Résumé:
In the age of consumerism, the role of advertising should not be underestimated, be it in terms
of developing business and international relationship, informing the society about new
products and services, or drawing attention to crucial social and cultural issues. Advertisers
use both textual and visual signs in a creative way to generate a meaningful message and
affect the audiences’ buying choices. Over time now semiotics has become a prominent field
that studies signs and sign systems produced by advertisers. Accordingly, the current study
aims to investigate the role of print advertising in the formation of culture and value systems
through semiotic analysis of four Tide’s advertisements following Ronald Barthes’ semiotic
theory. More precisely, it aims to reveal the communicated meanings enclosed within the
textual and visual signs of the selected advertisements in terms of denotation and connotation
as well as the myths and semiotic codes representing such values of feminism, hardworking,
collaboration and racial justice, and time-spending in each of these advertisements
respectively. The study applied descriptive design relying on the qualitative method. The
study findings revealed that the selected advertisements define, represent and promote social
and cultural values through a well-defined system of signs and codes within their textual and
visual contents. Based on these findings, the study recommended that print advertisers in
Algeria should shift into cultural domain functioning within value forming systems.
