SEMIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF BILLBOARD ADVERTISEMENTS USED BY 2017 KYRGYZ PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS CANDIDATES

Abstract

In political campaign carried out during electoral periods, political advertising has become one of the most important means of reaching and informing voters. In this context, billboard advertisement, as one of the political advertising tools, has an important place in promoting the messages of political parties or electors and in introducing themselves to voters. It is seemed that for this purpose, candidates and political parties in Kyrgyzstan's elections have been densely using advertising boards to promote their messages and to introduce themselves to voters.

For this purpose, firstly political advertising and billboard advertisements as one of the political advertising tools during the period starting from the independence of Kyrgyzstan to daylight were discussed; presidential elections and billboard advertisements as political advertising contents were taken under the framework of semiotics. Billboard advertisements of presidential candidates in the October 15, 2017 presidential election campaign were examined according to the Barthes’ signification scheme. In the semiological analysis, going out from the denotational\connotational approach, signs and visual  description of billboard advertisements were analysed.

For the Kyrgyzstan presidency competed Eleven candidates  each other.  However, only three of these candidates had bilboard advertisements on the streets of Bishkek. Thus, the study was conducted around the messages that these three candidates convey to the public through the billboard. In this context,  Presidential candidates Sooronbay CEENBEKOV, Ömürbek BABANOV and Temir SARIEV 's  Billboard advertisements  were examined through Barthes' semantics scheme.  The way has come out from the viewpoint of correctness / correspondence in semiotic analysis. Firstly the indicators used in the flat semantic plane are explained in the study. Then, the connotations of the representations in the society mind have been mentioned. in the semantic plane.