Feminist Semiotics of Advertising Media Texts

Abstract

Semiotics is emerged a major theoretical and analytical approach in the media-driven era of 21st century. In the history of human evolution, use and analysis of signs to communicate have the utmost importance. Before verbal and written linguistic discourse, the use of signs remains in human communication. Semiotics is thought to be a structural and linguistic approach but as Saussure has asserted that semiotics is broad, inclusive and comprehensive in nature and scope, while linguistics is a part of it. Modern media is scientifically and technologically more enhanced and inclusive of various signs through technological gadgets. McLuhan regards ‘media is message’. Like language in literature, various audio-visual and graphic signs are employed for effective expression in media texts. Language is a ‘sign system’ of human communication which is mainly androcentric and needs to be challenged and explored through a feminist perspective. The idea is to study semiotics in feminist context i.e. to be regarded as ‘feminist semiotics. The emergence of the feministic approach changed perception in every field of life and brought various possible interpretations. As the signs employed in media texts mainly androcentric, the feminist semiotics attempts to expose and deconstruct them. Advertisements especially, consumer ads either in print or in electronic media are published having the notion of ‘art for market’s sake’ or ‘art for profit’s sake’ which need to be considered and analyzed as ‘media text’. In this research article, efforts are made to explore and blend feminist contextual approach with semiotics to analyze advertising texts. There is a multitude of audio-visual and electronic driven gadgets in the present digital world therefore, it needs to be interpreted from feminist semiotic perspective.