Art History Structuralism and Semiotics in Advertising

Art History

Structuralism and Semiotics in Advertising

Modern culture in the 20th century characteristically subsists to techniques of structuralism and semiotics, which introduces a new scientific rigor to art criticism. This is because both fields of study provide systematic and detailed analyses of images and texts. Structuralism and semiotics also borrows from various disciplines, such as linguistics, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and other social sciences in the analysis of these images and texts.

Structuralism is the study of various code functions within a single structure, which may be in different forms. Through this discipline of image and text analysis, structuralists can scientifically, i.e., objectively create concepts or ideas embedded within the unit of analysis. Semiotics, on the other hand, is the study of symbols, representation, and signs. Thus, both are essential in the study of codes (which can be words, images, sounds, odors, and objects that are encountered through sensory experience) that we encounter everyday, how people organize and signify meaning to a code (structuralism), and how these codes are represented (semiotics).

Roland Barthes, a French social and literary critic, is one main proponent of Structuralism and Semiotics to analyze, primarily, images and texts. His contribution in semiotics concerns the process of signification, defined as the "relationship of a sign or sign system to its referential reality." In his essays, Rhetoric of the Image and Myth Today, Barthes categorizes an images and texts that are analyzed into three messages, which are the signified, signifier, and sign.). Barthes did not only provide extensive study on the process of signification in semiotics; he also identified and defined the 'sign' as the "associative total of the first two terms," which means that the sign is equivalent to the addition or combination of the signifier and the signified. Thus, the signifier and the signified are parts of one whole, which is the sign. His provision of a general definition of the sign, Barthes then proceeded to explain the process of signification, stating that there are two orders of signification: the first order of signification is through denotation, while the second order is through connotation. These orders of signification, or levels of meaning, illustrate how meanings can be arrived at in the study of semiotics. In denotation, the literal meaning of the sign is processed, specifically the "simple or literal relationship of a sign to its referent," while connotation is the cultural association of signs, wherein socio-cultural values are incorporated in the interpretation or provision of meaning in signs.