This book was put together over the course of the past three years and is the outcome of the author's publications in the multimodal advertising rhetoric research field and projects that were undertaken with the employment of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model. It features four chapters that span different, yet interlocking aspects of ad texts' multimodal rhetorical configuration and culminates in a practical guide for the analysis of the verbo-visual rhetorical structure of TV ad texts, based on the unique methodology of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model on offer by //disruptiVesemiOtics//. //rhetor.dixit//: Understanding ad texts' rhetorical structure for differential figurative advantage neither seeks to cover exhaustively issues in any of the traditional fields of concern to the discipline of rhetoric (an impossible endeavor, indeed, within the contours of a single book), nor to address all issues on top of the current agenda in multimodal advertising rhetoric. Its mission is to present key facets of current research in multimodal advertising discourse, largely dispersed and spread out in multiple disciplines, including semiotics, in such a manner as to enable the reader to get to grips with the benefits that stem from employing a content analytic approach for the ongoing management of the modes of rhetorical configuration of advertising texts. The combination of an interpretivist approach with the methodical outlook yielded by content analysis affords to transform multimodal rhetorical analysis of advertising texts from a theoretical enterprise geared towards making sense of how meaning emerges through the figurative language of advertising to a systematic method for managing advertising textuality, in such a manner as to enable practitioners in marketing related disciplines (e.g., account planning, marketing research, brand management) to actively manage how brand meaning is generated through distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration. The managerial orientation of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model is intended to enhance understanding as to how a brand's intellectual capital is configured and, moreover, to point to directions whereby what I call a brand's figurative first mover advantage and differential figurative advantages may be furnished to a brand's discourse. The systematic understanding of a brand's distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration is not just a 'nice-to-have' add-on in a metrics dashboard, but a prerequisite for managing brands as constellations of figurative elements and modes of connectivity among figurative elements, which are part and parcel of a brand's textual essence.

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the existing marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, Film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques.

Semiotics has been making progressively inroads into marketing research over the past thirty years. Despite the amply demonstrated conceptual appeal and empirical pertinence of semiotic perspectives in various marketing research streams, spanning consumer research, brand communications, branding and consumer cultural studies, there has been a marked deficit in terms of consolidating semiotic brand-related research under a coherent disciplinary umbrella with identifiable boundaries and research agenda. The Handbook of Brand Semiotics furnishes a compass for the perplexed, a set of anchors for the inquisitive and a solid corpus for scholars, while highlighting the conceptual richness and methodological diversity of semiotic perspectives. Written by a team of expert scholars in various semiotics and branding related fields, such as John A. Bateman, David Machin, Xavier Ruiz Collantes, Kay L. O’Halloran, Dario Mangano, George Rossolatos, Merce Oliva, Per Ledin, Gianfranco Marrone, Francesco Mangiapane, Jennie Mazur, Carlos Scolari, Ilaria Ventura, and edited by George Rossolatos, Chief Editor of the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics, the Handbook is intended as a point of reference for researchers who wish to enter the ‘House of Brand Semiotics’ and explore its marvels. The Handbook of Brand Semiotics, actively geared towards an inter-disciplinary dialogue between perspectives from marketing and semiotics, features the state-of-the-art, but also offers directions for future research in key streams, such as: Analyzing and designing brand language across media Brand image, brand symbols, brand icons vs. iconicity The contribution of semiotics to transmedia storytelling Narrativity and rhetorical approaches to branding Semiotic roadmap for designing brand identity Semiotic roadmap for designing logos and packaging Comparative readings of structuralist, Peircean and sociosemiotic approaches to brandcomms Sociosemiotic accounts of building brand identity online Multimodality and Multimodal critical discourse analysis Challenging the omnipotence of cognitivism in brand- related research Semiotics and (inter)cultural branding Brand equity semiotics

This volume addresses some of the most important conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges and opportunities with which the sister disciplines of semiotics and discourse analysis are mutually confronted in the context of considering new avenues of cross-disciplinary application to distinctive branding research streams. In continuation of the collective volume 'Handbook of Brand Semiotics' (Kassel University Press, 2015), which sought to consolidate relevant scholarship and to identify the main territories that have been established at the cross-roads between branding and semiotic research, the current 'Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis' aims at accomplishing further strides in critical areas, such as the exigency for reconsidering the aptness of existing semiotic theories in the face of the radically shifting co-creative landscape of digital branding, the benefits of systematically micro-analyzing brand communities’ discourses by drawing on CAQDAS programs, the combination of big data analytics with discourse theory in corpus analysis, and the epistemological issues that emerge while combining discourse analysis with time-hallowed marketing qualitative and quantitative research methods. At the same time, the volume hosts a resourceful blend of empirical studies and novel conceptual frameworks in burgeoning streams, such as place, heritage, culinary, personal, and political branding.

This unique book gathers articles from the numanistic perspective of multidisciplinarity and innovation, connected by three main theoretical interests or overarching themes: music, semiotics and translation. Offering an eclectic collection of innovative papers that address such topics as culture, musicology, art consumption, meaning, codes and national identities, to name a few, it has a broad appeal across the humanities and social sciences. The contributing authors draw on various schools and methodologies, including psychology, psychoanalysis, social semiotics, semiotic modelling, deconstruction and cultural analysis. By approaching established themes in new and challenging ways, this highly engaging book has the potential to advance the state of the art in various topics. It appeals to all scholars investigating cultural identity, linguistics and translation, music consumption, performance, semiotic theories and various intersections of these and related topics.

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, but also, to a lesser extent, music semiotics and more niche, but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with Consumer Culture Theory.