Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012 (Chapters 1 & 2) pgs 21-67.

Prompts

  • Using an example, define Saussure’s terms sign, signifier, and signified in your own words.
  • How are signs employed in visual communication? Provide a visual example from contemporary or historical advertising and explain why the example is considered an icon, index, or symbol in Peirce’s terms.
  • How are non-literal devices used to convey meaning in advertising and/or social media? Provide a visual example from contemporary or historical advertising and explain which type of non-literal device (simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction, or representation) is being used and why.

Response

A signal is a symbol that alerts about something in particular, either to warn, inform, or direct something or someone. Signals can be an object, even abstract, but they always give a clear message. An example would be a traffic signal. A signifier would come to be the physical part of the signal, be it the object, color, shape, word, sound, or image with a clear and literal concept of what it is. A signified would be what we perceive in our mind as the concept and meaning of that particular signal to give it total meaning.

As explained briefly in the previous point. A signal gives necessary information of various types, either to warn, as would be the traffic signals. A stop, for example, informs the driver that they must come to a complete stop. A sign also serves to send a clear message, for example, a giant McDonald’s symbol on the road that invites us to eat. In this case, it would be a symbol because we had to learn that when we see a giant sign of an “M” it means food. It is a relationship between the signifier and the signified.

Non-literal devices are used in the form of advertising more creatively, to attract attention and give a non-literal message, but that in a certain way expresses a clear message about the product. In this case, an example of a metaphor would be this Mitsubishi ad where you can see how the body of the vehicle is suspended in the air, revealing that there is a rhinoceros inside. Obviously, the car is not like that, but the advertising campaign tells us that this model of the car is as tough and strong as a rhino, capable of going anywhere.