A Discourse-Semiotic Analysis of Socio-Cultural Aspects of Television Advertising

Abstract

Nowadays, as a direct consequence of revolutionary advances in technology, TV advertisements (ads) have become omnipresent in our lives. However, they are rarely studied in the context of Algerian academia despite their importance. Being complex ‘coded’ discourses, TV ads need to be ‘decoded’ in order to get their meanings. In an attempt to shed light on the meaning of TV ads, this dissertation proposes an interdisciplinary approach that aims to analyze TV ads by borrowing analytical tools from the fields of semiotics and discourse analysis. The dissertation is a qualitative comparative one, using a discursive-semiotic approach to explore the socio-cultural elements in two TV ads, one in English and the second in Arabic. It is divided into two main parts : a theoretical part and an analytical part. The analysis of the two TV ads (one for the luxury watches Rolex, the other for a mobile telephone company, Nedjma) reveals the efficient use of a considerable amount of socio-cultural signs in the structure of both ads. But what is interesting is that each TV ad adapts those socio-cultural signs and symbols to the nature of the product/service being advertised, and to the environment or context in which it is going to be used. The result is a highly persuasive discourse, characterized by its multimodality. The TV ads benefit at full stretch by the potential for meaning-making, offered by the possibility of combination between different modes of representation (language, image and sound, for instance). The socio-cultural signs and symbols used in the discursive construction of the TV ads are themselves polyvocal. So, when used in combination they offer a wealth of possible meanings; and they create room for connotations. In fact, the analysis shows that it is connotation which takes primacy over denotation in both TV ads. The contribution of this dissertation is that it compares the important socio-cultural elements in the building the discourse of two TV ads and points to areas of similarities and differences.