Modern and postmodern advertising: A semiotic analysis

The intellectuals of the enlightenment pioneered with the idea that human could design a better life for himself by using his mind and his social life could be shaped in this direction. This structure of the mind has caused that it is regarded as the first and basic source of information on act of understanding human's natural or social life and thought has placed instead of lace of sacred texts, revelations, emotions or instincts. Modernity has marked the accumulation of knowledge formed by the participation of free individuals, the emancipation of mankind, the enrichment of daily life, the establishment of scientific dominion over nature, the creation of rational forms of social organization and thought styles as a project of the period of enlightenment. Postmodernity represents a new phase of capitalism; besides, it marks a critical approach to the values of the Enlightenment and modernity. Modernity makes capitalism historically invisible or, at the very least, naturalizes it but postmodernity has the same problems and it makes them invisible by covering the problems. In this study, the political, economic and cultural changes that have occurred in the process of modernity and postmodernity and the reflection is determined through dynamic ads. In both modernity and postmodernity, it was intended to make visible the continuing dominance of the capitalist economic system at the level of functionality, status and symbol and how the indicators used as a means of concealment of this sovereignty were controlled and operated. Taking into consideration the characteristics of modernity and postmodernity, ten commercial films covering 1970 and 2016, which were screened by Youtube channel and compatible with the theoretical section, were selected and analyzed by semiotic analysis. Keywords: Enlightenment, Modernity, Postmodernity, Advertising, Politics, Economy, Language, Culture, Ideology, Semiotic Analysis.