This work focuses on the analysis of both the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of modern French social advertising, the description of the communicative structure of the advertising message and its conceptual and semiotic study. Public advertising is an important tool for shaping society. Public advertising can have many functions: informational, promotional, educational, social. With its help people can actualize problems of society and identify with its solutions. Public advertising is often designed for a wide audience which faces different social problems such as family violence, environmental protection, health of children and society, drug addiction, AIDS and so on. Special attention was paid to the study of the concept sphere and lexical implementation of the concepts of French public advertising. Examining the different types of French social advertising, we saw that two opposing central mega concepts "Menace" (threat) and "Protection" (protection). Mega concept "Menace", depending on the type of advertising, can concretise in danger to life and health, as well as the threat to the environment, which is an indirect threat to human life. To this mega concept are submitted such semantic-forming concepts as "Cause" (cause) and "Cons?quence" (consequence). All these concepts are reflected in verbal forms as well as in visual means. Semiotic analysis of social advertising shows that textual and visual components are equally important for advertising. With the use of images it is easier to convey the meaning of advertising, rather than only through verbal means, since the image has a stronger emotional impact on human consciousness. Often, however, using only a picture is not enough to fully disclose the nature of the advertising message and thus the textual component becomes necessary. Regarding the communicative structure of social advertising, it should be noted that the socio-advertising message is a complex communicative act, where assertive acts are used in combination with other types of speech acts, often together with the directives. In such cases, the assertive act usually states a fact or issue and the directive act appeals to perform certain actions or take measures to solve the problem. The analysed examples of French public advertising also showed that under the guise of assertive speech acts are often hidden motivations or indirect orders, which are presented as discourse implicatures. These implicatures are closely related to the stylistic values of linguistic units, as well as encyclopaedic, cultural and social competencies of the speakers. In addition, implicatures in public advertising are actualised through associative connections with different elements. Talking about the sender of advertising messages, we conclude that the sender of the French social advertising can be of two types: a) the real sender - public advertising agency, in some cases, it can be at the same time the creator of the advertising message (government or NGO) and b) fictitious, in other words - delegated sender. The role of the recipient in the French social advertising is more passive, because the author of the advertising message simultaneously addresses a huge amount of people; it means that the recipient of advertising is multiple. We have classified French public advertising communicative purposes as follows: 1) attract attention or change the public's attitude towards a problem; 2) appeal to change the behavioural pattern of society; 3) promote a particular lifestyle; 4) motivate to carry out some actions; 5) influence public opinion / social consciousness; 6) involve people in social processes.
