Variety And Limitation

In such an age of media, information, commodity and consumption, advertisements have become an important and even inalienable part of daily life. When faced with a sea of advertisements various in forms and contents, the author attempts, based on the theories of two-order signification, the structuralist semiology, pragmatic semiotics, and postmodernism, to explore the dialectical relationship between the variety and the limitation of linguistic signs in advertisements shown in such aspects as the ideology-rich myth, the structure (with synchronic/diachronic relations and syntagmatic/associative relations), the value (with differentiation and signification), and the postmodernist self-reference, autonomy, and hyperreality. It is the author's hope to illustrate the semiological theories and ideas with the help from the real cases of advertisements, and to provide a semiological and critical perspective in reading linguistic signs in advertisements. Data analysis of advertisements for mates and marriage reveals that, different and numerous as the messages about economic, occupational, and social status may be, the implied signified, namely fortune, remains simple. Analysis of the advertisements for skin food shows that the products are differentiated by different signs, especially by different linguistic signs in advertisements. Signs about such aspects as brands, technology and materials form a complete structure by synchronic/diachronic relations and syntagmatic/associative relations, and any change with any component can make the structure and the product different from before. However, what lies behind the structural variety is the value of "novelty" that various advertisements share. Furthermore, with the increasing demand for sign value and differentiation in a consumer society, differentiation predominates over signification. As a result, self-reference and even autonomy of signs appear frequently in advertisements, which pushes the variety of signs to the extreme of endlessness. On the other hand, with stimulation by mass media, the limitation in signs also goes to the extreme of monotonicity, which in turn blurs boundry between the signifier and the signified, and between the sign and the real world. Analysis of advertisments during Valentine's Day shows that Feb. 14 has been symbolized by such love signs as the rose and become a day of hyperreality.