Predominant Discourses on the Semiotics System of Urban Billboards: A (Case Study: Municipal Billboards (2010 - 2012) in Isfahan)

Urban life is remarkably occupied with advertising billboards, images and sketches by governmental and private organizations and companies. People are usually exposed to Municipal billboards that aim at propagating civil values and improving civil behaviors. This article tries to give an analysis of Isfahan's municipal billboards appeared from 2010 to 2012, and then it provides an account of discourses governing the semiological relations of them. The cognitive semiological analysis according to the interpretive paradigm has provided us with the theoretical base as well as the methodology of this research. Twenty-seven cases have been selected from the 140 billboards and images which set from 2010 to 2012. After making certain that chosen cases fit with our research well, we started our process of analysis and interpretation. According to our findings, urban billboards are governed by five main discourses: message-based, sympathetic, warrant, law-based and esthetic message-based discourses. While the esthetic message based boards were more common since 2010 till 2011, sympathetic discourse is further in 2012 and a discursive shift occurred by which the message based discourse with harsh images, negative connotations and warrants were replaced with sympathetic and esthetic contents.