- One way to explore broadly similar processes would focus on some of the key inferences which are involved in interpreting the ad. Inference involves drawing on your own existing knowledge rather than simply on what is explicit in the ad. This requires very detailed analysis, perhaps of how you make sense of the ad (though you couldn't comment on similarities without checking this against interpretation by others).
- Alternatively, you could focus on diversity of interpretation. Clearly, this approach demands empirical evidence of how different viewers/readers/listeners seem to interpret the ads on which you are focusing. It would be likely to consider such factors as class, age, gender and ethnicity. Note, however, that this may take you beyond the intended audience.
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| Example
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Sign | Magazine advertisements
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Signifiers (also
paradigms - try the
'Commutation Test')
| Images of objects, people and places; words
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Signified (also involves
denotation and connotation; consider
binary oppositions)
| Concrete referents and/or abstract concepts
|
Codes | Technical: Typography; Photographic
(e.g. shot size, angle, lens type,
focus, framing); Codes of Lighting and
Colour. Others: Setting; Props;
Character; Dress Codes; Verbal Codes
(including
Rhetorical Codes:
'Appeals'); Body Language.
Broadcast or Narrowcast Codes?
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Syntagmatic dimension
| Spatial as well as temporal relationships between elements
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Intertextuality
| Any allusions to other ads,
other treatments of theme or the magazine it is a part of?
| Code users | Target audience?
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- For what academic purposes are you analysing advertisements?
- How do your current purposes differ from those of others who have also analysed ads?
- What aspects of the ads will be your main concern?
- What general approach will you adopt (e.g. semiotic analysis, content analysis, linguistic analysis, rhetorical analysis or a psychological framework)?
- Why are you adopting this approach?
- What are the strengths of this approach?
- What published examples of the approach do you know?
- To what extent do these offer useful models?
- What different dimensions do you seek to cover?
- Which advertisements will you compare/contrast and why?
- Are they similar in content (e.g. product), style, intended audience or medium?
This list is very freely adapted from that of Jib Fowles (1996).
- What exactly is being advertised?
- Where and when did the ad appear?
- Why might it have appeared there and then rather than elsewhere?
- What appears to be the intended audience?
- What suggests this?
- In what ways does it utilize features of the particular medium used (poster, television, film, radio or magazine)?
- What graphic mode(s) is/are used (e.g. still photography, drawing, animation, live action)?
- Describe the overall design.
- Where is it set in space and time?
- Who are the participants?
- What do they do?
- What key objects are featured?
- What part is played by words (choice of words, typography/voiceover)?
- What part is played by the use of sound and/or light?
- Which features are foregrounded and which are backgrounded?
- What significance might all of these features have for the intended viewers/readers/listeners?
- What key inferences must the viewers/readers/listeners make to make sense of the ad?
- What intertextual references can you discern (to other ads, to other genres, to other people etc.)?
- How else does the ad seek your involvement?
- With what is the product associated?
- What does the product seem to symbolize?
- What does the ad seem to suggest about gender roles, class/status, age, ethnicity or self-identity?
- What cultural assumptions and values seem to be involved?
- What use is made of humour, and to what effect?
- What do you regard as the most likely preferred interpretation offered in the ad?
- What scope does there seem to be for alternative interpretations?
- What aspects of the ads has your approach revealed?
- What are the limitations of your approach?
- What features of the ads has it tended to downplay?
- How could such limitations be overcome in future studies?
- What have you learned from the exercise?
Relevant Weblinks
- Semiotic Analysis of Advertisements: Impulse Chance Encounter commercial [pdf format]
- Semiotic Analysis of Advertisements: Levi's Launderette commercial [pdf format]
- Semiotic Analysis of Advertisements: Silk Cut and Marlboro Posters
- Semiotic Analysis of Advertisements: Wrigley's Last Stick commercial
Key Module Links
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