONTENTS

• Introduction Page 3

• Case Study on Sisley’s Print Advertisement Page 3

• Semiotics and Signs in Advertising Page 3

• Critical Discourse Analysis Page 5

• Conclusion Page 6

• Bibliography Page 8

• Annexes Page

Saussure saw a sense of purpose that comes when there is an association or relationship between the forms of a Marker with an idea. Whereby a Marker is a meaningful sound or graffiti that is a mental picture or concept. Semiotics creates a meaning which the object, not only contains the complex information, but also carries emotional impact for the audience. Human senses will catch the signal and then pull the impression to the brain, which leads to a conclusion of subjective meanings, depending on the perspective of each audience. Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning. Our actions and thoughts (what we do automatically) are often governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions, dependent on our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly. For instance, when we see the different colours of a traffic light, we automatically know how to react to them. We know this without even thinking about it. But this is sign which has been established by cultural convention over a long period of time and which we learn as children, requiring a great deal of unconscious cultural knowledge to understand its meaning. Everyone is a Semiotician, because everyone is constantly unconsciously

In other words, the Signifier is defined as something that we “see” and invokes the concept of the Signified, which is something that we “think”, therefore merging to deduce the Sign that has occurred, which is also anything that conveys meaning. For example, in a crucifix Sign, the brown cross would be the Signifier and the religion of Christianity associated to that, would then be the Signified. The Signifier is also further dissected into three types, namely the Icon, Symbol and Index. Under the visual category of the Signifier, the Icon is basically the “literal” physical resemblance of the object, which is instantly recognizable and does not need to be learned (illustrative or diagrammatic), an example would be the ‘no smoking’ sign. The Symbol however, has no resemblance to the object and must be “learned”, either through cultural knowledge or understanding to derive its meaning, some examples are the ‘homepage icon’ resembling a house and flags being a representation of different countries or organizations. As for the Index, it can only exist because of a physical Signifier, therefore being “implied” to resemble the object, some examples would be smoke, an Index indicative of fire and traffic signs like the ‘slippery road surface’ sign (Marshall & Werndly 2002). The Signified is