Assignment 2 for Language and Rhetoric
Topic 3
Semiotics is described as ‘science of signs’. Using examples from newspaper or magazines make a semiotic analysis of the visual ‘meaning making’ elements of at least two advertisements.
Semiotics is a study about the signs and the sign systems. It is based on French structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure’s works. Ferdinand de Saussure was the first who separated the notion of semiotics from the linguistics, defined it and gave scientific substantiations. He argued that the language is just one of the many ways of delivering a meaning and the other way is the sings and symbols. Since then the signs and the symbols are used in different spheres of our life. In advertising they are used to endow a meaning to advertised product or service. Thus they contribute a meaning to the visual elements of an advertisement, strengthens its rhetorical impact, and ‘naturalises’ it. This essay will be focused on semiotic analysis of the visual meaning making elements of two advertisements in order to show how it is reached.
In advertisements the sign consists of the signifier and the signified. Sometimes a product or a service can be the signified meaning of which is transferred from the visual meaning making elements like images, photos or graphics. Sometimes a product or a service can be the signifier itself and become a symbol differentiating and almost identifying the consumers by the product they buy and showing a particular class, way of life, interest and financial abilities of the consumers. This is that what Judith Williamson named as currency. She suggests that currency is something which has value and which is interchangeable. According to her as the currency is interchangeable and it can be transferred to other objects and give them ‘value’ too[1]. Gillian Dyer in her book Advertising as communication argues:
‘A sign is made up of the signifier, a material vehicle, and the signified, a mental concept or reference. A signifier has potential but not actual meaning whereas the signified is the concept or meaning which the signifier refers to’[2]
The first advertisement is an example where the product is the signified. This advertisement promoting Police sunglasses consists of photographic images of two people one of whom is Antonio Banderas. There are no any graphic signs excepting the product name Police. The semiotic analysis of this advertisement consists of two parts. Firstly, we need to identify the relation between the image of Banderas and the product. The product and Banderas are not linked by any narrative, simply by juxtaposition. But there is no need to link Banderas and the product. What advertisement does is to rely on our assumptions and show that they (Banderas and Police) have the same meaning. The advertisement showed it visually by wearing the sunglasses to Banderas. But there is subtle psychological link which runs beneath the surface in terms of what the image of Banderas mean to us and what Police is trying to mean to us too. Here the advertisement connects the person and the object: Banderas and Police. The photographic image of Banderas works as a referent system which relates to the product system and applies mythic meaning to the product. Here it works as the signifier which identifies the mythic value for the product which is the signified. According to Judith Williamson:
‘The product, which initially has no ‘meaning’, must be given value by a person or object which already a value to us, i.e. already means. Therefore at this stage something about the product is being signified and the correlating thing or person is the signifier’[3]
Thus the image of Banderas wearing Police sunglass was used not to invent meaning for sunglass but to transfer it to the product by means of the images which are already familiar to us. It is achieved because Banderas as an actor already has a meaning in one sign system so his image may be used to create a new mythic meaning relating to Police sunglasses. So the product is endowed with the mythic meaning. If he was not Spanish actor and well known for his passionate and desperate lover characters this advertisement would be meaningless. Jonathan Bignell in his work Media semiotics wrote:
‘The advertisement works by showing us a sign whose mythic meaning is easily readable (the photographed model is a sign for feminine beauty) and placing this sign next to another sign whose meaning is potentially ambiguous (the name of perfume, for instance)’[4]
It is worth considering the rest part of the advertisement. Firstly, the black colour of man’s T-shirt, hair and sunglasses are only black colours in the advertisement which leads our attention to the black sunglasses. The sunglasses of man and woman are visually merged which promotes an idea of attractiveness for the both sexes. Men may look like Banderas, women may meet a person like Banderas. The next meaning making elements of this advertisement is the graphic signs. The rolling screen word Eyelike behind the woman also can be related to the sunglasses and it may have a message to like our eyes and take care of them. It is worth to make point about the headline of this advertisement. Police is written twice: in simple fonts and in gothic fonts. The first headline is the original writing of the product’s name; the second one is the reflection of it written in a passionate style. Here the idea of the passionate reflection contributes to the mythic meaning transferred to the product by the image of Banderas. In the photo Banderas looks very simple, but what accentuates his image is supposed to be Police sunglasses. And anyone who bought these sunglasses may look very simple but these sunglasses may reflect him as passionate and elegant as Antonio Banderas. Judith Williamson wrote:
‘The technique of advertising is to correlate feelings, moods or attributes to tangible objects, linking possible unattainable things with those that are attainable, and thus reassuring us that the former are within reach’[5]
The second advertisement promotes a new online protection software Norton 360. This is an example when the product is the signifier. In this case the process of transferring a value works in the reverse way giving the significance to people. The first note that may be said about this advertisement is its brightness and a mass of mild yellow, red, green and blue colours in it. There are several visual signs in this advertisement. The first one is the photography of family in the kitchen which consists of other meaning making signs in the photography itself. The second visual sign is the headline ‘360 your online shopping’ in the form of pointing circle. The image of product itself is located on the bottom of the advertisement. Also there is a graphic sign – brand logo of producer – Symantec corporation.
The first and the main meaning making visual element in the structure of this advertisement is the pointing circle. One knows that in mathematics any circle is 360 degrees. As the name of the product is Norton 360, the circle makes logical emphasis on the name of the product.
The photography of this advertisement is worth discussing. It depicts a family in the kitchen which makes a shopping and has happy time together. As the kitchen is a place where the family members meet, cook together and share their feelings and impressions it has big associations about family values. Apparently the connotation of this images lead to the ideas about family happiness. In order to get the ideological meaning of this photography we need to analyse the images of people in the photography. It is a young couple with two children. The woman is in the centre of the photography, her husband is apart from the centre, and two children are at the different sides of the table. It is interesting to remark also the positions of the couple in the photography: she is sitting and making shopping (making decisions) while her husband is standing and washing dishes. Looking at this photo it is easy to recognise one of the today’s social myths about the still increasing role of woman in the society. Here it is brought ‘naturally’.
The image of woman is in the yellow circle. But there is a laptop in that circle too. Placing a laptop in the centre of the advertisement designers wanted to prove that online shopping became the inseparable part of the shopping process today. But as online shopping is mostly risky because of the different online threats here Norton 360 is positioned as a unique and as its title says All-In-One Security. It protects one’s PC. Protecting PC it also protects all ID numbers and passwords from different sorts of online threats. Thus Norton 360 saves one’s comfortable life, luxury and family happiness. This is the ideology promoted in this advertisement. Designers showed this ideology almost visually. The pointing circle covers all the family, surrounds them and puts them together reinforcing the ideology of the advertisement. This is an example how the form surpasses the content in advertisement.
The headline ‘360 your online shopping’ is worth considering. The number 360 seems almost meaningless here. But on other point of view it has equivalent meaning to any relevant verbs such as like ‘make better’, ‘do better’, ‘upgrade’, ‘made safer’ and so on. The linguistic sign on the bottom of the advertisement is also worth discussing. It says ‘We protect more people from more online threats than anyone in the world’. It is very reassuring sentence which makes consumers to rely on security qualities of this product. They also claim that they protect from more online threats thus making emphasis on the fact that online threats are more than people. Thus it raises consumers’ need in Norton 360.
Showing protected life guaranteed by Norton 360 the product works as the signifier of the safe life. Judith Williamson suggests that the product once having got meaning transferred from another object, it itself comes to mean something. She wrote:
‘The product and the ‘real’ or human world becomes linked in the ad, apparently naturally, and the product may and does ‘take over’ the reality on which it was, at first, dependent for its meaning. As product merges with the sign, its ‘correlative’ originally used to translate it to us, one absorbs the other and the product becomes the sign itself’[6]
Gillian Dyer also argues that the meaning of any advertisement is reached when the meaning of one sign (easily recognisable object) is transferred to the product thus creating mythic meaning of the product. She writes:
‘It is in this sense that advertisements should be seen as structures which function by transforming an object into something which is given meaning in terms of people. The meaning of one thing is transferred to or made interchangeable with another quality, whose value attaches itself to the product’[7]
Thus making semiotic analysis for two above discussed advertisements this paper gave example where the signs can be used differently. There is no need to understand signs as definite symbols, patterns or something else. The sign can be a photograph of somebody, an image of something or it can be symbol with particular cultural meaning. As we saw in those examples the signs are usually used as the signifier. And the sign which is used as the signifier is the sign (meaning) of something in another sign system. This particular feature of the signs Roland Barthes named as a second-order semiological system (Barthes, R. Mythologies). He suggested that anything which is the sign in the first system becomes a signifier in the second system. Sometimes the advertised product can be the signifier. Sometimes the product can be the signified the meaning of which is transferred from another sign system by means of signs. The purpose of signs in advertisement is to transfer that well-defined meaning to the product and to endow the mythic meaning to the product. Actually the signs are the meaning making elements of the advertisements.
Bibliography
- Bignell, J. 2002. Media semiotics. Manchester and New York. Manchester University Press.
- Dyer, G. 1992. Advertising as communication. London and New York, Routledge.
- Williamson, J. 2002. Decoding advertisement. Ideology and meaning in advertising. London. Marion Boyars.
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[1] Williamson, J. 2002. Decoding advertisement. Ideology and meaning in advertising. London. Marion Boyars. p 20
[2] Dyer, G. 1992. Advertising as communication. London and New York, Routledge. p 118.
[3] Williamson, J. 2002. Decoding advertisement. Ideology and meaning in advertising. London. Marion Boyars. p 31
[4] Bignell, J. 2002. Media semiotics. Manchester and New York. Manchester University Press. p 33
[5] Williamson, J. 2002. Decoding advertisement. Ideology and meaning in advertising. London. Marion Boyars. p 31
[6] Williamson, J. 2002. Decoding advertisement. Ideology and meaning in advertising. London. Marion Boyars. p 35
[7] Dyer, G. 1992. Advertising as communication. London and New York, Routledge. p 116
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