The Relevance of Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics for Ad Textual Signification

Abstract

The import of rhetoric in advertising research has been burgeoning over the past thirty years. Coupled with an increased interest in multimodal interactions among verbal, pictorial, auditory registers, the hermeneutic tools furnished by traditional rhetoric have been expanded and elaborated. Mick & McQuarrie (2003) issued a call for a return to the text, as the province of rhetoric and semiotics, which may yield a rich picture of how ad texts signify. This paper addresses the fundamental question of how ad filmic texts assume signification from a multimodal rhetorical point of view, by engaging in a fruitful dialogue with various research streams within the wider semiotic discipline and consumer research. By critically addressing how ad texts signify in the course of the argumentation deployed by different approaches, such as Social Semiotics, Visual Semiotics, Consumer Research, the merits of a structuralist approach that prioritizes the distinction between relative and general degree zero, as put forward by Groupe μ (1970, 1992), are highlighted.

Keywords: ad textual signification, multimodal narratives, rhetoric, structuralist semiotics