A Semiotic Study On Public Service Advertisements Of CCTV Spring Festival Gala

As a type of multimodal discourse,the TV public service advertisement is formed by cooperative coding of various modes such as text,music,image,color and so on.Since the public service advertisement was broadcast in CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2013,it has already appeared on the stage for seven consecutive years.The sign is one of the carriers of public service advertisements conveying an idea or a concept.The “spring festival” is a symbolic sign of Chinese traditional culture and plays an important role in the spread of Chinese traditional culture.Due to the sociality of public service advertisements,scholars in many fields take a strong interest in them.Related research mainly covers the fields of Communication,Cognitive linguistics,Narratology,Chinese elements,etc.But there are few studies on the realization of signs from the viewpoint of Semiotics.Based on this,the thesis tries to study the signs in Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala from the perspective of Semiotics,and further reveals the reflective forms and internal meaning mechanism of signs.The theoretical basis of this study is Peirce's Theory of Triadic Relation.Peirce points out that Semiotics aims to study all signs,which coincides with the diversity of signs in Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala.In this theory,it mainly explores the triadic relation among signs,objects and interpretants.According to the relationship between signs and objects,Peirce further divides the signs into three types: icons,indices and symbols.Taking Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala from 2013 to 2019 as the research corpus,the thesis moves on with quantitative and qualitative methods.In this research,it uses the quantitative method to analyze the distribution of signs,and uses the qualitative method to analyze the realization of signs and ideological meanings conveyed by signs in Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala.This thesis analyzes,summarizes and organizes the contents of 21 public service advertisements in the past seven years,and explores how the signs are realized and distributed and what ideological meanings are revealed by signs.It has been found that Pierce's three kinds of signs like icons,indices,and symbols are all reflected in Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala.In terms of the realization,different types of signs present different ways of realization.The icons are mainly represented by specific locations of environment signs and character signs in visual signs,the music signs in auditory signs,and rhetoric signs in linguistic signs.The indices are mainly represented by environment signs indicating weather conditions and action signs in visual signs,nature's native sound signs and artificial sound signs in auditory signs,personal pronoun signs and dialect signs in linguistic signs.The symbols are mainly represented by image signs,color signs,Chinese element signs in visual signs and symbols in linguistic signs.As far as the distribution is concerned,a total of 1,278 signs are identified,including 421 icons,677 indices,and 180 symbols.The indices are used the most among them,accounting for 53%,which are mainly represented by environment signs and action signs.This distribution feature reflects the dynamic nature of CCTV Spring Festival Gala Public Service Advertisements on the one hand,and fits the ideological significance of “returning to the big family” on the other hand.As for the construction of ideological meanings,the signs like icons,indices,and symbols complete the construction of ideological meanings through the organic combination: the return to the big family,the promotion of Chinese traditional culture and the pursuit of China Dream.This study explores the realization of signs and ideological meanings revealed by signs in Public Service Advertisements of CCTV Spring Festival Gala based on Peirce's Theory of Triadic Relation.On the one hand,it proves the universal applicability and operability of Peirce's Semiotics;on the other hand,it combines Peirce's Semiotics with public service advertising discourse,which provides the guidance for analyzing the meaning of advertising discourse and assistance for communicators and receivers understanding the meaning of signs.The communicative effects of public service advertisements are enhanced and the concepts transmitted by them will be deeply rooted in the minds of people eventually.