Cultural Interpretations On Emblems Of Beijing And London Olympic Games From The Perspectives Of Semiotics

The Olympic Games has become the world’s most important sports event whose Olympicflame lights throughout the world. Culture of different countries and ethnics nourishes theOlympic culture as well as makes the Olympic visual images appear to be colorful phenomenon.The emblem of the Olympic Games, which is regarded as the core of the Olympic visual image,has become a symbol of the Olympic spirit as well as a symbol of national culture. The OlympicGames emblem shows the unique and fascinating cultural charm of each nation. This paperintends to make a cultural interpretation on the two Olympic Games emblems of Beijing andLondon from the perspective of semiotics and then explores its functions in the cross-culturalcommunication.Boomed at the end of nineteenth Century, Semiotics, a study of signs, is especially thescience about the general theory of language signs. Having a broad content, the present researchof Semiotics mainly focuses on the essence and pattern of signs, relation between signs andhuman activities and connection between signs and human thought.Semiotics has been truly studied since1960s. Now it becomes a symbol of scientificresearch whose theoretical results have infiltrated into many other subjects. A powerful source ofthe modern semiotics is the Swiss Linguistics Master Saussure’s lecture notes in early twentiethCentury——“Course in General Linguistics”. Saussure divided the sign into two independentparts——Signifier and Signified, which symbolizes the establishment of basic theory ofSemiotics. However, Saussure’s semiotic theory is mainly confined to the field of linguistics,while the practical significance is not obvious.The author selects the emblem of Beijing Olympic Games which represents Chinesenational characteristic and the London Olympic Games emblem which represents UnitedKingdom characteristics as the research object. From the perspective of semiotics, especiallybased on Saussure’s signifier and signified, the author analyzes their semiotic connotations andimplications. What’s more, from the perspective of code and codification of semiotics, the authorcompares the emblem of Beijing with the emblem of London to explore their uniqueperformance in cultural differences of Eastern and Western. At last, the author makes a summaryto expound the symbols can reflect different meanings in different cultures in order to dig its function and role in cross-cultural communication. The author hopes that this thesis can addsome new blood to the semiotical field as well as try to make the theory of semiotics morepractical.