Author: susanna

Exam idea

Main topic: The chosen topic originates from assignment 2 on cultural branding and iconic brands. A semiotic approach will be applied in order to analyze the material and hopefully find an answer to the research question. The main topic for this research paper is to look at how an iconic brand such as Ralph Lauren has created its iconic stature… Read more →

Tutorial 6 – Persuasion and rhetoric in advertising

To begin this post concerning rhetoric and persuasion first we need to understand these concepts. According to Socrates, rhetoric “is an art of gulling the ignorant about the justice or injustice of a matter, without imparting any real knowledge” (Simons, 2001, p. 4). Other philosophers doesn’t necessarily agree with Socrates and find that the ability to impress an audience is… Read more →

Tutorial 5 – Semiotic analysis of 1950’s Jell-O commercial

This semiotic analysis draws upon Machin’s (2007) semiotic method with a focus on the depiction of people in visual communication. This method concerns itself with the available semiotic recourses for positioning the viewer regarding the people in the image, and how this positioning encourages us to relate and process the people in the image in a particular way. The semiotically… Read more →

Tutorial 4 – Discourse analysis II

The two DA methods overlap however although they work with similar materials DAII is “much more concerned with their production by, and their reiteration of, particular institutions and their practices, and their production of particular human subjects” (Rose, 2001, p. 164). The two DA also differ in terms of how they define the term archive, DAI analysts regards archive as… Read more →

Tutorial 3 – Discourse analysis I

According to a thesaurus the word discourse means “communication of thought by words; talk; conversation. So, the basis for discourse is language, how we express ourselves and make meaning of our surrounding society. Discourse can also be explained as a complex structuring of cultural environments such as for example: aesthetics, communication, gender roles, sociality and history. Everything regarding our society… Read more →

Tutorial 2 – Cultural Branding

Iconic brands set themselves aside from other brands because the customers valuing the product as much for what it symbolizes as for what is does. The brand needs to express certain values held dear by some parts of society. In order for a brand to become iconic is has to provide a myth about its identity providing consumers with an… Read more →

Tutorial 1 – Signs, icons and symbols

Semiotics is the theory of signs and how they create and represent meaning. The basic unit of semiotics is the sign which is commonly defined as something that stands for something else. The sign is this unity of word-object, known as a signifier with a corresponding culturally prescribed content or meaning, known as the signified (Berger, 2010). Semiotic theory offers… Read more →