Research On The Male Images In Chinese Contemporary Advertisement Through Semiotics

Advertisement is a phenomenon of popular culture. Characters in advertisement are the most attractive communication signs. Apart from plenty of studies on female images, studies on male characters are arousing the attention in academic circle with the constantly increasing occurrence of male images in advertisement. Based on the perspective of literature and art, the thesis tries to use semiotic theory as a tool to analyze the male images in contemporary Chinese advertisements.The thesis firstly reviews the male characters in modern and contemporary Chinese advertisements and summarizes the historical changes of male images. Modern Chinese advertisements are mostly published in newspapers and periodicals, in which male images mainly appear in forms of picture and portrait with the small quantity and simple roles, namely, foreign men, Peking Opera stars, typical men in traditional culture, historical figures and common men. However, in contemporary Chinese advertisements, male images become richer and richer and show the trend of diversity. Male images can generally be divided into traditional and anti-traditional types. Traditional type includes: heroic image,"social husband"image and winner image and anti-traditional type includes:"domestic husband"image, obedient man image,"new-generation men"image and"handsome boys"image.Based on the classification of male characters in contemporary Chinese advertisements and the background of contemporary Chinese popular culture, the thesis analyzes the referent meaning of male images in advertisements from the semiotic point of view connecting with a great quantity of specific advertisements. The most fundamental semiotic theory lies on the signifier, the signified and the referent function of signs. According to the Roland Barthes'theory, signs have two ideographic systems which are both included in male images of advertisements. The thesis interprets the essences of signs from the aspects of successful men, equality of men and women and"handsome boys"and digs out the ideological features implied in male images of contemporary Chinese advertisements, that is, diversity of male images in advertisements, as abstract visual signs, is the specific embodiment of a kind of life style and value and advertisers create modern myths to motivate consumer desires by using these visual signs.In addition, on the basis of Jean Baudrillard's symbolic consumption, the thesis discusses the meanings of symbolic consumption of advertisements from aspects of consumption and recognition and symbolical consumption. Consumers establish their social identities by purchasing the goods in advertisements or achieve alternative satisfaction by symbolical consumption. The thesis focuses on analyzing the meanings of symbolic consumption of male characters in advertisements from aspects of consumptive God and creating consumer desires by using typical advertisement cases such as Hundred-year hairwash and Chivas Regal and finally makes a conclusion that male images in advertisements are not only the medium of advertisers'sale promotion and evidences of consumers'social identities but also the tools of consuming social ideology. The research on male images in contemporary Chinese advertisements can boost the study of character images and gender images in Chinese advertisements and should be paid more attention to by academic circle.