Differences, similarities and changes of national identity signs in print advertisements
Date Issued
June 2018
Author(s)
Abstract
Advertisements prevail in everyday culture not only through the traditional mediums
of television, radio, magazines or public billboards but also through pop-up menus
or side bars of web pages on the internet. Their intensive presence in public discourse
makes them part of popular culture and this allows us to study them as objects that
reproduce national identity because of their quotidian manifestation in everyday
social interaction, practices, habits and routines (Edensor, 2002). From a similar
perspective, Anderson (2006) embraces the reading of advertisements as a practice
that cultivates nationhood. Under his theoretical framework, people are having a
sense of belonging to an imagined political community because they share the same
readings in everyday life. The current paper aims to identify what kinds of nonverbal
signs that conceptualise national identity are portrayed in print advertisements of the Republic of Cyprus since state independence from 1960 to 2010, as well as which
ones are prevailing in an overall corpus of n=1860 advertisements. A methodological
approach that utilizes quantitative content analysis and qualitative analysis, based on
a semiotic interpretation of advertisements is implemented to withdraw results.
While the findings of the study depict predominant cultural values and
characteristics of the Cypriot national identity, a mapping of the nonverbal signs
over time portrays which ones are affected or not, throughout the socio-political
development of the island as a post-colonial, independent state. The paper shows
that national credentials in print advertisements can, on the one hand, reflect values
and characteristics of the people in a given culture, and on the other, portray
differences, similarities and changes of locality in a reciprocal way over time.
of television, radio, magazines or public billboards but also through pop-up menus
or side bars of web pages on the internet. Their intensive presence in public discourse
makes them part of popular culture and this allows us to study them as objects that
reproduce national identity because of their quotidian manifestation in everyday
social interaction, practices, habits and routines (Edensor, 2002). From a similar
perspective, Anderson (2006) embraces the reading of advertisements as a practice
that cultivates nationhood. Under his theoretical framework, people are having a
sense of belonging to an imagined political community because they share the same
readings in everyday life. The current paper aims to identify what kinds of nonverbal
signs that conceptualise national identity are portrayed in print advertisements of the Republic of Cyprus since state independence from 1960 to 2010, as well as which
ones are prevailing in an overall corpus of n=1860 advertisements. A methodological
approach that utilizes quantitative content analysis and qualitative analysis, based on
a semiotic interpretation of advertisements is implemented to withdraw results.
While the findings of the study depict predominant cultural values and
characteristics of the Cypriot national identity, a mapping of the nonverbal signs
over time portrays which ones are affected or not, throughout the socio-political
development of the island as a post-colonial, independent state. The paper shows
that national credentials in print advertisements can, on the one hand, reflect values
and characteristics of the people in a given culture, and on the other, portray
differences, similarities and changes of locality in a reciprocal way over time.