Riassunto completo + appunti del corso di Language in Advertising

Language in advertising

Summary language

The starting point of semiology is that advertising is a communicative activity with a persuasive purpose aimed at getting consumers to buy products and services. These studies focus on the linguistic of the messages. Barthes introduced the semiological interest in images, focusing on codes, denotation and connotation:

• Denotation: is an objective description of the sign. It’s a proper analysis of perceptible elements in the image. It is a description frame-by-frame of the image, identifying objects and their positions.
• Connotation: is a description of meanings taken by the sign and its elements within a social and cultural context. It refers to social and cultural structures, symbolic associations, and how they influence over (affect) our lives.
• Codes: it’s a matching system that connects systems of signifiers and meanings.

Barthes states there is an intentional meaning of the image in advertising. Let's look at the example of pasta Panzani showing a half-open packaging containing pasta, tomatoes, and so on. We can show the effectiveness of advertising based on a complex structure:

• Language Message: referring to the product labels and the caption. We have two types of language messages:
  • The denoted message which is the literal meaning of the labels
  • The connoted message which is the sociocultural and ‘personal’ associations
• Literal Images or denoted message: referring to what consumer sees properly
• Symbolic or connoted message: in this case linked to the bag. We have a message referring to ‘home cooking’ based on the denoted message related to ‘returning from the market’.

According to Barthes, it is important to separate the two types, in order to understand the real relationship between the messages and the image as a whole. The function of language message is to ‘Anchor’, pointing out a level of perception and interpretation.

Eco and consolatory art

Eco’s analysis of advertising followed Barthes’s lines, assuming advertising codes follow a double register: the verbal and visual ones. Analyzing the Soap Camay advertising, Eco shows that there is a contrast between visual register and some elementary associations. The text on the magazine refers to the conquest of an artistic treasure, as if the visual messages were directed to a limited target, but the linguistic message seems to address a larger target by activating unsophisticated impulses. Eco states that advertising is a consolatory art repeating what the user expects through the ideology of consumption.

From message to advertising text

Greimas states that in the analysis of images we have to understand two expressive levels. Each visual text operates on two levels:

• The figurative level: allowing the recognition of objects of the world in the image
• The plastic level: allowing to obtain meanings over the imitation of reality that images represent. This type of analysis refers to the study of three elements:
  • Topologic: focused on the spatial organization
  • Eidetic: focused on the shape of objects
  • Chromatic: focused on the colours

Starting from here, Greimas defines three types of visual text:

• Abstract: the only possible form of analysis is Plastic (paintings, contemporary art and so on)
• Figurative: where figurative trainers can be identified
• Iconics: in the case of figurativeness is very dense

The identification of plastic and figurative formants is a central process to understanding a visual text. Not all features of the image represent formants but only those communicating a content. Plastic formants are important in relation to the plane of the content, there are two types of relationship:

• Symbolic: in this semiotics vision, there is a correspondence between expressive and content features
• Semi-symbolic: we have a correspondence between expression plane and content plane categories when visual lines are organized into plastic contrast. Opposite, contrasting, or contradictory elements of the same plastic category are on the same surface.

Floch was the first to apply these tools to advertising dividing the advertising’s area into three horizontal bands. Look at the example of News Cigarettes:

• Top Band: refers to a type block, the title
• Central Band: referring to a series of irregular elements, this band is ‘inserted’ with respect to the other two
• Lower band: refers to the words ‘20 filter cigarettes’

On the expressive level (signifier): it identifies a series of graphic and chromatic oppositions, refer to the same category: Continuity and Discontinuity

On the plane content level (signified): the ad is presented like a ‘front page’ of newspaper. What exactly does the notion of front page refer to?

On a figurative level: the journalistic work is presented within the central band with some representation of reporter’s life. A newspaper is a personal creation resulting from a selection of news, at the same time news cigarettes are the result of a special mixture of tobacco. The ad contains also a semi-symbolism because there is a correspondence between expressive plane and content plane categories.

• Continuity: (work of reporter expressed by monocolor and irregular polygons)
• Discontinuity: (reporter’s work expressed through regularity, graphic parallelism)

Audio-visual advertising: from narrative to passion

Visual semiotics is a useful tool to understand the organization of print advertising, but for the analysis of audiovisual advertising we need the generative trajectory of meaning. It consists in a shot-by-shot analysis. So we can take into account the complexity of the spot addressing the levels of the text discursive, semi-narrative, and deep structures.

• Discursive structure: referring to space, time, actors that are figurative isotopies and also thematic ones
• Semio-Narrative structure: refers to narrative syntax that can be divided into canonical narrative schema (manipulation, competence, performance and sanction) and actantial model, referring to the actantial position (as sender, object, receiver, helper, subject, opponent). A single actor can play more than one actantial role.
• Deep Level: referring to the semiotic square

A narrative analysis of advertising is able to explain the pragmatic dimension (agents actions) but it ignores the pathemic dimension (modulation of moods of the subject in the narrative).

Semiotics of passion

In the mid-1980s, the attention has been given to the thymic category, expressed by euphoria/dysphoria opposition. From a discursive point of view, passion results as ‘meaning effects’ representing the primum (the starting point). The sensory aspects of experiences are got through images that are basis of synesthetic modeling. When you talk about syntactic text, visual-auditory or visual-tactile are the most common expressions of synesthesia. The aim is to activate a multisensory process, ‘mediated’ by synesthetic representations. In classical rhetoric, synesthesia is a form of metaphor that associates terms with a diverse sensory system.

The modern advertising line is characterized by preponderance of passions related to the present or the future. For example, passions are related to the present when you envy someone else's product like smooth skin or a mobile phone and so on. But passions are also related to the future when them are projected forward. It’s important to consider that advertising passion has two forms:

• Passion stated: the starting point, transformation, and diffusion of a passion
• Impassive discourse: passion isn’t the content, but the form of an expression, as it is a projection of images

Image analysis allows understanding that there are emotions that could be in written or spoken language.

Semiotics and marketing

Advertising is a communication form that interacts with other forms within a specific cultural and social context. According to Semprini, advertising has become a common cultural form, a generic discourse that produces a vision of reality based on values inherent in paradigms. When you study improvements of a specific text, you have to take it into account as a single element in an ‘intertextual chain’ and compare it with other touchpoints.

The search for values

Floch defines the bases to understand the importance of semiotics for marketing and corporate communications:

• Greater intelligibility: ‘Nebulae of meaning’ (basis of a lot of advertising) are semantically defined much more precisely
• More relevance: semiotics allows distinguishing and creating a hierarchy of elements and identifying semantics variables produced in ‘generative of meaning path’
• More differentiation: elements can be related to each other according to the semiotic square rules

The axiological square should not only be considered as a static scheme, but as a useful tool to understand the functioning of text, the semantic transformations that are present in different adv stories. Market research and marketing can benefit from the studying of these values.

The brand between possible worlds and expression, brand speech

Brand discourse is another crucial aspect of marketing studied by semiotic analysis. It is traceable in all elements usually studied by marketing like adv, logo, products packaging. A brand is defined as "a semiotic phenomenon, a way of segmenting and attributing meaning in an orderly, structured and voluntary way". Each text is autonome and independent with respect to the creation circumstances and also to the reader that can receive and interpret it in different ways. There is a process of "disengagement" that "disconnects" the text both from the empirical sender and receiver. Traces of the sender and receiver can be found in the text. These are the representation of the statement. In the enunciative strategies, the presence of the brand can be explicit within the statement, such as the introduction of the logo or label. From a semiotic point of view, the brand is a ‘delegated statement’ as expressed in schematic form. All brand’s elements contribute to creating consistency.