ABSTRACT
Advertisements are signs, and their systems of codes are powerful carriers of ideology. Ideology is one of the key concepts of Media Studies, and advertisements are key texts in any analysis of the way in which ideology works. Roland Barthes labelled the ideological meaning of signs as the third level of interpretation after denotation and connotation (see p. 19). He described this third ideological level as ‘mythic’ – because at this level ‘meaning’ appears as natural or common sense.
