A Semiotic Study On Celebrity Advertising

Advertisement is a complex symbolic system. With the participation of"celebrity", a special symbol, it becomes even more complicated. On the basis of the former groping studies, this thesis is trying to surpass all the limits of former studies and setting up a systematic theoretical model for the practice of advertisement production. For this purpose, the thesis set celebrity commercial advertisement on TV as the study objective, using the Structuralism of Micro-Semiotics as the analytical tool to establish the theoretical false work for advertisement producer.This thesis with 6 chapters can be divided into three parts: First, set scientific basis for the study and clarify its value. This part includes Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Second, commence on the studies of celebrity as a special symbol, of celebrity advertisement text, and of how audience's perception towards these ads could be. This part covers Chapter3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. It's main body of the thesis. Last, the conclusion, including achievements, shortcomings as well as prospects of this study. This part corresponds to Chapter 6.At last, a multiple structure system comes out, which is the final achievement of this study. The model comprises three integral parts: celebrity symbol with double-tier denotative system, a generalized model for celebrity advertisement with triple-tier text system and an audience'interpretation model with multistage decoding system. Each of them is an independent system to serve their parent system as a whole.