Imaging in Advertising: Verbal and Visual Codes of Commerce

by Johnson; Fern L.

• ISBN13: 9780415978811
• ISBN10: 0415978815
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

While scholarship on the visual elements of advertising has advanced our understanding of communication and media, the language elements - or 'verbal images' of the advertisement tend to be downplayed, providing a truncated analysis. Imaging in Advertising explores how the verbal and visual work together to create a language of advertising that speaks to audiences and moves them to particular thoughts and actions. Through a series of case studies, Fern L. Johnson examines how the verbal and visual produce meaning - exploring advertisements for cigarettes, alcohol, and cosmetics - and argues that the verbal images in advertising are as important as the visual images, treating advertisements as a structured whole, rather than a series of fragments.

Author Biography

Fern L. Johnson is Professor of English and faculty member in the Communication and Culture Program at Clark University.

Table of Contents

Advertising images and discourse	p. 1
Imaging in adlvertising	p. 3
Defining discourse	p. 6
Exploited discourse elements in advertising	p. 9
Overview of chapters	p. 13
Smoke and mirrors - circulating racial images in cigarette advertising	p. 15
Race and cigarettes	p. 18
Tobacco industry targeting of African Americans	p. 21
The cultural text of racialized ads	p. 23
Verbal and visual imaging in black and white	p. 33
Conclusions and implications	p. 58
Keeping race in place - multicultural visions and voices in teen advertising	p. 62
Ideological codes and diversity	p. 65
Teen demographies and cultural diversity	p. 68
Representation and "doing diversity" in advertising	p. 71
The uneasy representation of cultural diversity in teen advertising	p. 80
Conclusions and implications	p. 102
Different tropes for different folks - advertising and face-fixing	p. 106
Advertising and beauty as a never-ending quest	p. 107
Thematic tropes for fixing the face	p. 114
Conclusions and implications	p. 147
Madison Avenue meets Silicon Valley - technology imprints on advertising	p. 154
The who and what of technology use	p. 158
Technographic discourse types in advertising	p. 164
Conclusions and implications	p. 203
From Barbie to BudTV - advertising in the Fifth Frame	p. 206
Conceptual foundations	p. 207
Narratives as advertising text	p. 214
Self-absorption and the Fifth Frame meet the Internet	p. 221
Conclusions and implications	p. 232
References	p. 236
Index	p. 245
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