The semiotics of advertisements: “Reading advertisements as a sign systems”

Abstract

This article, making use of the perspectives of semiology, attempts to provide a way to analyze how meaning is arranged and used in advertising texts. In this paper, linguistics is taken as a model of main narrative style in the semiological perspective and linguistics principles are applied to examine not only the language but also the advertising textual. Following this path, semiological analysis has been realized on two sample advertising texts which are chosen among the cosmetic advertisements with the aim of looking at how advertising is realized as a system of signs, and seeing the deep meaning of advertising in relation with market conditions. While conducting the research, the theories of Arthur Asa Berger, Roland Barthes and David Chandler has been applied to. At the advertisements which are research material, products which have no meaning or have a different meaning at the begining, have gained various meanings by replacing object or person which is meaningful for us in the signification structure of advertising.