Paper 1: Advertisement Analysis
Purpose
The goal of this assignment is to develop your skills in the analysis of images. You will learn to identify the
basic elements of an image—denotation and connotation, signifier and signified—in order to interpret and
evaluate an advertisement. As part of your analysis, you will be expected to identify the cultural trends,
values, or beliefs that “anchor” and inform the image and the message it is communicating. Your papers
will be evaluated for a strong and complex thesis, as well as for logical, reader-based organization.
Readings
All readings assigned from Weeks 1-3 can be drawn upon for this assignment (if/when relevant).
Writing Task
Choose a single, contemporary advertisement for a product. This advertisement can be a still-image or
video. In a 4-5 page, thesis-driven essay, conduct a semiotic analysis of your advertisement.
Note: Strong essays will not only analyze the advertisement but attempt to situate it within a larger
cultural, social, political, or economic context. Consider, for example, the Jeep advertisement and how it
draws on understandings of freedom and mobility via “disobedience.” The geographic context provided in
the image may also situate the advertisement within a “frontier” imaginary.
See pages 20-32 of Signs of Life for information on “Writing About Popular Culture” and specific
questions to guide you through the analytical and writing process. Pages 27 (“Questions for Conducting
Semiotic Analysis”) and 30 (“Questions for Analyzing Images”) are particularly useful.