Semiological analysis of the book’s cover of French as a foreign language

Abstract

The objectives of this research are firstly to analysis the sign appearing on the book’s cover of French as a foreign language and secondly to study the trends of creating the book’s cover. Our corpus consists of 57 covers of the French book as a foreign language published from 2012-2018 by French publishers: CLE International, Hachette FLE, Didier FLE and Editions maisons des langues. For the research methodology, we use signal analysis method (méthode d’analyse systémique) proposed by Anne- Marie Houdebine. Our analysis is based on 3 stages: scene stage, icon or symbol stage, and semiolinguistic stage. The result shows that there are 18 signs in scene stage, 41 signs in icon stage and 21 signs in semiolinguistic stage. The interpretation is based on 4 themes namely the group of people, the electronic devices, the cool colors, and the tourist attractions in France and in French speaking countries. The findings suggested the highlight of the technology theme as the prime trend in book cover through the use of electronic devices. The frequent use of images of mixed group of people reflected the current multicultural society. Cool color tone, such as white, green, and blue suggested the sense of relaxation and relief while exploring the covers. Photos of tourist attraction and cities related to France were pervasively displayed to stimulate the country tourism.