22 Mastercard |
An Image usually has some interpretational component which guides the reader
to certain aspects of meaning. Have a good look at 22 Mastercard, and make sure
you read the text. With regard to this advertisement, we conducted an informal
survey with 30 people, asking them two questions:
• Is this is a scene of someone moving in or moving out?
• Is the person seen in the Image the friend, or the holder of the Mastercard?
While we are
not claiming that each of these questions has to have a definite answer, provided
by the advertisement, we were interested to see what specific interpretations
readers would take if explicitly asked to do so. Here are the results:
(1) Moving in:
26
(2) Moving out:
4
(3) Person = friend: 24
(4) Person =
card-holder: 3
(5) Really couldn't
tell: 3
Most people picked interpretation (1), and there seem to be two main reasons
for this, both of which are visual clues: (a) the room looks too clean and
bare for someone to be moving out (there should be more junk, brooms,
etc.); (b) the physical posture of the person seems to be one of coming up
the stairs into the house, therefore bringing the sofa in. Both of these are
properties of the Image itself.
Those who picked
(2) seem to focus on an idea of some "bright future" being beyond
the door where the sofa is being taken; this is also a property of just the
Image.
The majority
of people also picked (3), and this seems to be because the friend is mentioned
in the Text: it appears to be a relevance
effect---why mention the friend and then show someone else?
For the people
who picked (4), they probably focussed on the second-person perspective of
the whole advertisement---it is from Mastercard to you, so that's you in the
picture.
Both of these
interpretations involve the relevance of the Text component of the advertisement
to the Image.
So, now we can
consider how an advertisement would function if it were (to be) any of these
variations:
-- similar to
22 Mastercard but:
(a) the Text
mentions someone's name (e.g. "Jack finally had a free afternoon").
(b) it is meant
to be for a moving company (e.g. imagine the person in the picture in a uniform)
rather than Mastercard.
(c) it is meant
to indicate someone moving out (for instance, it is meant to connote that
the former occupants are moving up to a bigger house and have the financial
support of a bank, which helps people realize their dreams).
These "what-ifs"
illustrate the way that we analyze advertisements: changing some part to see
if we can discern how that part functions.
