Research On Children Television Advertisements From A Semiotic Perspective

The emergence of the television media has not only changed people’s life, and it has becomean indispensable part of the vast majority of people’s life. Advertising plays an important role inthe television media, it is not only an important element of television programs, but also have amajor impact on the development of television media because of its strong economic strength.Generally speaking, television advertising shows strong vitality and influence both in form andcontent. It is undeniable that audience from all ages have watched television advertising, amongall the audience, there comes a group who get more and more attention, and that is childrenaudience. Children are not mature in terms of physical and mental development, and they have noeconomic ability. Compared with adults, children’s concept in consumption is different, and theyrely on adults in make decisions of what and how to consume. In our country, the televisionadvertising to children is in the stage of continuous development and innovation. Additionally,along with the vigorous development of children’ s programs and children’ s channels, thetelevision advertising to children in China will enter a new stage.At present, there are some problems in the research of television advertising to children.The first one is concept definition is chaos, different scholar hold different opinions. Secondly,most scholars are excessively focus on the negative impact of advertising to children from theperspective of children’ s advertising accomplishment. Last but not least, the research is notsystematic. This paper uses the Piaget’s cognitive development theory and the advertisementexamination standard to define the concept of "children" and "television advertising to children".In terms of research methods, this paper mainly adopts the literature material method and contentanalysis method. The first step is to collect a large number of advertising videos, arrange them,then consult a number of books about this subject. The last one is using the semiotics theories toanalysis all these videos and put the research results into paper. This paper is mainly refers to thePeirce "the trinary structure " theory, Hall’s decoding and encoding theory and representationtheory, and Meng hua’ s semiotic theory. Television advertising consists three elements,pictures, sounds, and time, these three parts are corresponding to television advertising’s visualsystem, auditory system and associative thinking system, both the value and the influence of thesesystems can be explained by the semiotics theory. In China’s television advertising to children,audience can hear a mass of beautiful music, and cartoon animation is everywhere, both music andcartoon animation are children’s favourite, they help the advertising build a lively or warm atmosphere, or both. Among all the television advertising, television advertising to children can beeasier to get the audience attention, and make them feel good. In this paper, we have found thatthe effective communication is lies in:1. Children are so lovely and everybody is nice to see them;2. The sound transmission is mandatory because no one can turn off their ears, and music isbeautiful and no one would refuse it.3. The cartoon image and the advertising plot are veryattractive.On the one hand, many of today’s television advertising to children would discipline kids inrespecting the old, cherishing the young, and sharing with friends and so on. Many of this arethe Chinese traditional virtue education. On the other hand, some of television advertising tochildren include the behaviour like capricious, self-centered and comparing to others. This kind ofadvertising is not good for children’s development. In order to create a good growth environmentto children, China’s advertising practitioners, government, schools and families need to takemeasures. The first measure is to improve the relevant laws and regulations, regulating thebehavior of Advertising companies and advertisers. The second measure is to strengthenadvertising industry self-discipline to improve the quality of television advertising to children.The third measure is that school, family and social organizations should take more guidance andsupervision to improve children’ s advertising literacy. Only in these ways can China’s televisionadvertising to children step in a new stage, and show its great vitality and influence.