A semiotic analysis of print beauty advertisements

Abstract

This essay will be tackling two important topics which are highly interlinked. These are advertising and semiotics. As semiotics is the research of signs and motifs and their meanings, and as it is going to be portrayed in this essay, advertisements have a sufficient amount of signs, this merger of the two topics is constructive enough to analyse their application in everyday life, and that is through adverts that are a part of society. This essay will take into consideration beauty advertisements, and how advertisers try to create this idealized phenomenon of female beauty; most of which comes from Western culture. The analysis will focus on semiotic terms that best describe and are applicable for an advertisement, and whether these are prevalent occurences when it comes to beauty advertisements. Studies of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Daniel Chandler will be applied to the analysis of these . The last sub-chapter of the literature review will feature an advertisement with a totally different idea proposal from the other advertisement mentioned in the rest of the essay.