Reading Cultures.Politics of Representation - Essay Example

While studying semiotics; however one must consider that there is applied semiotic structures as for instance architecture, dress or cuisine. Any edifice is a refuge and a certain message (Hall, 1980:58). Semiotics maybe applied to cultural studies to artifacts as literary texts, photographs, popular songs, food, road signs, advertisements, and clothing. Semiotics does not seek to find the importance of texts but to be conversant with the process through which they become meaningful and how they are differently being interpreted.

 Representation is the production of meaning, discourse and image (Hall, 1997:3). Looking at the advertisement “Istanbul European capital of culture”, there are several cultural aspects about Istanbul and the people of Istanbul that are brought out. . Big, colorful palaces built in the Ottoman Empire style of houses have been the way to in the Middle East even in the ancient times. From the images, it would be rare to find someone mistaking Istanbul to a city in the U.S, because of the unique buildings.

There is a lot of use of horses as a mode of transport, of course representing how long they have been using them. The use of boats can also be seen and, it represents a mode of transport that is free and readily available from the way a boat flies in between buildings. In the advertisement, there illustrations of how easily one can move around the city from using the suspension bridge, to moving from one place to another via en electric train. Most of the modes of transport in the advertisement started in the ancient times.

All through the advertisement, there is dancing. To bring out the significance of dancing in understanding the city of Istanbul, is the code of dressing used when dancing, the movements and the musical instruments used. All these elements used in the advertisement cannot be specified to represent only the city of Istanbul; it could be another Islamic city like Dubai or even Qatar. With that in mind, the same elements can only be associated with an Islamic community. Let us use an example in the use of color white as used by Andrew (1996:12).

White is commonly associated with peaceful and, good times like weddings and, that is why people wear white wedding dresses, but in some places, white is associated with severe thing such as death. Considering that, it is necessary to note how specific mode of dressing, the architecture and dancing are to a community. The meaning of the images shown in the advertisement is that Istanbul is an