Roland Barthes developed a range of semiotic tools to analyse the cultural meanings

Semiotics can be defined as the study of symbols and signs particularly with regard to how they are used to create meaning and communicate it to others. Semiotics also offers tools that make it possible to uncover the cultural conventions and codes that highlight the period to which a setting was placed and interpret meanings behind the symbols (Berger, 2014). In the pilot episode of “That 70s Show”, it is possible to apply semiotic analysis since there are various signs and symbols that reveal different elements of the show. Different signifiers in the episode and what they portray helps the audience to interpret the message that the producer is trying to convey. That 70s Show has a large presence of signs, signifiers, codes and ideologies that relate to teenage relationships and their lives in general during the 1970s. Additionally, it is important to highlight character placement and the semiotics involved pertaining to the viewers.

Through visual anthropology, images, ads, and cartoons are constantly changing individual’s views and the world in which they live in. Images are not merely pictures to state the obvious, they are pictures that have a deeper meaning. Whether the meaning is shown or not shown, they convey representation of something more meaningful in the end. Stuart Hall

Multimodal text plays a huge role in the entertainment industry, but how they promote and influence audiences to buy their products depends highly on how they present their advertisement. In the famous Old Spice commercial many rhetorical appeals are used, and although this advertisement little to realistically describes the product they are advertising, It's clever and subtle use of all three appeals, pathos, logos, and ethos, persuaded many people to switch to Old Spice and at the same time helped Old Spice reach its target audience, which is men.

Quite often an image is easy to understand. Advertisements shout “Buy my product!”, and movie posters suggest that people watch the indicated movie. An image that is easily interpreted is Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with Stoneware Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread (Sturken & Cartwright, 14). The image plainly displays the items stated in the title. There is little emotional reaction for this image and little thought required to examine it. Sometimes the image requires lots of interpretation to become clear, but even then the image may still be unclear. The TV show Pretty Little Liars is an excellent example of this. In each episode, the main characters either get nearer or farther from discovering the identity of the person sending them cryptic messages. The audience does not know who this person is, and fans get together after every episode to try to decipher what every little detail means and whether the details help lean fans towards their goal. The artist decides how easy deciphering their work is going to be, and the ease of interpretation is based on that. The audience is the ultimate decision-maker for the meaning of the image, but the artist can lead them a certain

The space I chose to observe and write about for this essay is ULTA Beauty in the Greenwood Mall. In this analysis, I will be focusing on the impact of advertisements and products within class, gender, and beauty through the study of semiotics, connotation, and denotation. ULTA sells haircare products, skin care products, perfumes and cologne, high end makeup brands, and drug store makeup brands as well.

In Chapter Seven of Practices of Looking, we start to explore in the ideas of advertising, consumer cultures and desire. Everyday, we are faced with advertisements through newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, billboards, public transportation such as buses and taxis, clothing, the internet, etc. Logos, such as signs, or anything that resemble a brand, are everywhere, they are on clothing, household items, electronics, cars, etc. Consumers are always showing off their brands and advertisements and we are used to seeing those brands and advertisements in an everyday setting. In modern media, advertisers are pressured to always change the ways they show off and get the attention to consumers, old and new. Advertisers also used present figures who were glamorous. Advertisements set up a certain relationship between the product and its meaning to sell the products and the hidden meaning we link to each of the products. Advertisements use the language of conversion. Advertisers try to create a customer relationship to the brand to try to form them as familiar, necessary, and also likeable.

Today’s quick-moving world of technology has media texts such as advertisements to make sure that people understand with just a glance. Having adverts on magazines, social media and billboards allow them to use tools such as semiology, genre and narrative because it makes their messages clear instantly. These signs allow us to carry meaning through advertisements, connotations and the signification process. These tools let brands, mainly celebrities, and the option to produce and create a myth of the product such as “Be daring. Be an inspiration” to sell it to the world. We are in a time where advertisers use ‘simplicity’ in their adverts; there are no more paragraphs. It is mainly down to the person and the few words shown in that advert.

For my semiotic analysis essay i have chosen to evaluate the Oxfam’s ‘Lose yourself - Vintage’ campaign. This will be used to show how advertising uses codes to develop an image in order to attract customers. “Advertising is the official art of the advanced industrial nations of the west”, the industry uses a wide variety of techniques to get attract the audience. The placement of particular text, imagery, colours and other signs is an imperative aspect to what makes an advert successful.

In order to achieve a deeper understanding of what this quote really means, an analysis of the context of the quote must be established. This quote coincides with Barthes’ philosophy during his transition from structuralism to post-structuralism. In 1968, Barthes wrote an impactful essay, Death of the Author. In this essay, he explored a radically different viewpoint of authorship than what was popular at the time. According to his viewpoint, a work of literature was not finished when published by its’ author, he wouldn’t even consider it a complete work. According to him, “to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (Barthes 5). Barthes did

Advertisements, in the twenty-first century, are an ever-present medium of influence in our day-to-day lives. This notoriously ubiquitous form of publicity has become so intricately woven into our cultural and societal presence that we have learned to absorb the messages put forth by advertisements, often without any question as to their credibility. Advertisers position readers to accept the messages being conveyed, and in doing so, attain an unsettling degree of power over their readers, with the ability to exploit feelings, emotions and desires through the use of clever discourses, images and symbols. In order to undermine the influence and pervasive nature of advertising,

When analysing all of the advertising around us, sometimes we don’t look at what the true message of a commercial really is. We live in a world that is controlled by mass media and because of this advertisers are trying harder each year to outdo themselves and their competitors. Rhetors use techniques in their advertisements such as fantasies or surrealism to catch the attention of their audience. Companies like Audi pour millions of dollars into their marketing teams to make sure their cars look the best and attract consumers. Commercials that are shown on television today are great examples of rhetorical artifacts because of the many techniques being exercised by the rhetor. Analyzing this through the lens of rhetorical

In his essay The Rhetoric of The Image, Roland Barthes explores the relationship between image and meaning. He centres his discussion around the advertisement as advertising is a medium in which there is an intended message being sent to the viewer. Barthes puts forward that if an image contains signs, in advertising the signs are ‘full’, as these signs are formed with the viewer in mind so that the intended message is not missed.

The theory of semiotics, as proposed by Roland Barthes, has been used to analyze advertisements and the effectiveness of advertisements on viewers. In the articles that I researched that used semiotics to analyze particular advertisements, I found four common and related themes. First, the articles mentioned that the viewer determines the meaning of the advertisement or the viewer interprets the advertisement. Second, this meaning that the viewer assigns to the advertisement is largely determined by context, both social and cultural. Third, advertisers use culture and predominant cultural beliefs in their advertisements in efforts to reach their audience more effectively. Finally, these advertisements actually end up supporting the

The Reception Theory works with the principal idea that “it is the notion that audiences don’t just absorb everything they are told but are actually involved, sometimes unconsciously, in making sense of any given message as it relates to them in their own personal contexts.” Simply stated, creative work is not just passively received by the audience but rather, they interpret the meaning of texts based on their own cultural backgrounds and personal experience, which then creates the relationship between the viewer and the work. However, when used in analyzing the meaning behind advertisements the general public is exposed to everyday, especially those concerning the sex objectification of women, researchers can further gather substantive results

In Barthes’ “Rhetoric of The Image” he writes about image semiotics and the approach to images, the way they are presented and perceived. He begins with giving us the origins of the word “Image”, and it is of Greek origin meaning “Imitation”. And so he continues to propose two main important questions: “can analogical representation (the "copy") produce true systems of signs and not merely simple agglutinations of symbols? (Barthes 32)” And also: “Is it possible to conceive of an analogical "code"(as opposed to a digital one)? (Barthes 32)”