Essay #1, Semiotic Ad Analysis
Writing 101, Fall 2000
Instructor: Jennifer Beech
Assignment: For this essay, you will conduct a semiotic interpretation of an advertisement that employs both visual and written rhetoric: a print ad found in a magazine, newspaper, or billboard, a television ad, a poster ad, etc. You will present your audience with a thesis that suggests your interpretation of that advertisement and how you see it functioning as a sign within the larger sign system of American culture. You should, then, devote the body of your essay to defending and developing that thesis. Your essay should be typed in MLA format and be about 3 ½-5 pages in length.
Audience and Purpose: Write this essay for an audience of first-year college students like yourself. Having this particular audience in mind as you select an advertisement for analysis, you will, perhaps, want to choose an ad with which your audience is familiar. Presenting your analysis may help your audience to resist commodification and objectification by the ad and the advertisers; likewise, your essay may help prompt your readers to more critically engage with a particular ad, even with the larger culture around them. Furthermore, your interpretation might serve the additional purpose of entertaining your readers and yourself. In drafting and revising your essay, you will want to consider what language, tone, details, and explanations will best sell your ideas to your readers.
Getting Started: Reread Chapter 2, "Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising," in Signs of Life; editors Sonia Massik and Jack Solomon explain semiotic interpretation of ads and walk you through interpretations of two different ad campaigns. Start looking in magazines and at the advertisements you encounter as you walk around campus.
Once you select an ad, you might take the prewriting advice offered by Maasik and Solomon: "We began by looking around for sets of associations to similar signs, as well as for significant differences. By building several systems of associated and differentiated signs, we arrived at a conclusion" (122). Remember also that you will want to suspend your opinion of the ad (as much as possible) and, instead, study the images with which the objects in the ad are associated.
Taken from our readings, in-class discussions, and the video's we've watched, the following questions may also help you generate or expand upon ideas:
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Why am I being shown this or told that? |
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How do the characters in the ad function as signs? |
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What sorts of people don't appear in this ad? (The absent/present: What is not said or pictured can communicate just as much as what is present.) |
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What cultural myths are invoked in this ad? |
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What relationship do you see between those myths and the target audience for the publication? |
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How are the designers making use of color, lighting, copy, and positioning of the models? |
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Has the public reacted in any way to this ad? |
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What story does this ad tell about how happiness is achieved? About what culture is or should be like? |
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How is this ad playing off of its audience's desires and/or fears? |
Drafting and Revising: Avoid first-draft masterpieces. Writing takes time to think and rethink, organize and reorganize, to get reader feedback, and finally to edit and to proofread. You'll want to give yourself enough time to check your organization in order to make sure that each paragraph is focuses around one main idea with supporting examples and illustrations. You'll want to consider placing beside each other paragraphs that explore like ideas and to provide transitions from paragraph to paragraph to help lead your readers through your essay. Be sure to revise and polish your introduction to make a strong and engaging first impression and to revise your conclusion to leave your readers with a final impression about your topic (see Signs pp.122-23 and Keys for Writers pp.29-32 on introductions & conclusions).
