ZUR 589o:
Cultural History of Advertising
Bignell,“Signs and Myths”
“Advertisements”
“Politics is the intersection of public and
private life. This book deals with the public
form, but one which influences us privately:
our own private relations to other people
and to ourselves” (Williamson 10).
“children”
“children”
“Advertisements are selling us something else
besides consumer goods. In providing a structure
in which we and those goods are interchangeable,
they are selling us ourselves” (Williamson 10).
semiotics
the study of signs in society (how signs
communicate meaning)
semiotics
sign =
signifier = “fork” or or
signified
+
semiotics
linguistic signs (words)
iconic signs (visual representations/images)
non-representational signs (font, color, size)
Anything which seems to carry meaning in an ad is a sign:
• diachronic = evolution of linguistic signs over time
semiotics
• synchronic = signs existing at any given point in time
semiotics
semiotics
• syntagmatic = spatial arrangement of signs
• dog bites man
• man bites dog
• paradigmatic = grammatically substitutable
(parallel, alternate, or opposite) signs
• pitbull bites man
• poodle licks boy
semiotics
• metaphor = one signified is made
to appear similar to another
different signified
• “my love is like a red, red rose”
(1794, Robert Burns)
• metonymy = replaces one signified
with another related signified
• “Hollywood”
“Myth, as Barthes uses the term, means things used as signs
to communicate a social and political message about the
world” (Bignell 21).
“The message always involves the distortion or forgetting of
alternative messages, so that myth appears to be simply true,
rather than one of a number of different possible messages”
(Bignell, 21).
Sophie Dahl/Opium ad (discussed in Bignell, p. 33)
2012
ideology
in ads
ads attempt to
make meaning
appear
automatic and
unsurprising --
rather than
arbitrary
What myth does is to hollow out the
signs it uses, leaving only part of their
meaning, and invest them with a new
signification which directs us to read
them in one way and no other.
(Bignell 22)
The function of the criticism and analysis of
myth must then be to remove the impression
of naturalness by showing how the myth is
constructed, and showing that it promotes one
way of thinking while seeking to eliminate all
the alternative ways of thinking.
(Bignell 23)
Ads are designed to to move
out from the page or screen on
which they are carried, to shape
and lend significance to our
experience of reality. We are
encouraged to see ourselves,
the products or services which
are advertised, and aspects of
our social world, in terms of
the mythic meanings which ads
draw on and help to promote”
(Bignell 30)
The aim of ads is to engage us in their
structure of meaning, to encourage us to
participate by decoding their linguistic and
visual signs and to enjoy this decoding activity.
(Bignell 31)