Decoding Advertisements; Ideology and Meaning in Advertising; Williamson

Judith Williamson [+–]

Judith Williamson is a professor and journalist, formerly a teacher of cultural studies at the Maidstone College of Art. She is the author of Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, Deadline at Dawn, and Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture.

This book sets out not simply to criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but to examine in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function, however, is to involve us as ‘individuals’ in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If it is economic conditions which make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions seem necessary.

Preface

Preface to the Fifteenth Impression

Foreword

Introduction

‘Meaning and Ideology’

Part One: ‘Advertising-Work’

1. A Currency of Signs

2. Signs Address Somebody

3. Signs for Deciphering: Hermeneutics

Part Two: ‘Ideological Castles’: Referent Systems

4. ‘Cooking’ Nature

5. Back to Nature

6. Magic

7. Time: Narrative and History

8. Conclusions

End Matter

Select Bibliography

Reviews

Enormous, if solemn, fun.
Angela Carter, New Statesman

For anyone teaching Media Studies in the last decade, Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements stood out like a good deed in a turgid world. Here was a writer on popular culture who remained literate and sensitive, committed and astute.
City Limits

A key text in the Media Studies field, ably demonstrating how philosophical ideas can be taken down from the stratosphere and applied to everyday life.
The Guardian

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Decoding Advertisements

Ideology and Meaning in Advertising

Judith Williamson [+–]

Table of Contents

Reviews

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