Sign Analysis of the Baileys’ Advertisement

Sign Analysis of the Baileys’ Advertisement

Baileys Original Irish Cream Advertisement (in Harper’s Bazaar – Feb. 2004)

Submitted By: Gagan J. Pal

Proposal

This paper is an attempt to analyze and understand how still images become meaningful in magazine advertisements by using semiotic approaches.

The analysis would be conducted by specifically studying the Baileys Original Irish Cream Advertisement (Harper’s Bazaar – February, 2004).

Literature Review

Signs show up in different ways- they can be written and/or oral words or any sort of sound or visual. Semiotic analysis of the images in the visual means for mass communication, that is, silver screen, television, video games, posters, magazine and news paper advertisements might help us to uncover their inherent implications. Of all the methodologies utilized for the examination of visual images, the most prevalent one is the semiotics.

Images sell everything. They can sell soaps, cars, an company, a celebrity or a political party. In the course of recent years the images are shortsighted and for the most part less imperative than the words. Today, the situation has reversed. In advertising the image is perfect representation of life.

Visual Semiotics:

Surrounded with symbols, images and various signs, human being has always strived to signify them and utilized for communication. The meaning comes out of an interaction between the message and the audience. Semiotics is the science of signs. Semiotic analysis is used in the study of sign processes in different fields such as communication, linguistics, anthropology, architecture, medicine, etc.

Three schools of Semiotics:

1. Prague School of the 1930s and early 1940s

Developed the work of Russian Formalists by providing it with a linguistic basis. Notions such as ‘foregrounding’ were applied to language as well as to the study of art (Mukarovsky), cinema (Jakobson) etc.

2. Paris School of the 1960s and 1970s

Applied ideas from de Saussure...