...Semiotic analysis of gender in advertising * * The Purpose of this paper is to write a semiotic analysis of the advertisement ' Kylie Minogue, ‘Inverse for men', that addresses the representation of gender. That is, how is femininity and masculinity is “constructed” within the advertisement? The advertisement was taken from a press release for this fragrance on sofeminine.co.uk, within the 'Him' section. SoFeminine.co.uk is a top UK website for women it is typically aimed at a target audience of ‘today’s busy women as they search the site for lifestyle information’ (http://www.sofeminine.co.uk/). My analysis of this advertisement will look at the key signifiers and what they are signifying, the denotation and connation’s in the advertisement and the technical codes – photographic imagery, in the visual image and how they represent and reinforce gender stereotypes. In the advertisement one female stands between two males. One of the males is fully clothed and stares into the camera the other male is semi nude. The Female in the picture stands with her back to the clothed male. Her arm is around the shoulder of the semi nude male, the other arm loops on top of the semi nude models arm that is reaching down her thigh. This denotative analysis is based on what is actually in the picture, “'denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign” (Chandler, Daniel (1994)). Given this is, it is important...
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...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”...
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...War propaganda posters were used throughout both World Wars and the Cold War. Different countries used them to different effect such as Germany using them to condemn the Jewish population and ostracise them, the West using them to present the Soviets as the foreign enemy and the Allies in the World Wars to create a sense of nationalism. This sense of nationalism is what is created in this War poster that a semiotic analysis will be conducted on. The colours, uniform, the line of men, lack of women and the text will be analysed in depth to understand this poster in terms of the war and what it meant for the Allies. Whilst this is a British poster, the uniform worn by the soldiers was very similar across all the Allies. The Triple Alliance...
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...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...
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...Semiotics: Signs, Syntax, and Linguistics Describe Advertising Mickey Mouse ears, sleigh bells, snowflakes, dog houses, mail boxes, and stop signs; chances are you know at least one of these things if not more. How do we describe them? In what way are they described to us? And above all How do we recognize and accept these things? The theory of semiotics aims to explain how we recognize these symbols in our lives and, more importantly tries to describe the way we communicate to, with, and around objects. The theory of semiotics has been around since the late 1800’s. A Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure developed the theory and explained it early on as the use of language and how certain symbols and objects obtain meaning. The theory or science of signs and their meanings became known popularly as semiotics. Language is something of a system of mutually defining entities. Saussure distinguished between diachronic and synchronic linguistics. Simply put the use of linguistics defines objects and the way that we, as a culture, see and describe the world with which we interact. From its inception the theory of semiotics has been useful in regards to all different aspects of communication. It can be used to examine persuasion, social interaction theory, media cultivation and penetration theories as well as interpersonal communication. This wide range of applications for this theory make it particularly pertinent to the discipline of communication. Large companies...
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...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...
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...Essay Title: No. 4) Analyze a movie poster from a film directed by Martin Scorsese and then, with reference to the ideas of Pierce and Saussure, apply techniques in Semiotics and Semiology in order to illustrate how the text can be interpreted. Any and every piece of text in this world has meaning, or a point it is trying to put across. If you look at a portrait, or a page in a book, different aspects of the picture, or the way the words are put together on the page, all have purpose; To convey a certain message. This technique of analyzing different parts of texts, using signs and symbols, is termed “semiotics. [1] In this essay, we shall be using the techniques of semiotics, to interpret a poster of renowned Director, Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster movie, “Shutter Island”. According to Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Pierce, two founding fathers of semiotics; a sign consists of “the signifier” and “the signified”. The signifier of a sign is the form in which the sign takes, and the signified stands for what the sign represents. [2] Let’s take for example, a picture of a young boy crying. In this scenario, the little boys face would be a sign, the act of him crying would be the signifier, and the signified would probably be that the boy is sad because something has gone wrong. Delving deeper into semiotic analysis, there are two types of relationships signs and signifiers can have with each other; they are syntagmatic or paradigmatic relationships. Signs and signifiers have...
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...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...
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...* ------------------------------------------------- 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...
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...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\...
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...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...
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...WHAT IS VISUAL SOCIAL SEMIOTICS? Semiotics is generally described as the “study of signs.” For a sign to exist, there must be meaning or content (the signified) manifested through some form of expression or representation (the sign). Figure 1 is a well-known painting by Rene Magritte that demonstrates this relationship in a striking and explicit manner. By putting the sentence This is not a pipe below a highly realistic representation of a pipe, Magritte reminds viewers that the image is not reality but artifice–in other words, a representation or sign. A thoughtful viewer might note that the word “pipe” itself is an arbitrary combination of four letters that conveys the concept of “pipe” through the form of written expression–once again, a sign. Signs exist within semiotic systems. For example, the green light in a traffic signal is a sign meaning “go” within the semiotic system of traffic control; words are signs in the semiotic system of language; gestures are signs within the semiotic system of nonverbal communication; and so on. Because semiotic systems encompass the entire range of human practices, Semiotics provides us with a potentially unifying conceptual framework and a set of methods and terms for use across the full range of signifying practices, which include gesture, posture, dress, writing, speech, photography, film, television, and radio…. As David Sless notes, “we consult linguists to find out about language, art historians or critics to find out about paintings...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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...
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