Symbolic Elements Creation In Real Estate Advertising:the Case Study Of Property Advertisements In Nanguo Daily

With the rapid development of the real estate industry, real estate’s advertising has become one of the most popular and overwhelming advertising types today. To better publicize and promote the product, especially the residential property etc., it is more important to further integrate a variety of symbolic elements which can express more meanings regarding to a home from the spiritual aspect in the advertising rather than indicating a utility as a house from the material aspect.Thus there comes the question that:how does the real estate advertising make combination of different communication elements, to convey to the receptors that, not only the functional information of this particular commodity from the material aspect, but also the more profound symbolic meaning beyond it from the spiritual aspect? And as to the receptors, what kind of perception they have regarding to the real estate advertising, and what do they expect from it?In this dissertation, we selected the real estate advertising column from Nanguo daily as a research sample, and applied the content analysis method as well as simulation theory to analyze the advertisements as texts carrying special ’meanings’. We also investigated the roots of the meanings from the view of receptors’psychological need. Firstly, we explained the relationship between the real estate advertising and media, and demonstrated the developmental course and reasons of newspapers as the first-choice of a real estate advertising media. Secondly, we made an overall description of the selected sample from three aspects, time distribution, layout size, and layout position. Thirdly, taking together with the selected variables in this study, we further carried out a detailed analysis of the communication elements in the real estate advertising, focusing on the indicators that the language text, the appeal form and topic, and the usage of pictures.Furthermore, in this dissertation, we analyzed the meanings the advertisement as a collection of symbolic elements carried according to the characteristics of the language and visual symbols revealed by the content analysis. Through an in-depth analysis of the roots of the meanings, we could conclude that the "meanings" which the real estate advertising produced include three aspects, a symbol of identity, a representation of a special life-style, and an imaginary defined home.