The language of advertising

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols. It simplifies our understanding of signs and symbols through interpretation and gives them a designation and meaning. Semiotics explains meaning through our social and cultural background. When studying semiotics, the question arises about the difference between signs and symbols. Often, they are used interchangeably, but I think, there is a clear boundary between them. The sign carries a straight point, it seems to me to be called a language to make sure enough to remember the signs that we see in our daily life. For example, traffic signs that show where you can turn, where parking is, where “straight ahead only” etc. Signs warn us about something and they contain a direct message. Often, signs have the same meaning for different people equally. Again, regarding the traffic signs, most likely the driver in Kazakhstan will not experience significant difficulties in other countries, even if signs can be slightly different, in general, they are similar. Symbols, on the other hand, may have a deeper meaning. And therefore, the meaning of a symbol can differ depending on the person. Symbols cannot be called languages, since looking at the symbol in our head there are no such phrases as “CAUTION”, “STOP”, etc. To make it possible to compare, you can use religious characters. All of them have a deep meaning, which is not immediately possible to understand, and also it is impossible to call the understanding of one for one person wrong if it differs from another person. Since symbols do not have an agreed meaning for all people. Usually, they can have one meaning for one group of people.

With the rapid development of various media outlets in modern society, semiotics has begun to be used in the study of various media contents such as advertising, news, dramas, movies, and entertainment. According to DharmaKeerthi Sri Ranjan (2010), if signs and even language give form and meaning to think or experience instead of just naming what was already there, they are not just channels and there is nothing that exists before signs and media communicate thought and experience (p. 6). In our consumer and commercial world, marketers are constantly looking for what can positively influence the image of the brand, satisfaction, probability of purchase, and the like. All these signs, symbols, and meanings are used in everything: from the product's design and packaging to advertising and retailers. Consumers constantly acquire, use, and evaluate. Francis Arackal (2015) suggests referring to data and meaning in media content. 

In the semiotics of the media content, I want to consider three categories: iconic, symbolic, and indexical. If the image is easy to understand and it has a literal visual representation of its meaning, then we can call this image iconic. Usually, you don’t need a specific cultural background to get the meaning of this type of image. To exemplify, take your phone and look at all these icons. Notebook is a note app, clock icon - clock app, calculator icon - calculator app. Everything is obvious, simple as much as possible, and thus very convenient. 

Advertisements reflect the wishes and dreams of the audience and express the advantages of product use in a complex and abstract and ambiguous appeal method, it has become difficult to grasp the inclusive meaning of advertisements.  However, from the standpoint of an advertisement producer, it has become important to grasp and reconstruct the target audience's memories, imaginations, and experiences in order to be able to appeal appropriately to the audience.  It is important to understand the underlying meaning and understand its social and cultural meaning. The attitudes and methods of consumption, the effects of consumption, and the conditions of the consumption should also be led. It is ideological action to conceal realistic contradictions and replace people's social relations in the production relationship with consumption relationships in the production relationship. It is not a forced, but a voluntary consent form, reorganizing individuals into consumers or integrating them into consumers. In the end, the advertisement is the ideology device of capitalism, rather than information on products and market information.

In other words, advertising is not only a tool to increase the consumption of products but also a cultural product that penetrates into the daily lives of the consumer public, which greatly affects the consumer culture and lifestyle of society as a whole.

In a consumer society, advertising constantly creates new symbols and consumers acquire symbols through advertising. Consumers meet the world with the product through symbols, and advertising tells them what the symbolic meaning of owning or using the product is. Advertising seeks to encourage consumers' desires by creating completely new information implicit in the product, secretly or explicitly filling the empty signpost with the message of desire and seducing consumers with it. To make this need, advertising talks about change. Tell the consumer that his life will change for the better if you buy a product. Advertising talks about change, making consumers dissatisfied with lifestyle, appearance, occupation, relationship, etc. in any way, and advertising suggests that their products can alleviate their dissatisfaction. Advertising bets on attractive characters to make consumers envy and want to "be like them", people who have already transformed, and perfect but unattainable figures, so the world created by advertising is always seen as valuable and artistic.

We are surrounded by many ads every day. This means that the ads have been a great influence on the message they are delivering, while advertising has a daily environment. Today, advertising is a political and economic system, regardless of the world, and in a country, it is permeated into our entire life domain without distinguishing time and space through various media. The advertisement is not only the economic function of the marketplace of the product, but as well as an important cultural function that reflects and constructs our lives, and this function should be understood as the original nature associated with the economic function. Every day we witness the growth of the advertising industry. SMM, targeting, and PR are the common words that we use in our daily life. Now more than ever, good advertising should "talk" with a potential customer. And for this, agencies use semiotics as a language, since it is not enough to only write the text literally. Signs, symbols, images, and sounds are trying to influence on customers. I think one of the most interesting features of semiotics in marketing is that it can communicate feelings, perceptions, and associations by using not only signs but also codes, myths, and archetypes (Vos, 2019).

Bibliography

1. Johnson, A. (2020, October 5). Examples of Semiotics in Advertising. Chron.https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-semiotics-advertising-38593.html

2. Song, S. (2020, August 5). Paid advertisement controversy rattles Korean YouTube industry. The Korea Herald. Retrieved from http://www.koreaherald.com/index.php

3. Ranjan, D. S. (2010). Science of Semiotic Usage in Advertisements and Consumer’s Perception. Journal of American Science. Marsland Press.

4. Beasley, Danesi (2002). Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising. Mouton de Gruyter publishing house.

5. Arackal, F. (2015). Semiotics and Media Content. ResearchGate. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300484241_Semiotics_and_Media_Content

6. Vos, L. (2020, September 25). Semiotics in Marketing: What It Means for Your Brand and Messaging. CXL. https://cxl.com

КАЗАХСКИЙ НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ИМЕНИ АЛЬ-ФАРАБИ
ФАКУЛЬТЕТ ФИЛОСОФИИ И ПОЛИТОЛОГИИ
КАФЕДРА РЕЛИГИОВЕДЕНИЯ И КУЛЬТУРОЛОГИИ

Специальность "6В03102 - Культурология" Студент 4-го курса: Ли А. В.

Научный руководитель: Есекеева Э.Ф

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