The Cultural Semiotics Analysis Of The Creative Culture Products Of The Beijing Olympic Winter Games

The Beijing Olympic Winter Games is an important platform to show the charm of Chinese culture and spread China’s image to the world.The creative culture products represented by mascots are rich in cultural values and connotations,which are good channels to spread Chinese culture,construct China’s image,and help the world understand contemporary China.Since every product consists of different symbols,Lotman’s cultural semiotics can be used to analyze the connotation of symbols in each creative culture product.Meanwhile,empathy communication is conducive to sharing cultural connotations of creative cultural products while decoding the symbols.This study adopts a qualitative research method in which two mascots and three artware ornaments are selected as the research objects,i.e.Bing Dwen Dwen,Shuey Rhon Rhon,the Enamel Zun of the Winter Olympic Rings,the Wenjun Vase and Handing Future Curling.Firstly,based on the textual view and symbol of Lotman’s cultural semiotics,many different symbols contained in the five creative culture products will be found and divided.Secondly,the connotations preserved,transmitted,and generated by these symbols will be analyzed in detail.Additionally,with the empathy communication model,how people deepen their cognition of these products and better understand the meanings of these cultural symbols can be explored.Then,the study analyzes China’s image constructed by these creative culture products.It is found that on the basis of Lotman’s view of text and symbol,each creative culture product can be seen as a text with complete meaning and function.The five creative products for the study are all independent texts,containing many simple and complex symbols,which can preserve cultural memories,transmit cultural meanings,and generate new information in different contexts.And these symbols accord with the characteristics of empathy communication,containing several elements commonly recognized by people,evoking people’s cultural memory and cultural identity,and expressing the common expectation and vision of the world,which is beneficial to help people decode these symbols and better understand their connotations.Finally,it can be found that different images of China are constructed by these products.Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon construct lovely China’s image;the Enamel Zun of Winter Olympic Rings constructs Cultural China’s image;the Wenjun Vase and the Handing Future Curling construct Creative China’s image.According to Lotman’s cultural semiotics,this study makes a bold attempt to analyze the creative culture products of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games,enabling people to better decode the connotative meaning of these products,and comprehend contemporary China in depth,which contributes to the construction of contemporary China’s image.