EDUCATION THROUGH ADVERTISING’S METAPHORS
Keywords:
education, metaphor, advertising, culture, identityAbstract
The study of brand choices based on our metaphorical interpretations can lead
us to consider, in a more realistic way, the construction of individuals and today's
world, as well as trades and relations that undertake a range of interconnected social
processes. Eventually, the extensive process of media consumption - choosing, buying,
and using - of goods, could provide us with answers to important questions, like “who
are the social actors?â€, “what kind of rules do they follow?â€, or “what are their
values?â€.
In this sense, this paper will try to discuss the important educational role of the
advertising discourse. By promoting a vision of reality, advertising assumes a social
responsibility also. In a way, an advertisement educates people about the product or
service being advertised, but also about the values communicated through a proposed
brand identity. We will focus on the metaphorical constructions that are involved in
advertising communication, the social and ideological campaigns, as well as the role
of the new media tools in targeting the emotional potential of the target audience.
Fallowing I. Richards’s and G. Lakoff's theory that people frequently use
metaphors in their daily conversations, we advances the conclusion that metaphor is
an omnipresent principle in language through which advertising is connected to us. We
therefore believe that the recurrent use of metaphor in advertising communication
doesn't serve the purpose of generating the surprise of the consumer public anymore,
but responds to an existential need for understanding reality. Furthermore, as we will
try to argue, it is mainly due to this double metaphorization of the advertising
discourse that it can be understood by such diverse masses, managing to bridge sociocultural
gaps.
Furthermore, we will try to encourage a reconsideration of educational methods
proposing the new applications of advertising’s discourse as possible ways for better
understanding of nowadays values and identities.
References
Notes
i Jef Richards, Department of Advertising, The University of Texas at Austin, "Advertising Quotes," from
http://Advertising.utexas.edu/research/quotes/Q100.html on April 7, 2006.
ii Ivor Armstrong Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York. OUP. Lecture V., pp. 89-112. p. 89.
apud van Gent-Petter, Marga, THE OMNIPRESENCE OF METAPHOR AS A TOOL FOR
COMMUNICATION PURPOSES, Analele UVT Vol. III, 2008
iii George Lakoff, M. Johnson , Metaphors we Live by, ed. Chicago University Press, 2003 pg. 39
iv Daniel E.Berlyne, Aesthetics and Psychobiology. New York: Appleton, 1971
v Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979
vi Paul Virilio, La Vitesse deliberation, ed. Galilée, Paris 1999 pg. 59
vii Roland Barthes, â€Rhetorique de l'imageâ€, in Communications, n. 4, 1964
viii Charles Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising,ed. Routledge 1996
ix Paul Messaris, Visual Persuasion. The Role of Images in Advertising, ed. Sage, 1997 pg.19
