Semiotic Analysis
Gurminder Kambo – 090258100
CS 235
Naveen Joshi
March 8, 2012
Semiotic Analysis Assignment
In modern western society, advertisements dominate our culture and consumer affairs. We are bombarded with thousands of advertisements everyday, which become a part of our everyday lives. Culture determines the taste of consumers, advertisements is a tool to sell products to the general public that were influenced by our cultural trends. This could be telling us how to feel, what to like and what to buy and fulfilling those cravings by presenting us a product. Everyone knows the saying ‘Sex Sells’. Advertisers use this attribute and try to associate their products with sexual imagery hoping to get attachment to consumers subconscious mind. I will approach this advertisement at the dominant level, meaning that the preferred reading of society conveys the dominant values of society (Joshi, February 29, 2012). In sexual oriented advertisements, today’s society objectify woman and use them as a tool to attract consumers. Since sexual oriented advertisements are considered patriarchal, I am going to perform a dominant reading of the society and argue that objectification of woman is taking place and are depicted as sexual oriented objects.
Structuralism is a theoretical method and a way of thinking about and acting in the world concerning with the perception, description, and manipulation of structures The social world has an underlying structure that can be revealed, one way to reveal this structure is by semiotics (Joshi, February 29, 2012). Semiotics is the study of signs that construct a meaning. A Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure first derived the theory of semiotics. Semiotic analysis was created to study communication and language. Saussure introduced two concepts that signs must have, a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the physical form of the sign; it's the component that delivers the message. The signified is the mental image associated or
CS 235
Naveen Joshi
March 8, 2012
Semiotic Analysis Assignment
In modern western society, advertisements dominate our culture and consumer affairs. We are bombarded with thousands of advertisements everyday, which become a part of our everyday lives. Culture determines the taste of consumers, advertisements is a tool to sell products to the general public that were influenced by our cultural trends. This could be telling us how to feel, what to like and what to buy and fulfilling those cravings by presenting us a product. Everyone knows the saying ‘Sex Sells’. Advertisers use this attribute and try to associate their products with sexual imagery hoping to get attachment to consumers subconscious mind. I will approach this advertisement at the dominant level, meaning that the preferred reading of society conveys the dominant values of society (Joshi, February 29, 2012). In sexual oriented advertisements, today’s society objectify woman and use them as a tool to attract consumers. Since sexual oriented advertisements are considered patriarchal, I am going to perform a dominant reading of the society and argue that objectification of woman is taking place and are depicted as sexual oriented objects.
Structuralism is a theoretical method and a way of thinking about and acting in the world concerning with the perception, description, and manipulation of structures The social world has an underlying structure that can be revealed, one way to reveal this structure is by semiotics (Joshi, February 29, 2012). Semiotics is the study of signs that construct a meaning. A Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure first derived the theory of semiotics. Semiotic analysis was created to study communication and language. Saussure introduced two concepts that signs must have, a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the physical form of the sign; it's the component that delivers the message. The signified is the mental image associated or