Goodnow, Lauren2015-01-072019-08-192014-08-18bibid: 8793388https://hdl.handle.net/1813/38866This study seeks to prove that visual play exists in the real world as is found in online brassiere advertisements. Further, it finds that the language of visual semiotics, which is used to explain how advertisement images are interpreted, is insufficient to describe these advertisements, so this study proposes to extend the language of visual semiotics using the concepts of visual play. This study uses visual semiotics to analyze the use of visual play in online advertisements of bras, proposing a new layer of visual semiotics to include visual play. This third layer (of visual semiotics) creates a scale to measure the amount of visual play in an advertisement and provides a method to interpret advertisements that would other wise fail to be read in a visual semiotics method. The notion that a visual image is not carelessly entered is the keystone of semiotic analysis. The viewer comes into the image through the lens of his or her own experience, providing a personalized understanding of the image within the context it is shown. This study focuses on how visual play within these images creates a bridge between the advertising and art worlds to depict half naked women in a fashion that is void of association with porn, enabling the studied images to be more successful than traditional bra advertisements.en-USPlayBrasLudologydissertation or thesis