The Study Of Advertising Symbols Under The Care Of Morris's Semiotic Theory

Advertisement, which is abundant in our lives, can not only provide us with the information of the merchandise, but also influence our ideology to some degree. It is so trivial that it is just used for advertising the merchandise. But in a certain way, it is so important that it can make some tiny influences, ideologically or aesthetically. So, we have to choose the excellent ads from all kinds of ads on the market. Based on Pierce's semiotics study, Morris classified semiotics into three subjects: Syntactics, Semantics and Pragmatics. Syntactics studies on the relationship between signs, Semantics studies the relationships between signs and their referents, and Pragmatics studies the relationships between signs and their interpreters. Since the advertisement is a kind of sign, it can be analyzed from Morris' s point of view. The main idea of the thesis is to generalize the characteristics of the ad: Syntactically, it has to be novel and attractive;Semantically, it should introduce the merchandise briefly but clearly, which can impress the audiences deeply; Pragmatically, it has to meet the audiences' psychological acceptances and their senses of cultural identify. Hence, this thesis aims to generalize the characteristics of the ads and set up a “model for successful ads under the direction of Morris' s semiotic theory”, which can be used to guide the producing of ads from a new angle.