Housing Advertisements as Signs: Locality Creation and Meaning-Systems

This paper explores the meanings of housing advertisements in terms of signs. Using examples from Britain and Canada, these advertisements are shown to possess not only ideological effects but also dimensions for individual self-authorship. Their ideological effects are examined in terms of their representation of certain features of ‘real life’—the natural, the acquisitive, the historic, the traditional and the harmonious—this being broadly consonant with the existing ways of thinking and doing.