Article Title：On covert communication in advertising
Abstract：
This paper investigates the notion of covert communication in advertisements. I begin by discussing the role of intentions in communication, outlining the relevance-theoretic view. Taking the work of Keiko Tanaka (1994/1999. Advertising Language: A Pragmatic Approach to Advertisements in Britain and Japan. Routledge, London) as a starting point, I reanalyse her claim that advertisers employ covert strategies to overcome audience distrust in terms of constraints placed on the strength of product claims. It is argued that considerations of cognitive consistency and innate human meta-representational abilities are far more central to a cognitive pragmatic account of advertisements than the notion of covert communication. Likewise, the claim that advertisers use covert communication in order to distance themselves from their frequent exploitation of social taboos is re-examined in the light of more recent advertising literature. Next, a discussion of the 'advertorial', incorporating insights provided by schema theory (e.g. Augoustinos, Martha, Walker, Ian, 1995. Social Cognition. Sage, London), probes deeper into the notion of 'covertness', suggesting that even this strategy involves a degree of complicity between advertiser and audience. Finally, covert communication is contrasted with weak overt communication, leading to an important refinement of Tanaka's treatment of the notion. Underlying this paper is the claim that an appeal to the notion of covert communication in advertisements owes more to outdated accounts of Subliminal Seduction (Key, Wilson, 1976. Signet, New York) or The Hidden Persuaders (Packard, Vance, 1981. Pocket Books, New York) than to current research or theoretical work within advertising. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: cognitive consistency; relevance theory; advertising; overt vs. covert communication; communication; advertorials
DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00039-0
Source：JOURNAL OF PRAGMATICS
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