Advertising

and
Ideology
• Ideology through advertising
• Ideology is a term used in reference to the
fundamental values and beliefs of a group,
society, or culture.
• These beliefs are widely accepted views about
the roles of men and women, good and bad,
the nature of the “good life”, etc.
• Ideologies are reinforced by the dominant
institutions in society through constructed
representations of the world, and symbol
systems which often justify the current social
structure or ways of living.
• In advertising, ideologies are conveyed through
• Marx
• The “Ideology” concept was originally proposed by Karl Marx (Marx and Engels
1962) to describe the relationship between human life and material conditions.
• “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx and
Engels 1962), Marx and Engels claimed that all human consciousness (ideology) is
rooted in material conditions, and can be changed only by transforming these
conditions.
• Material conditions determine the human consciousness and form their system and
framework of ideas through which they can understand the world and their
positions in the world.
• In addition to the material conditions, ideology is also determined by the class
relations of production.
• Ideology, according to Marx is a system of ideas which expresses the interests of the
dominant class but in deceptive ways.
• As a system of ideas, ideology means strategies used by the ruling class or dominant
social groups to maintain their ruling position and achieve control of subordinate
classes by articulating their theories of economics and society which misrepresent
the actual class relations but in favour of the interests of a minority.
• The notion of “false consciousness” is derived from the misrepresentation of class
relations.
• Through his criticism of “false consciousness”, Marx unmasked the hidden nature of
capitalism by condemning ideology as an illusion to cover capitalist exploitation.
• To Marx, exploitation is hidden by religious and political illusions which substitute
“naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Marx and Engels 1962: 36).
• His criticism of false consciousness (i.e. ideology), expresses his strong opposition
towards capitalism. This led to the pejorative use of the term ideology by capitalist
leaning scholars
• Antonio Gramsci’s Concept of Ideology
• Apparently, Gramsci does not hold the same view for the
notion of Marx’s ideology as “false consciousness”, but
advanced Marxist thinking by developing the concept of
“hegemony”.
• Hegemony means strategies used by the dominant class to
rule the masses through consent.
• Ideological and cultural domination by the ruling class over
the rest of the society.
• According to Gramsci, ideology is valid, necessary and a
superstructure for the dominant class to secure their
exercise of political leadership and control of the
subordinate classes, because this kind of rule is based on
“the ‘active consent’ of the subordinate classes and to
integrate the various factions of the dominant class into a
relatively stable power bloc”.
• Hegemony plays an effective role in the system of other
state apparatuses but in practice. Hegemony should be
seen as flexible and dynamic in terms of unlike Marxist
thinking about ideology as false consciousness.
• Louis Althusser’s Concept of Ideology
• Louis Althusser, leading 21st Century French Marxist philosopher,
incorporated some aspects of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony by
borrowing from structuralism and psychoanalysis.
• In his essay on “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, he
describes ideology as “not
• pure illusions, but bodies of representations existing in institutions and
practice” (Althusser 1976: 155).
• He believed that ideology is neither necessarily seen as true or false,
but is a matter of the real and an “imaginary’’, “lived’’ relation between
men and their world.
•
• All the State Apparatuses function both by repression and by ideology,
with the difference that the (Repressive) State Apparatuses function
massively and predominantly by repression, whereas the Ideological
State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology
(1971).
• Ideology serve as an apparatus for social relations through: i) force and
ii) a system of beliefs and ideas.
• The two kinds of apparatuses form the State Apparatuses (SA) and the
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), both consisting of material
existence or reality and spiritual existence or ideas, which are not
opposed but combined into one body.
• According to Althusser’s (1971:162), ideology has a material element
and the concept of imaginary relationship of individuals to their real
conditions of existence”.
• Ideology represents men’s lived relation to their conditions of
existence, which Althusser insists, are “imaginary” relations - a kind of
• Ideology in Advertising
• The mass media plays a significant role in conveying the “broadly held”
views and how the world 'really' works and should work.
• Media messages can make audiences accept current practices and their
roles in society as “normal. The broadly held views become the
dominant ideologies of a society or culture.
• Advertising is ideological as it reflects and molds our life and thoughts.
• Advertising plays the function of selling things to to us, but it also
creates structures of meaning. Here the “meaning” stands for
“ideology”.
• Besides the function of selling commodities, advertisements also
transmit ideological meanings, either in an implicit or explicit manner.
• Ideology embedded in advertisements shifts along with changes in
production systems. Advertising then had the function of encouraging
people to change behavior in relations to changing systems of
production. Thus ideology manages the people’s consciousness.
• Ideology perpetuated in advertisements aims to set up an interaction
between producers and customers and to encourage the sale of goods:
this is seen as the potential ideology of advertising in a general sense.
• But in the specific and concrete sense advertisements can be seen as
ideological because they are vehicles transmitting message of
commodity; linking consumers’ wants and desire to the product;
influencing the audiences’ consciousness and world values as well as
making commodities symbolize social and cultural significance.
• Advertisements transfer meaning by linking a particular product or
brand to a particular set of qualities or beliefs in the consumer's mind.
• This linkage is often achieved through juxtaposition — the simple
imposition of the qualities on the product, in the hope that the
consumer will make that connection themselves. The product is then
linked with ideology.
• To discover ideology, we must learn how the ideology in encoded.
• Just like a language system that consists of distinct signs by which the
ideological meaning is understood, advertising can only be understood
its symbols are known. For example, the color red symbolizes luck and
happiness in many cultures.
• The simplest language to understand is visual language, where the
relationship between the concept and the sign seems fairly
straightforward. But even with visual language it is not that simple
when the image is two dimensional. Written language is difficult since
written words don’t look or sound like the things to which they refer.
• Visual signs are called iconic signs— they bear, in their form, a certain
resemblance to the object, person or event which they refer. A
photograph of a tree reproduces some of the actual conditions of our
visual perception in the visual sign.
• Indexical Signs: signs where the signifier is caused by the signified, e.g.,
smoke signifies fire.
• The signifier might not resemble its signified object but it is not
arbitrarily assigned, rather it is directly connected in some way to the
object.
• The relationship between what the sign stands for – its referent and the
sense behind it, the interpretant – may have to be learned.
• The link between the representamen and its object may only be
inferred; for instance, smoke, thunder, footprints, flavours, a door bell
ringing, or a photograph (?) or even films.
• Written signs are Symbolic (arbitrary) signs because the relation
between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally
specific — They have no obvious relationship with the things to which
they refer.
• The letters T.R.E.E do not look anything like trees in Nature, nor does
the word tree in English sound like ‘real’ trees (if indeed they make any
sound at all).
• The relationship of these system of representation between the sign,
the concept and the object to which they might be used to refer is
entirely arbitrary —in principle any collection of letters or any sound in
any order would do the trick equally well.
• Trees would not mind if we used the word SEERT - trees written
backwards - to represent the concept.
• The signs are arbitrary but understood well in a group where the signs
are shared. Language is a code of shared meanings.
• P[
The signs are arbitrary but understood well in a group where the signs are shared. Language is a code of
shared meanings.

• Symbolization is the linking process between signifier and signified.

• Denotation and connotation are two levels
Property Denotationof analysis that can be used to identify ideology in
Connotation
advertisements.
Red Colour Luck/happiness
• Denotation refers
Rose
to the literal meaning and
Flower
while connotation refers to meanings beyond the literal or
love
ideological level.
Forestry Plantation nature

Mountain Landscape Longevity