March 05, 2008
English Professor Fern Johnson authors book on advertising images
Author explains how language and visuals in advertisements influence our culture.
The dominance of advertising in everyday life carries potent cultural meaning. In today’s "image based culture," advertising spreads images that shape what people believe and how they live their lives. While scholarship on visual images has advanced our understanding of the role of advertising in society (for example, in revealing how images of extremely thin female models and athletic heroes affect ideals and aspirations), images circulated through language codes—or "verbal images"—in advertising have received less attention.
A new book, "Imaging in Advertising: Verbal and Visual Codes of Commerce" (Routledge 2008), by Clark University English Professor Fern L. Johnson, takes a closer look at how the verbal and the visual work together to create a language of advertising that speaks to audiences and moves them to particular thoughts and actions.
"Imaging in Advertising" includes five case studies that draw from print, television, and internet advertising. Each case study offers a critical analysis of the power of advertising's verbal and visual images to perpetuate and energize cultural ideas and stereotypes. The author examines racialized verbal images in cigarette advertising; representations of cultural diversity in teen television commercials; metaphors for dealing with facial care across different age, gender and racial groups; language borrowed from technology to sell non-technology products; and the illusion of personal choice that is promoted in many Internet web sites designed as "advertainment."
"We are long past a time when advertising was considered to be just one of many influences on culture—pushing its messages into the cultural mix, interrupting cultural spaces, distracting citizens from more worthy pursuits but yet not part and parcel with culture," writes Johnson in her Introduction. "Advertising today is part of the cultural environment, weaving in and out of our lives on a daily basis. Advertising, as such, speaks as one of the prominent discourses of our time."
Gail Dines, chair of the American Studies program at Wheelock College and co-editor of the best-seller "Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader" writes, "Although we are bombarded by images on a daily basis, there are a surprisingly few number of books that really get under the skin of how advertisements work to sell products. Luckily, we now have Fern Johnson's insightful analysis to aid us in developing critical media literacy as a way to resist the allure of these seductive and manipulative images that are a key part of our visual landscape."
Jean Kilbourne, noted for her "Killing Us Softly" video series on body images and author of "Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel," praises the book as "an illuminating examination of how the verbal and visual combine to create the language of advertising."
"Imaging in Advertising" is currently available through online booksellers including Amazon.com.
Johnson received her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, her M.A. from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of "Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States" (Sage 2000), which examines the cultural foundations of language diversity in the U.S. She is on the editorial boards for two journals, Women and Language and The Howard Journal of Communications.
Johnson has been on the faculty at Clark since 1988. She is a participating faculty member in, and past director of, Clark's Communication and Culture Program. She teaches courses on language and culture in the U.S., language policy issues and gender and discourse.
Johnson is a resident of Carlisle, Massachusetts.