Suggested Reading: Semiotics of Advertising

• Alexander, Monty (1995) 'Big Talk, Small Talk: BT's Strategic Use of Semiotics in Planning its Current Advertising' [WWW document] URL RESTRICTED
• Alexander, Monty (2000) 'Codes and Contexts: Practical Semiotics for the Qualitative Researcher' [WWW document] URL RESTRICTED
• Alexander, Monty (nd) 'The Myth at the Heart of the Brand' [WWW document] URL RESTRICTED
• Barthes, Roland (1963) 'The Advertising Message', in Barthes (1994) The Semiotic Challenge (trans. Richard Howard). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 173-8
• Barthes, Roland (1964) 'The Rhetoric of the Image', in Barthes (1977) Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana, pp. 32-51
• Beasley, Ron, Marcel Danesi & Paul Perron (2000) Signs for Sale: An Outline of Semiotic Analysis for Advertisers and Marketers. New York: Legas
• Beasley, Ron & Marcel Danesi (2002) Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
• Bell, Steve (2001) 'The Signs Are There' Marketing Week 27th September [WWW document] URL http://www.space-doctors.com/download.php?file=cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/marketing-week.pdf
• Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin (not explicitly semiotic but very useful)
• Bignell, Jonathan (2002) Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press (Chapter 2) [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
• Chandler, Daniel (2007) Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edition). London: Routledge [contains new material, particularly on Roman Jakobson]
• Chandler, Daniel & Merris Griffiths (2000) 'Gender-differentiated production features in toy commercials', Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44(3): 503-520; [WWW document] URL RESTRICTED
• Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011) Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Cook, Guy (1999) The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge
• Danesi, Marcel (2002) Understanding Media Semiotics. London: Arnold (Chapter 8)
• Danesi, Marcel (2006) Brands. London: Routledge
• Dyer, Gillian (1982) Advertising as Communication. London: Methuen [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
• Dzamic, Lazar (2001) No-Copy Advertising. Hove: RotoVision (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• Evans, Malcolm & Fiona McNae (1999) 'Semiotics, Culture and Communications: The Common Sense of the 21st Century' [Semiotics of Brands] [WWW document] URL http://www.space-doctors.com/library/sem_intro.pdf
• Evans, Malcolm & Fiona McNae (nd) 'Signs of the Times' [Semiotics in design and packaging] [WWW document] URL http://www.space-doctors.com/library/d_week.pdf
• Floch, Jean-Marie (2001) Semiotics, Marketing and Communication. London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Forceville, Charles (1998) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London: Routledge
• French, Tim, Simon Polovina & Adam Vile (1999) 'Semiotics for E-Commerce: Shared Meanings and Generative Futures' Proceedings of BIT '99, 3-4 November, Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University; [WWW document] URL http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.17.6319&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Goffman, Erving (1979) Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• Goldman, Robert (1992) Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge
• Goldman, Robert & Stephen Papson (1996) Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford Press
• Harris, Alan C. (1989) 'Sell! Buy! Semiolinguistic Manipulation in Print Advertising' [WWW document] URL http://www.csun.edu/~vcspc005/advertis.html
• Harvey, Michael & Malcolm Evans (2001) 'Decoding Competitive Propositions: A Semiotic Alternative to Traditional Advertising Research', International Journal of Market Research 43(2): 171-87; [WWW document] URL http://www.space-doctors.com/library/ijmr.pdf
• Harvey, Michael & Malcolm Evans (2001) 'Cracking the Code' [The use of semiotics for Guinness advertising] [WWW document] URL http://www.space-doctors.com/download.php?file=cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/cracking_the__code.pdf
• Holbrook, Morris B. & Elizabeth C. Hirschman (1993) The Semiotics of Consumption: Interpreting Symbolic Consumer Behavior in Popular Culture and Works of Art. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
• Jhally, Sut (1987) The Codes of Advertising. New York: St. Martin’s Press
• Lawes, Rachel (2002) 'Demystifying Semiotics: Some Key Questions Answered', International Journal of Market Research 44(3): 251-64; [WWW Document] URL http://www.ijmr.com/AboutIJMR/Sample3.pdf
• Lee, Na Ree (2002) 'Colour as a Tool for e-Branding' [WWW document] URL http://www.colormatters.com/research/nrl_ebrand.pdf (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• Leiss, William, Stephen Kline & Sut Jhally (2005) Social Communication in Advertising. London: Routledge
• Leymore, Varda Langholz (1975) Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising. New York: Basic Books
  
• Lewis, Richard W. (1996) The Absolut Book: The Absolut Vodka Advertising Story. Boston, MA: Journey Editions (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• McQuarrie, Edward F & David Glen Mick (1996) 'Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language' [WWW document] URL http://lsb.scu.edu/~emcquarrie/rhetjcr.htm
• McQuarrie, Edward F & David Glen Mick (1999: 'Visual Rhetoric in Advertising: Text-Interpretative, Experimental and Reader-Response Analyses', Journal of Consumer Research 26(1): 37-54
• Messaris, Paul (1997) Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. London: Sage (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• Mick, David Glen (1986) 'Consumer Research and Semiotics: Exploring the Morphology of Signs, Symbols and Significance', Journal of Consumer Research 13(2: 196-213
• Mick, David Glen (1988) 'Schema-theoretics and Semiotics: Toward More Holistic, Programmatic Research on Marketing Communication', Semiotica 70(1/2: 1-26
• Mick, David Glen & Laura G Politi (1989) 'Consumers' Interpretations of Advertising Imagery: A Visit to the Hell of Connotation'. In Elizabeth C Hirschman (Ed.): Interpretive Consumer Research. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, pp. 85-96
• Moriarty, Sandra (nd) 'Visual Semiotics and the Production of Meaning in Advertising' [WWW Documents] URL http://spot.colorado.edu/~moriarts/vissemiotics.html
• Moriarty, Sandra (nd) 'An Interpretive Study of Visual Cues in Advertising' [WWW Documents] URL http://spot.colorado.edu/~moriarts/viscueing.html
• Nadin, Mihai & Richard D. Zakia (1994) Creating Effective Advertising Using Semiotics. New York: Consultant Press
• Neumueller, Moritz (2001) 'Hypertext Semiotics in the Commercialized Internet' [WWW document] URL http://sammelpunkt.philo.at:8080/23/2/ht_semiotics.pdf
• Oswald, Laura (2012) Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies, and Brand Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Scott, Linda M & Rajeev Batra (Eds) (2003) Persuasive Imagery: A Consumer Response Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum (not explicitly semiotic but useful)
• Umiker-Sebeok, Jean (Ed) (1987) Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
• Valentine, Virginia (2001) 'The "Notness" Principle - A Semiotic Model of Meanings' [WWW document] URL RESTRICTED
• Vestergaard, Torben & Kim Schroder (1985) The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
• Williamson, Judith (1978) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars

Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!

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