In this seminar we looked at different adverts and how semiotics were used in them, and also explored further the semiotic content covered in the lecture beforehand.
In this lecture we looked at how semiotics is fundamental to an understanding of how visual communication works and how text and images can be manipulated to benefit their messages. We also looked at how we are all participants in a culture which functions on the basis of shared meanings and common understanding, how we are able to read the world around us as a system of signs.
We also learnt about the two key approaches to understanding visual communication and semiotics, as put across by Charles S. Pierce and Ferdinand de Saussere. With Saussere focusing on phonemes, and Pierce focusing less solely on linguistics and more on how we make sense of the world through senses and experiences. We looked at how linguistic signs are inherently arbitrary, and how Pierce defined the three categories of signs:
Symbol - arbitrary (Signifier) E.g. Words, flags, alphabet
Icon - Resembles the sign, likeness (Signified) E.g. Onomatopoeia
Index - direct link between sign and object, logical, causal connection (Sign) E.g. Smoke is an index of fire
We also learnt about how semiotics relies on common understandings and culturally shared conventions, even when the signified is absent, the sign can still be meaningful in certain contexts, one example of this is the Heinz Ketchup advert, where the Heinz ketchup bottle is missing, but due to common understandings and shared experiences we know what advert is for:
In the seminar we focused on semiotics being used as a form of social criticism, to examine and explore the motivations behind these constructions of meaning.
The first thing we looked at was Rene Magritte - The Treachery of Images (1928-29). His painting of a pipe highlighted that a painting is a mere representation of meaning - just an image of a pipe created from paint and canvas, and relies upon the viewer's shared understanding with the artist that this is the object to which we have allocated the name or signifier 'pipe', looks like.
The painting features the sentence 'This is not a pipe' to show that Magritte is commenting on how we perceive and make assumptions on the things we see.
To follow on from this we then considered how semiotics are used in advertising to portray certain characteristics or ideas through carefully constructed representation, and how we read messages through this, when really the characteristic being associated with a product is merely us viewers perceiving and assuming something.
We watched the Christmas adverts for Tesco, ASDA, Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's and what messages were being communicated in each. Each supermarket's message was different, with Tesco's communicating togetherness and a positive outlook, whereas ASDA showed a more realistic, stressful side to Christmas and used the idea of Christmas being 'mum's responsibility'. Marks and Spencer communicated the message of Christmas being 'magical' using fairies, and Sainsbury's retelling of the WW1 football match communicated an emotive message and was probably the most effective of all the adverts because of this. Each advert played on shared experiences and cultural understandings from ASDA's 'stressed mum' message to Sainsbury's war story.
