Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Today we observe a development in which the role of language is steadily decreasing whereas the impact of pictures is increasing. This goes hand in hand with a development in which information relies more and more on visual concepts. More and more language takes the part of explaining how to read the visual presentations, more and more language takes the part of providing the background information which is necessary to understand the meaning of the visual foreground. Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) argue that Today, we seem to move towards a decrease of control over language (e.g. the greater variety of accents allowed on the public media, the increasing poblems in enforcing normative spelling), and towards an increase in codification and control over the visual (e.g. the use of image banks from which ready-made images can be drawn for the constuction of visual texts, and, generally, the effect of computer imaging technology). Although we may be aware of this tendency, we have not been taught in school how to read visual concepts and so most of us share some degree of illiteracy concerning a critical reading of information presented by images. This is remarkable because we all agree about their influence on our lives but at the same time when we do not develop analytical tools for describing what kinds of strategies, what kinds of concepts are working in visual presentations of information. We tend to overlook the importance of visual concepts simply because we generally do not know enough about their code. This paper analyses photos and language which are parts of ads, which have definitely been designed for transferring messages because they have been made to advertise one specific product. Images and the text of advertisements never are casual products like family pictures. Although the photo in the family album is coded its coding is less elaborated than the coding of pictures in ads. We have to keep in mind that many people, experts in advertising, experts in public relations were involved in the process of designing an ad before we can look at the final result. This is why ads are definitely conceptually designed because they are meant to create a specific meaning in the viewer s mind. It is a truism that no visual concept, no photo of an ad was chosen by chance. Photographs and language of ads are more likely to have been carefully constructed and selected according to the meaning they are supposed to create. This is [...]

For upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students in communication and media studies

A first in multimodal/multisemiotic discourse studies this collection of original articles by international scholars focuses primarily on texts from non-English speaking contexts. The illuminating insights enhance our understanding of how language and other semiotic resources construe specific cultural and social concerns.

This book examines new forms of communication that have emerged through the interactive capabilities of the Internet, in particular online advertising and web advertisements. It develops a new model of online communication, incorporating mass communication and interpersonal communication. Interactive mass communication redefines the roles of online communication partners who are confronted with a higher degree of complexity in terms of hypertextual information units. In web advertising, this new aspect of interactivity is linguistically reflected in different types of personal address forms, directives, and "trigger words". This study also analyzes the different strategies of persuasion with which web ads try to initiate their activation.Web Advertising provides essential information on the language of web advertisements for academics, researchers and students in the fields of hypertext-linguistics, advertising, communication and media studies.