Manifestation of Cultural Values in Advertisements:

Abstract

Advertising has progressed beyond the use of simple techniques for announcing the availability of products or services. It has ventured into the domain of persuasion and conveying social messages embedded in advertisements. The present study is concerned with a semiotic analysis of four advertisements, two by MacDonald‟s, and two by Coca-Cola. The study‟s objective is to highlight the manifestation of cultural values in the advertisements taken from international brands. The researchers aim to apply Barthes‟ theory of visual semiotics, which consists of three levels of signification. The researchers analyzed the four chosen advertisements according to Barthes‟ three levels of signification, which are: denotation, connotation, and myth, to extract the cultural values embedded in each advertisement. To carry out the research, the study is based on a descriptive qualitative research method and uses observation and description as the research instruments. The study's findings revealed certain cultural values that differ due to cultural differences and cultural contexts embedded in the advertisements.