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One important issue that comes up in the analysis of advertising is how much
of the processing is conscious on the part of the reader, and how much of it
is unconscious or unavoidable. It is not easy to avoid at least some comprehension
of an advertisement, when you are presented with one. The situation is much
like when you are sitting next to a stranger who is talking on a mobile telephone:
it is very hard to simply ignore the communication altogether. Advertising is a form of communication, and we find ourselves participating
in many acts of communication every day. It is important to remember that
the almost unconscious act of getting the basic meaning of an advertisement
is quite different from further issues of interpreting regarding whether you
find an advertisement convincing or not, whether you think that it might influence
your behavior or not, or whether you approve of the kind of scene and social
values that are apparent to you in the advertisement. The analytic perspective that we present here takes the view that advertising
is treated as ordinary communication, and that advertising language is treated
as ordinary language. There is ample evidence that this is true. As we go through
some of the basic concepts from linguistics that we will use, in Units 2-4,
we will see that advertising language is not qualitatively different from ordinary
language, and that the ideas from linguistics and semiotics that have been applied
in many domains of language and cultural behavior carry over directly to the
analysis of advertising. The application of the key concepts of presupposition
and relevance with respect to advertisements
is based on the idea that readers treat advertisements as normal, rational communication.