C103 - The Semiotics of Advertising
Week 11 Lecture Notes
Monday 11/3/2025

For next Monday's lecture

• Please read Chandler, Chapter 5 "Ways of Meaning", 195-224.

For the rest of this week

• We have three bundles of asynchronous work and assignments for the week
• As usual, these assignments this week are due Friday night November 7 at 11:59 pm.
  • Bundle 7 (Goal: investigate greater deviations from the norms of reality)
  • Bundle 8 (Goal: Explore syntagmatics, with special focus on narrative [= sequential syntagmatics])
  • Bundle 9 (Goal: explore paradigmatics further, along with its interaction with syntagmatics)
• A note on AI use so far, as that has been a horrible burden on this course in this online format. From the week 1 assignments, bundles 1-3, there were a couple of instances of people submitting AI-generated work. I noticed them immediately (the style is quite distinctive in response to my sort of questions), confirmed them with some new state-of-the-art AI checking software. I gave zeroes on those assignments and confronted the students via email. They basically acknowledged their mistake, agreed not to do it again, and we are moving on with no further consquences. THIS TIME. In other words, I implemented what I announced in the syllabus for the course.
  • Look, I fully understand that a compressed course like this one can be a lot of work in a short period of time, and AI might seem like a tempting shortcut. But it is a pyrrhic advantage, one which doesn't work to your long term advantage. Allow me to link to an article in the New York Times from this summer, which reports on a new study investigating the impact of substituting AI thinking for individual human thinking on longer-term cognitive development among students.
    • Here's the direct link to the report I read.
    • If that doesn't work for you, here's a pdf version of it I that saved.
  • The logic of this study is unassailable, and ought to make perfect sense: if you don't exercise your mental muscles, they don't develop very well!  
  • If you'd like to see how professors are horrified about rampant use of AI by students, here's a NY Times article from a couple of days ago about how professors in a high-enrollment statistics course at another university caught a bunch of students using AI, called them on it, and received a host of basically identical AI-generated "sincerely" notes of apology! If the direct link doesn't work, here's my pdf (worse than the original, because it does not include all the graphics).
• As of Saturday night, when I was putting these lecture notes together, the bundles from last week weren't yet graded, so I can't comment on last week's batch of assignments yet. But I will say something based on previous semesters' experience with similar assignments. 
• Many of you tend to be imprecise about using the semiotic terminology we are introducing. 
• It's true that I am giving a single fairly short lecture which attempts to summarize the most important material for the entire week, with threeseparate sets of written assignments, and that means that I am going pretty fast and without providing much opportunity for you to slow me down and ask follow-up questions (and of course if you are watching the recorded lecture instead of attending it in real time, there is no opportunity whatsoever to ask anything for clarification).
• Remember, the lecture is not the only source of information about semiotic concepts. You were also asked to read Chapter 1 of the Chandler textbook in preparation for that lecture. Anyone who actually read that chapter should have been able to follow even a quick lecture easily, and apply the concepts and terminology to the material in the bundles.
• If in fact you don't read that chapter before the lecture, or you don't finish it, at least go back and read it before doing the bundles. It will help you, I promise. Notice that I also add pointers to the bundle materials to let you know what part of the current chapter is relevant to the specific bundle.
• Things like imprecise use of terminology, or not directly answering the actual questions asked in the bundles, will result in you being docked a point here, two points there, and will degrade your performance and ability to earn a decent grade in this course.
• One more thought. You don't have to submit your responses to the earliest bundles in the week the moment you finish it. Save the first bundle to your computer in one of the required formats, and then go on to the next one. If you are uncertain about something relating to Bundle 7, you may find your uncertainty resolved by doing Bundle 8 or Bundle 9. Then you will be able to go back and fix your responses to Bundle 7 if you need to. You can also replace an assignment uploaded to Canvas if you find that you want to correct or improve something you said in an assignment you have already submitted, so you can do that up to the time the assignment is due. I won't start grading until after all the assignments are in, so take advantage of this option if you need it.
• I did want to say something about the optical illusion in Bundle 4, Q1. I am always surprised that a few of you struggle with this one. I tried to give a word description of how you get the second interpretation (just about everybody gets the young lady, but not everybody sees the old lady). I have a few other versions of this illusion, and maybe a different version would be easier for some of you to see. Here is a pair of similar images, and here is a third one flipped around the vertical axis and quite a bit harder for me to perceive. All versions of this reportedly stem from a drawing created by a German artist in the 19th century. I do not know which of these is actually the original, or might be closest to it. BTW there is reported to be evidence that younger people like you see the young lady more readily, whereas older people like me tend to see the old lady first. I suppose you could experiment with your parents and/or grandparents.

Structures (based on Chapter 3 of Chandler, 97-147)

• The main thing we will be considering this week is "paradigmatics and syntagmatics"
  • Very useful distinction for structural analysis
    • The main point of structural analysis: things have more meaning when they are opposed to other possible things, or used in combination with other things
  • Paradigm refers to a vertical set of items that can be substituted for one another
  • Syntagm refers to a horizontal set of items that are associated with one another
  • Chandler represents this as a diagram
  • In semiotics, these terms relate to the relations between different signifiers and/or signifieds
  • Let's first consider how these concepts function in language and in the real world around us.
  • Real world examples
    • Chandler example 1: restaurant menu

  Appetizers
  	nachos
  	fried calamari
  	buffalo wings
  Salads
  	Greek salad
  	Caesar salad
  	cole slaw
  Entrees
  	fried chicken
  	blackened swordfish
  	felafel
  Deserts
  	ice cream
  	blueberry cheesecake
  	tiramisu
  Drinks
  	beer
  	Coke
  	water

  • Paradigmatics operates on two levels here
  • Syntagmatics involves the association of various dishes in your order
  • Other real world examples are easy to think up:
  • Ordering a pizza
    • Paradigmatic choices in several areas: individual toppings, type of crust, sauce
    • Syntagmatic conditioning of the paradigmatic choices might not be so strong, but it still plays a role
    • For example, chicken as a topping might be better with Alfredo or ranch sauce than pepperoni
    • Or if you want pineapple on the pizza, ham might be a better match than, say, onions and anchovies.
    • Obviously it is a matter of taste, what goes with what
  • Assembling a sub sandwich
  • Paradigms include type of bread, primary meat ingredient, veggie add-ons, what kind of spread goes with it (mayonnaise vs mustard vs chipotle sauce, etc)
  • Again, syntagmatics is controlled by what goes with what
  • Clothing that you wear
  • Paradigmatics involves chosing the specific pieces you want to wear: this shirt vs that shirt (warmth, personal comfort, just which one do you like best)
  • Syntagmatics involves putting on two separate pieces of clothing that go together (that shirt with those pants, etc.). 
  • Why are paradigmatics and syntagmatics everywhere in our real world and life?
    • Paradigmatics involves classification and distinction of like items (food, clothing, etc.)
    • Syntagmatics involves association of items from different categories
  • Language (syntagmatics and paradigmatics)
    • Recall that language is a pure semiotic system based primarily on symbolic (arbitrary) signs
    • Paradigms consist of words or forms that may be substituted for one another
    • Lexical example: colors
      • The inventory of possible colors is a paradigm: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, teal, azure, [etc.]
      • Blue's definition (frequency or wavelength of light, a spot on the spectrum, by example) is paradigmatic
      • The ways these words for colors may combine with other words is syntagmatics
        • blue suede shoes, blue sky, blue moon, blue jeans, blue book, ...
        • But: *blue banana, *blue envy, *blue Afganistan, ...
      • We can open it up: colors are used mainly as adjectives, modifying nouns, and therefore they have a paradigmatic relation to other adjectives but a syntagmatic relation to the nouns they modify:

  colors
  	blue	book
  	green	book
  	gray	book
  sizes (etc.)
  	big	book
  	little	book
  	humongous	book

   

  • Note that when you combine colors and sizes, you get some additional syntagmatic constraints:
    • the big blue book
    • *the green blue book
    • *the blue big book
  • Grammatical example: suffixes -er/or vs. -ee
    • Performer of action vs. recipient/target of action

  employer	employee
  payer	payee
  lessor	lessee
  murderer	?murderee
  hitter	?hittee
  mentor	?mentee

  • We exploit this pattern for humorous and serious effect pretty often
  • Paradigmatics and syntagmatics operate on more complex units as well
    • Example: active vs. passive sentences in English (a paradigmatic set)
    • What are you told about using the passive in English? Here's a typical English-teacher story, as told by William Zinser (On Writing Well)
    • Consider these two mini-contexts:

      .

  	Active		Passive
  OK	Leo Tolstoy was a great Russian writer. He wrote War and Peace.	OK	War and Peace is a great Russian novel. It was written by Leo Tolstoy.
  (bad)	Leo Tolstoy was a great Russian writer. War and Peace was written by him.	(bad)	War and Peace is a great Russian novel. Leo Tolstoy wrote it.

  .

  • Now try reversing them. What do you think?
  • The conclusion is this:
    • There is a small paradigm of English sentence types consisting of active and passive.
    • On paradigmatic grounds alone, some English teachers condemn the passive.
    • But there is also a syntagmatic axis: the relation of these sentences to their context
    • In syntagmatic terms, sometimes the passive is completely justified.

Syntagmatic Analysis

• One typology has three general types of syntagmatic relations:
  • Spatial = arrangement of visual elements
    • Example: Citizen
    • Example: BuyerZone.com
  • Sequential = signs arranged in a temporal or spatial sequence of some sort
    • an important special case is the narrative sequence of a text that tells a story
  • Conceptual = association of ideas
    • Example: Apple billboard ads: Einstein, Gandhi
    • Classic Apple "Think Different" video ad with the same idea writ large.
    • I have written up a list of who is in this ad, which you can view here.
• Narrative
  • Texts are structured for maximum impact.
  • Chandler is rather cynical about expository writing:
    • "First you tell 'em what you're going to say, then you say it, then you tell 'em what you've said."
      • Good advice, IMHO!!
    • Introduction - main body - conclusion
    • Especially important: structural closure
    • Text is often "sharpened" for maximal impact (by making smart paradigmatic choices in selecting the words to use)
      • "I am hungry" vs. "I could eat a horse"
  • Narrative has its own inherent structure
  • Here's one typology of narrative (at least two others are in Chandler)
  • Sample oral narrative
  • Components of this narrative (a "typology"!)
    1. Abstract (1)
    2. Orientation (2-23)
    3. Complicating action (24-40 or so)
    4. Result or resolution (41-44)
    5. Coda (45-52)
    6. Evaluation
       • External (interruptions to narrative)
         • create suspense (23)
       • Internal (the narrative comments on itself)
         • intensifiers (structural or non-verbal devices to "intensify" the impact of the story
           • gestures
           • sounds
           • repetition & parallelism
           • pat phrases like "you know"
         • comparators (clauses not in past-tense narrative, which contrast to the flow of the story)
         • modifiers (extra words of evaluation in the narrative) (36)
  • Let's look at a few narrative ads and see if we we can spot most or all of these elements in them.
    • TiVo
    • Nike
  • More subtle or complex narratives are not so direct:
    • Example: Superstyle curtain track ad
    • Text and discussion of ad
  • In inexplicit ads, the effect is triggered by our need to interpret every element in the ad (visual and written text)
    • This is a natural phenomenon; our knowledge of languages conditions us to it

Paradigmatic Analysis

• Paradigmatics refers to the vertical axis of signifiers: the sets of possible signifiers that may be substituted into a particular context/environment
• Central question: why is this signifier used in a particular situation, instead of a "workable alternative"
• Paradigmatic oppositions in reality must work on multiple axes
  • The original example in this lecture was based on the opposition between familiar logos for IBM and Apple computers from the 1980s, but for this semester I have moved that example into Bundle 9, so I won't talk about it tonight.
  • Just bear in mind that when we are talking about paradigmatics, we are talking about the intrinsic values of the elements, not in relation to various other elements that may make up a text.
  • On the other hand, if we want to talk about the relations between elements in a text, how they influence one another, that's syntagmatics. 
  • A key component in paradigmatic analysis is the notion of opposition: items have meaning particularly in relation to other items.
    • Types of oppositions
      • binary vs. non-binary
      • privative vs. equipollent
      • polar vs. scalar
    • Binary oppositions tend to reply upon antonyms: good/bad, large/small, tall/short, fat/thin, etc.
      • But what is an antonym? Does every word or concept have an antonym?
      • What is the antonym of antonym? Is it synonym?
      • Is there such thing as a genuine synonym (= 100% identical meaning)?
        • Example: words meaning 'big'
        • Example: guarantee vs. warranty
      • Antonyms (pure or approximate) are far more interesting and significant than synonyms
      • The idea of antonym is yet another prototypical notion: we have the idea of a pure antonym, then we relate a host of non-perfect antonyms to it by (partial) analogy
        • Chandler's terms: digital (all or nothing) vs. analog (gradable, or scalar) oppositions
      • This is a part of our human desire to polarize oppositions and transcend any baseline norm for effect. This is ubiquitous.
        • Selection of vocabulary
          • English great
          • English fine vs. good
        • What goes into pornography
          • 1970: first visible pubic hair on a Playboy centerfold was controversial
          • Today what does it take to shock us?
        • Here is a paradigmatically impoverished retelling of the story of Goldilocks and the three bears
      • Hodge and Kress's visual mapping of Saussurian semiotics as a set of oppositions

  culture, society and politics as intrinsic to semiotics; other semiotic systems alongside verbal language; parole, the act of speaking, and concrete signifying practices in other codes; diachrony, time, history, process and change; the processes of signification, the transactions between signifying systems and structures of reference; structures of the signified; the material nature of signs. (Hodge & Kress 1988, 17)

  .