Study task 2 Reading and understanding a text

Tone of voice

Authoritative but unbiased

5 key points

- Power is balanced between different social aspects, which all have their own automatous values, yet the outcome varies depending on situation and specific situations

- Ideologies impact on every aspect of peoples lives, the only way this isn’t the case is if things are viewed through a scientific discourse

- Messages are constructed by relying on peoples shared knowledge, meaning that value can be found through the connotations of what is not in the text just as much as what is in it

- Deliberate spaces within advertising should not be criticised, as the choice to exclude them is just as important as the choice to include them

- Consumerism is a never ending circle of products creating an attraction, which ensures consumers want to purchase them initially, trapping them into a cycle of buying and consuming and buying and consuming

5 key quotes

- Social formation consists of three practices: the economic, the political and the ideological

- The relationship is both real and imaginary in the sense that ideology is the way we live our relationship to the real conditions of existence at the level of representations

- To read a text symptomatically therefore, is to perform a double reading: reading first the manifesto text, and then, through the lapses, distortions, silences and absences.

- competent critical practice is not to make a whisper audible, nor to complete what the text leaves unsaid, but to… explain the ideological necessity of its... structuring incompleteness

- Like all ideology, advertising functions by interpellation

Evaluation

Throughout the text, Storey talks broadly of Althusserianism and the impacts this has on audiences, especially with regard to how consumers respond to advertising. When considering historical views and traditions, as well as the politics of modern social interaction, he explains that ‘Social formation consists of three practices: the economic, the political and the ideological’. Storey expands on this to show how power is balanced between different social aspects, which all have their own automatous values, yet the outcome varies depending on situation and specific situations. The cultural impacts of this are the way ideologies impact on every aspect of peoples lives, with the only way of this not being the case is if things are viewed through a scientific discourse. He explains this through the theory that, within advertising, ‘the relationship is both real and imaginary in the sense that ideology is the way we live our relationship to the real conditions of existence at the level of representations’. Furthermore, through considering the cultural considerations of a text, a double reading must be performed ‘reading first the manifesto text, and then, through the lapses, distortions, silences and absences’, as messages are constructed by relying on peoples shared knowledge, meaning that value can be found through the connotations of what is not in the text just as much as what is in it. Because of this, deliberate spaces within advertising should not be criticised, as the choice to exclude them is just as important as the choice to include them, as ‘competent critical practice is not to make a whisper audible, nor to complete what the text leaves unsaid, but to… explain the ideological necessity of its... structuring incompleteness’.  Due to this increase in knowledge of what makes a good advertising text, consumerism is growing rapidly, as the technology becomes available to make more and more, the functions of ‘interpellation’ ensure that consumerism is a never ending circle of products creating an attraction, which ensures consumers want to purchase them, trapping them into a cycle of buying and consuming and buying and consuming [Storey, 2008:70-79]

Storey, J. (2008) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture', 5th ed, London: Pearson. pp. 70-79.