Packaging Desire a Socio Semiotic Study of Advertisements

Abstract

Today the public space is saturated with mass media and its attendant newlinecommunicative practices. Backed by technology, media and the market, and riding newlinethe juggernaut of liberalization, globalization and privatization (LPG), the mass mediated culture has ushered in a socio-semiotic space that is not only persuasive newlinein its intent but is also consumerist in its thrust. Advertisements both print and newlinedigital form an integral part of this communicative-discursive-consumerist grid. newlineThe advertisement is everywhere. Advertisement intrudes all spaces, public or newlineprivate, circumscribes human consciousness and everyday life and life rhythms. newlineAn integral aspect of global and local culture, advertising has become a universal newlineform of mass consciousness, communication and consumerism. Employing various newlinesemiotic strategies verbal and nonverbal, psychological, social or cultural, newlinediscursive or ideological in various combinations, advertisements, both as newlinemediums and massages, have turned into persuasive tools and techniques of newlinecontemporary life and living. It has become an integral component of modern-day newlinesocial discourse that overtly or covertly aims to influence lifestyles, channelize newlineattitudes and behaviors and manipulates the contours of human impulses and newlineaspirations through consumption. newlineThe present study, through an eclectic selection and reading of Indian, newlineInternational and global advertisement/commercials, both print and digital, aims at newlineexamining how advertisements are consciously or unconsciously, covertly or newlineovertly, configured as socio-semiotic discourses, texts and artifacts around a newlinecomplex range of signifiers depicting and altering the pattern of cultural and market newlinepraxis. It also intends to examine how advertisements employ, use and press into newlineservice popular social, cultural, psychological and ideological codes to construct newlineand convey a range of meanings, how they propel and sometimes break newlinestereotypes, how they use images and sounds and wield the tool of language to newlinederive and deliver their messages.