The Meaning of Signs in Starbucks Advertisement

Abstract

This study is entitled The Meaning of Signs in Starbucks Advertisement. This study focuses on the analysis of verbal and visual signs in the poster available on the Starbucks website. It aims to identify the kind of verbal and visual signs implied in Starbucks advertisements and to analyze the meaning of the verbal and visual signs implied in Starbucks advertisements. This study used advertisements as primary data. This study applied the documentation method and note-taking technique in collecting data. This study used qualitative methods and the data was analyzed descriptively. The result of this study was presented in the informal method. Three theories were applied in this study. Saussure (1983) theory was used to analyze the signs, which the verbal and visual signs found in the data. Then, the meaning of signs was analyzed through the theory from Leech (1974) and the color theory by Cerrato (2012) to analyze the meaning of the color in the data. The result shows that there are twenty-six signs found in the data, nine of them are categorized as verbal signs, and seventeen others are visual signs. The verbal signs are visible through the text and sentence, meanwhile, the visual sign focuses on color and shape. Based on the analysis of verbal sign meaning five of them has connotative meaning and four of them has conceptual meaning.

Keywords: Advertisement, Verbal signs, Visual signs