COMMUNICATION STUDIES AND SEMIOTIC METHODS APPLICATIONS

摘要

This research consists of two parts. The first part examines mainstream communication studies as a discipline which emerged from other social sciences like, psychology, sociology, and anthropology with historical roots in Greek and Roman oratory and rhetoric In the analysis of texts in communication studies, critical methods such as discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, and the semiotic approach are often employed. These methods add to critical and scientific depth as well as provide students and scholars the techniques for understanding and explaining how communication texts are designed to influence audiences. Mainstream Communication Studies is definitive, descriptive and explanatory in nature; the critical approaches are analytic, argumentative, comparative and evaluatigve. The second part of this research focuses on semiotic methods used in the analysis of texts. Through a semiotic analysis of Intel's Sprinter Ad of 2007, different levels of meaning are revealed. These meanings help to explain the reasons for the immense public criticism and the eventual withdrawal of this advert from the media in the US.