Two Approaches to the
Study of Advertisements
William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut
Jhally
SEMIOLOGY
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Emerged from linguistics and cultural
analysis
Can be used to study any social phenomena
in which meaning is thought to inhere
Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes,
Marshall McLuhan
Evolution of Advertising
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1920s: visual representation became more
common, the text explained the visual
1960s: the text does not simply exaplain the
visual; more cryptic; semiology required to
read ads = relating elements in the ad’s
internal structure to each other
User-centred (relies upon the experiences of
the segmented audience) vs. product-centred
advertising (relies on how product claims
appeal to an undifferentiated audience)
Audience/Subject Addressed
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Invesatigating the message’s relationship to the
audience: „The job of the advertiser is to know the
world of the segmented audiences intimately, so that
the stimuli created can evoke associations with
whatever is ‘stored’ in their memories”
„Advertising doesn’t always mirror how people are
acting, but how they’re dreaming… In a sense, what
we’re doing is wrapping up your emotions and
selling them back to you”
Advertising reconstitutes the predispositions, hopes,
and concerns of the audiences to suit its own
purposes
Williamson
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1.
2.
3.
Williamson’s argument (signifier, signified; transfer
of meaning; referent system)
Their interpretation of her work:
Meaning of Catherine Deneuve transferred to the
product
Relies on the creativity of the audience; since the
1960s: advertisers see viewers as participants:
„Doyle Dane did things that other agencies said
couldn’t work. They worked because they treated
people as if they had some brain and as though
they had a sense of humour”
In order for the transfer to take place, the first
object must already be significant to the audience
Gender
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Erving Goffman, Gender Advertisements; examines
ads in terms of the parent-child relationship; claims
that ads draw on ritual gestures that are instantly
recognizable (have to transmit the message in 30
seconds): „ads are highly ritualized versions of the
parent-child relationship, with women treated largely
as children”
E.g. female hands barely touching objects, women
lying on beds (in a poor position to defend
themselves and sexually available), drifting away
mentally, protected by men
Content Analysis
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Derived from a social science tradition rather
than from linguistics and literary criticism
More objective, more reliable than the
semiological approach, helps to ground our
analysis of images and words in something
more than individual and impressionistic
interpretation
yet more restrictive, dismissed by many
critics as totally inadequate for the
measurement of meaning
Content Analysis
1.
2.
3.
4.
Different researchers work with the same data;
objective descreption implies that there should be
an acceptable level of agreement among different
analysts
The same set of criteria should be applied to all
the data under examination
Specific quantitative procedures are used: instead
of „women are often shown mentally drifting from
the scene”: „In 82 % of ads sampled women are
often shown mentally drifting from the scene”
Measures only the surface content of the message
Categories used
E. g. Studying occupational roles:
1.
Housewife/mother;
2.
Stewardess
3.
Model
4.
Celebrity/singer/dancer
5.
Cook/maid/servant
6.
Secretary/Clerical
7.
Businesswoman
8.
Teacher
9.
Other
Sampling and Coding
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Sampling: choosing a smaller number of ads for
actual study that are representative of a given
period or issue; using sampling tables. E.g.
„magazine ads from 1900 to 1920”; „magazines
targeted for females in 1982”
Coding: e.g.: assigning the primary female character
in each ad to one occupational category; problem:
many ads may have more than one primary female
character; solution: constructing subcategories,
primary and secondary coding for the same set of
categories; in this way we can measure subsidiary
themes in the data
Suggested presentation topics
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Colour in perfume ads (Williamson)
Gender subordination in perfume ads or in tobacco
ads
Masculinity in car ads
The body in perfume ads
Gender in washing powder ads
Occupational roles for females in washing powder
ads (Content Analysis)
Most popular ads in IEAS (interviewing students)