Essay 2 Flashcards
Introduction for the Semiotic Analysis essay on smoking.
- Semiology suggests that all communication is based on sign systems that work through certain rules and structures.
- All language systems can be analysed through semiology, which originated as a means of understanding language.
- This advertisement will be assessed on the basis of: implied narrative, audience, intertextuality, anchorage, image and signs that will aid in the reader’s understanding and interpretation of the intended message of the advertisement.
What type of image is used?
Describe the image
• Colour is dark
• Dull colouring and dull skin – she looks unhealthy
• Light on subject face ensuring that the woman is the focal point
Type of image:
• Advert/Awareness campaign
• Dark, morbid portrait photograph
What is the intended message or implied narrative?
It is important to consider what the image suggests about the implied message of the advertisement. The image may tell a story about what would have happened immediately before and immediately after the image was taken. The reader will have to consider who the target audience was meant to be and how we are positioned in relation to the text.
- Don’t smoke while pregnant
- What a mother consumes, the baby will also consume
- It is very direct showing that there is a direct correlation between what a mother consumes and what a baby consumes
- Close up shot makes it more personal so that the audience can relate more to the image
Who is the target audience?
Consider who the implied audience is and how the audience is positioned or addressed by the image. It is important to draw on the understanding of textual conventions when considering how the audience is addressed by the image. Question how the viewer is situated in the image and its implied narrative.
- Pregnant women who smoke
- Aims to bring them into the role by making them one with the character
How is anchorage used?
Images are often polysemic and therefore, the audience may not grasp the true meaning of the message by considering the picture alone. For this reason, anchorage is used to ‘anchor’ or fix the image to one particular meaning and diffuse polysemic interpretations. Anchorage is the use of text to anchor an image to a particular interpretation. In this, anchorage considers the importance of the synergy between an image and the words associated with this image.
- Image shows how smoking affects unborn child
- Text supports the idea that the advert is referring to negative influences
- Credibility (cancer association stamp)
Intertextuality in the advert
Intertextuality is the process of knowingly borrowing and referring to other texts, or interpreting one text in the light of other related texts.
- Local symbol
- Indian woman used in Indian Ogilvy advert
- HCG is a cancer association in India
Signs that Communicate through Codes and Conventions
- A sign is any signal that communicates something to us.
- Signs work on a basis that the sign stands for, or represents, something
- Every sign consists of a signifier and a signified.
- The signifier is whatever material form is used to convey meaning: letters, images, sounds, and so forth.
- The signified is the concept that the images, sounds or letters communicate.
- All media messages use codes and communicate through conventions.
- These codes and conventions sometimes seem difficult to spot because we become so used to them that we decode them automatically, without noticing.
- Signs and symbols will only work successfully with people who know and share the same codes - the same cultural knowledge.
Is it effective?
o Educates o Legitimacy – cancer association o Draws attention graphic o Disturbing to see baby in woman’s mouth o Can relate to regular woman o Dark
