Textual Artifact

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Communication is everywhere, literally everywhere, it’s impossible to escape. We hear it, we see it, we can even touch it. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how a textual artifact can communicate meaning. I chose to study an ad from Brazil convincing drivers to be safer around bicyclists. I actually chose my ad by looking up some of the most influential ads of the decade. I scrolled through some pretty powerful ads, but as soon as I landed on this one I stopped my search. The image was so simple, yet I got the message immediately. It shows the handlebars from a bicycle mounted to the wall on a wooden plaque with the words “cyclist #103” written beneath. The shape of the image was strikingly similar to that of a deer head being placed …show more content…

For this ad specifically, it refers to the handle bars standing in place of a deer head mounted on the wall. The shape of the handlebars is already eerily close to that of a deer’s antlers, and because it is posted to the wall on the same kind of plaque a hunter might use it creates a very striking image. Someone who views this might get the impression that if they ride a bicycle, they will die just like a deer stuck to the wall. The overall dark colors also add a serious tone. The image acts as a sign, and every sign has two parts: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the physical form as we perceive it; in this case it would be the image of the handle bars. The signified is whatever meaning we tend to associate with sign; in this case that would be death. Charles Pierce, a famous semiotician actually came up with a system to classify different kinds of signs. He defined the three categories as symbolic, iconic and indexical. The sign from this ad is iconic, meaning that it resembles something else. While the image in this ad is obviously what jumps out first, there’s actually text beside it. Semiotics is not exclusive to nonverbal signs, so it’s important to look at the verbal side as well. Just under the handlebars is a gold plate with the words “cyclist #103.” In a way, this dehumanizes the cyclist. He or she doesn’t even get a name, they are simply assigned a number.

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