Advertising Semiotics: A methodological discussion on the complexity of the communicatively modeled processes

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensive insight into the net of activities that shape, give content and meaning to the complex process of advertising communication. In this attempt, the paper will primarily refer to the existent semiotic research on meaning making using it as a general methodological background against which it builds and presents its own account. The account itself will focus on the semiotic agents, resources, processes and factors, both supportive and restrictive of the semantic complexity of the advertising message (here taken as metonym of the communication). For the purposes of convenience the whole advertising process is subdivided into three sets of related and semioticly relevant activities: a) processes that precede the production of the message, and are related to the market concerns like company’s image, USB, objective, previous advertising history etc, and that should correspond to the question of What to communicate, b) processes related to the shaping and the communication of the message, and that relate to the question of how to shape and communicate the meaning(s), and c) the comprehensive reception and reaction on the part of the audience, which covers the question of what audiences make from it.