A Study Of TV Advertisement From The Perspective Of Roland Barthes’ Semiotics

With the continuous development of social economy, the social values and theconsumption concepts of people are changing every day. At present, people’s consumption toa large extent has transcended the material level and has been embodied in the pursuit of“symbol value” of the products. With the help of certain channels, advertising conveysmessages by means of various signs in the form of the text, the image, the sound, etc. toconsumers. At this circumstance, television advertising as a kind of media bearing doubleproperties of economy and culture is a perfect stage. It not only completes the transmission ofproduct’s information, but also embodies the development of consumption concepts andcultural values through the meaning construction of signs. In a manner of speaking, televisionpromotes the symbolic process of the advertising.As a means of communication, television advertising employs a variety of signs toachieve its persuasion purpose, thus we can say that studying advertising from the semioticpoint of view is in line with the law and at the same time semiotics can offer a powerfultheoretical foundation for advertising analyses. Therefore, based on Roland Barthes’s semiotictheory, this thesis carries a global study on television advertising with specific cases. Alongthe train of thought from the basic sign level, the way signs entering the system of televisionadvertising to the meaning generation mechanism of advertising, this thesis attempts toanalyze some characteristics of television advertising, elaborates the process of meaninggeneration mechanism, and explores the way ideology enters television advertising on thebackground of ideologicalization as a common phenomenon in advertising.To study television advertising from the perspective of semiotics in a sense is aregression of the advertising research. Starting from the inner side of advertising, semiotics parses the internal mechanism that advertising takes effect and excavates the deeper meaninghidden behind. By setting television advertising itself as an object, through the discussion ofthe choice of signs based on the relation between the signifier and the signified, thedisassembly and recombination of the syntagm and the system, as well as the shifting processand the accelerating process, this thesis attempts to penetrate the internal meaning generationmechanism of television advertising, providing readers with a perspective to interprettelevision advertising.