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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 14:1 (2023) ► pp.70–89

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Semiotic manipulation strategies employed in Iranian printed advertisements

 | Razi University
 | Razi University
Published online: 14 March 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20005.moh
Abstract
Commercial advertisements are considered informative discourse, whereas the manipulative effects of their verbal and visual strategies have been ignored. According to Van Dijk, Teun A. 2006. Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & Society 17(3): 359–383. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, manipulation in mass media is performed by drawing the audience’s attention to information A rather than to B, by providing irrelevant or incomplete information, and by playing emotional games. Since the analysis of manipulative effects of semiotic features used in advertisements is scarce, the present research project investigates the potential manipulative effects of semiotic aspects used in Persian printed advertisements, and the influence of the Iranian sociocultural context on designing these visual messages. A corpus of 160 Persian printed advertisements was analyzed; the results revealed that their semiotic features, especially those which are meaningful based on the sociocultural context of Iran, tend to inculcate relevant information and meaning in consumers, in order to control their minds and subsequently their purchases. The findings of this study include six theme-based categories of semiotic manipulation strategies: Celebrity images, Creative images, Punctuation marks, Natural images, Seasonal images, and Cultural images. The results are discussed along the lines of research methodology in discourse and semiotic analysis.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Printed advertisements
  • 4.Iranian sociocultural context as a manipulation context
  • 5.Method
    • 5.1Research design
    • 5.2Procedures for data collection
  • 6.Findings
    • 6.1Semiotic manipulative strategies
      • 6.1.1Celebrity images
      • 6.1.2Creative images
      • 6.1.3Punctuation marks
      • 6.1.4Personification
      • 6.1.5Natural images
      • 6.1.6Seasonal and cultural images
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
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