The role of advertising in culture and value systems formation : A semioticanalysis of Tide’sprintadvertisements

Abstract

In the age of consumerism, the role of advertising should not be underestimated, be it in terms of developing business and international relationship, informing the society about new products and services, or drawing attention to crucial social and cultural issues. Advertisers use both textual and visual signs in a creative way to generate a meaningful message and affect the audiences’ buying choices. Over time now semiotics has become a prominent field that studies signs and sign systems produced by advertisers. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate the role of print advertising in the formation of culture and value systems through semiotic analysis of four Tide’s advertisements following Ronald Barthes’ semiotic theory. More precisely, it aims to reveal the communicated meanings enclosed within the textual and visual signs of the selected advertisements in terms of denotation and connotation as well as the myths and semiotic codes representing such values of feminism, hardworking, collaboration and racial justice, and time-spending in each of these advertisements respectively. The study applied descriptive design relying on the qualitative method. The study findings revealed that the selected advertisements define, represent and promote social and cultural values through a well-defined system of signs and codes within their textual and visual contents. Based on these findings, the study recommended that print advertisers in Algeria should shift into cultural domain functioning within value forming systems.