I’m sure that I’ve revealed in response to one of Glynnis’ old anti-print posts that I subscribe to at least a half dozen magazines and I know that if not here, I’ve said on Twitter that there’s nothing like the feeling you get, when you go out to mailbox and find a new “Rolling Stone”.

IOW: I’ve seen the ads in the physical magazines and if you’re only learning of them via the web, then you’re missing out. Which is kind of the point because I remember the ads, they’re generally toward the front and pretty much every magazine to which I subscribe is read cover-to-cover, not only during the time between issues, but for weeks, months and years afterward as they move from the coffee table to the bath, into the magazine rack and then to the basement, where they’re added to collection that in the case of “Rolling Stone” spans more than 25 years.

Magister said:
I’m sure that I’ve revealed in response to one of Glynnis’ old anti-print posts that I subscribe to at least a half dozen magazines and I know that if not here, I’ve said on Twitter that there’s nothing like the feeling you get, when you go out to mailbox and find a new “Rolling Stone”. IOW: I’ve seen the ads in the physical magazines and if you’re only learning of them via the web, then you’re missing out. Which is kind of the point because I remember the ads, they’re generally toward the front and pretty much every magazine to which I subscribe is read cover-to-cover, not only during the time between issues, but for weeks, months and years afterward as they move from the coffee table to the bath, into the magazine rack and then to the basement, where they’re added to collection that in the case of “Rolling Stone” spans more than 25 years.

You’re right, one of the great things is to flip-through a new issue of Rolling Stone or Wired and look at the ads and the article illustrations before starting to read one.

The Evil Genius has plans for the Internet:

http://www.flixya.com/post/brightlights/1989192/Apples_Plan_To_End_The_Free_Internet

printed on dead tress? A little editorial comment there?
You might want to check into the ecological impact the internet has and will have on the natural resources of this planet. The energy production involved, the e-waste, etc. etc. It is not without its impact.
Cheap – and rather ill-informed – shot.

Critical
Literacies Assignment 3

Critical Text
Analysis of an Advertisement

William Kelleher Student Number 566746

A South African view … (William Kelleher: willkelleheremails@yahoo.co.uk)

If “all texts are positioned and positioning”
(Janks, 2010 : 98) then none more so than advertisements.  At the very least these texts work to promote
consumerism.  At most they present
features of disrespect for the environment, machismo, paternalism, sexism and
othering that border on the unethical.  In
addition, since advertising is purposeful and market-driven the effects that it
produces are not anodyne or theoretic but observable – changing people’s
behaviour and position in the world.  If
that were not enough advertising is massive and pervasive; accompanying us
throughout the day and in a wide range of media.

The advert with which we are concerned promotes
a particular type of media: magazines. 
It does so in a very interesting way. 
Firstly it relies on its position as mouthpiece to include within its
range the common attributes of many different magazine publications.  This advert for instance relies on the
sporting coverage that magazines provide. 
However, in a different advert for the same campaign the theme was
travel and documentary photography as done by Bruce Dale for National
Geographic.  Secondly, two media types
are opposed.  If the internet is ‘surfed’
then magazines are read, or by opposition with surfing, ‘swum’.  This allows a third step in which opposing
lexical fields are constructed.  Internet
is ‘exhilarating’ but ‘fleeting’ whilst magazines are ‘enveloping’ and ‘immersive’.  Fourthly, a reduction takes place.  Even as people who use Internet are qualified
as being addicted or ‘hooked’, Internet itself is reduced to information
searching as in the Google engine. 
Finally a simple argument is proposed: new media do not replace old
media.  In a reminiscence of Hegelian
dialectics movies clash with radio, TV clashes with movies but in each case the
movement of history allows both to find their place in a new synthesis.  This new synthesis is presented in terms of
the extended metaphor that has been running throughout the text since the two
opening claims.  From “We surf the
Internet.  We swim in magazines.” the
argument as recapitulated reads, “Which is why people aren’t giving up
swimming, just because they also enjoy surfing.”

What an extended metaphor such as surfing and
swimming allows in addition to a fairly lame joke about internet use is to
complete the advert with a close up picture of Michael Phelps emerging from a swimming pool and taking off his
goggles.  The visual metaphor completes
and extends the text since Michael Phelps echoes the lexical fields surrounding
Internet and magazines (‘immersive’ and ‘exhilarating’) whilst adding a
reference to the visual interaction with on-line content and magazine
illustrations.  The enigmatic nature of
the photograph and the clouded goggles seem to add a question … Are we blinded by Internet?

Such as it is, the above description offers a
first approach to the ‘Magazines’ advert. 
Its basic mechanisms are exposed. 
What is not dealt with however is the background motivations of such a textual artefact.  It has been investigated but not interpreted,
interpreted but not explained.  It needs
to be situated and contextualised.  Janks
(2010) proposes several ways of doing this. 
Three will be adopted in this essay whilst an argument will be made for
involving a fourth approach.

Firstly, the composition of a text which
positions its reader involves choices of inclusion and exclusion.  A choice to include a particular realisation
of mood, subject and theme involves a corresponding choice to exclude other
wordings.  In reference to Halliday’s
functional analysis of text this can be called realisation of meaning
potential.  A first method of situating a
text is then to analyse it in greater detail to see how meaning is realised.  Secondly, image and text are both sign
systems.  Colour, disposition of
elements, depiction in an image are used in the same way that words, clauses
and cohesion create textual meaning. 
Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) call this multimodality since ‘mode’ means
for them any understood and conscious manipulation of sign systems.  Following Janks a way of accessing the
meanings in an image is the use of call outs to explain features of an image in
a non-linear way.  This technique is
drawn from the work of D. Alder and has been used here in annexe 1.  Finally a multimodal text, once understood, can
be successively situated in terms of production and the conditions for such
production.  Fairclough’s (1989: 142)
work in this regard derives from cognitive sociology and Cicourel’s research
into interpretative procedures.  When
inserted into a critique of power and ideology these successive ‘frames’ or
‘schemata’ move from the semantics of utterance to cohesion and pragmatics, to
local intertextual and interactional context to situational context and social
order.

In this text only one person gets the floor –
the copy writer for ‘Magazines’.  The
predominant mood is that of statement with the overwhelming majority of such declarative
clauses being positive.  There are two
negative statements concerning movies and TV but these are associated with a
verb having negative connotations (KILL) and thus the negation of this
connotation has a positive effect. 
Similarly when Internet is placed in a negative clause the predicator
for the ‘new medium’ is ‘DISPLACE’ (a verb containing a negative prefix) and
the overall meaning is positive.  Finally
‘people’ (the third person referent for the ‘we’ of the first line) is combined
through finite operator with ‘GIVE UP’ and the effect of juxtaposition of a
negative phrase with negative verbal periphrasis is also positive.

The result of this positive polarity is to
create a sense of the categorical and the definite.  In the table (Annexe 2) are listed the
predicators used and the processes with which they are associated.  Internet is associated with verbs such as
‘GRAB’ and ‘DISPLACE’ which are fairly direct in terms of connotation (but
modified in the sense outlined above). 
As for the reading of magazines however, the verbs such as ‘EMBRACE’,
‘RISE’, ‘GROW’ and ‘INCREASE’ or again ‘CONTINUE’, ‘FLOURISH’ and ‘OFFER’ have
obviously positive connotations.  There
is also the fact that the copulative ‘BE’ by establishing a thematic equative
works repeatedly to directly associate ideas and moves in the argument.  The above points are given force in the third
paragraph which (symmetrically situated between the opening and closing two
paragraphs) uses the vocative ‘THINK’ to interpel the reader.

In terms of process, ‘THINK’ is mental,
referring to the internal processes of the reader.  This vocative interpellation literally forms
the link with the other material and relational processes that give substance
to the text (cf annexe 2).  This is not
surprising since references are in the most part exophoric, referring to what
media do and effect.  The thematic progression
reflects this.  Whereas thematically the
first third, approximately, of occurrences are experiential, from the
interpersonal ‘THINK’ onwards the themes become textual, serving to cohere and advance
the argument.  There is only one instance
of modalisation in the passage (which refers to the ‘established medium’ which
is the magazine format).  Here, towards
the end of the text, ‘CAN’ is used rather surprisingly and in contrast to the
categorical, definite tone of the rest. 
Presumably the objective is to include a sense of possibility, of
freedom.

This latter point is better captured by
considerations of texture.  Internet is
subject for only five clauses and theme for only four whilst magazine reading
carries the rest of the text.  Of the
occurrences of ‘Internet’ however the word is replaced twice: once by a
hyperonym – ‘new media’ – and once by a hyponym ‘Google’.  This cohesive technique in the text has
specific effects.  It defines Internet as
new and limits its action to search engine functions.  Similarly magazines are replaced by the
corresponding (collocational) activity of reading and the role of ‘reader’
whilst the hyperonym of ‘media’ which initially referred to the Internet is
later captured through adjectives such as ‘established’ to refer twice,
exclusively, to magazines.  In all,
‘magazine’ is repeated seven times, Internet five times and media four times
(cf annexe 2 for a fuller analysis of subject and theme).

Texture is achieved at the level of structure
through theme and information whilst at the level of cohesion it is a function
of reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction and lexis.  In terms of lexis: collocation, repetition
and synonymy are important devices in this text.  Magazine becomes associated with the
personal, the material and in turn is attached to nouns and adjectives such as
‘unique’, ‘loyalty’ and ‘growth’.  This
latter epithet is in addition a nominalisation of a verb which appears in the
first paragraph and thus repetition creates an effect of closure.

Reference here involves specific effects of determination.  It is interesting to note that whereas ‘Internet’
is systematically associated with ‘the’, ‘magazines’ and ‘readers’ are
associated with the zero article.  The effect is one of changing distance.  Throughout the article the Internet is
distanced whereas magazines are closer, more immediate, more generalisable
since closer to the notion or referent. 
It is a similar preoccupation with distance from the reader that prompts
the use of the inclusive we at the start of the advert.  By including the reader in the term of reference
a sense of impact and immediacy is again achieved.  Why then should the text end with ‘people’
and ‘they’?  The answer is to be found in
thematic analysis.  Because the last
clause starts with ‘just because’ which is a textual theme if ‘we’ were used it
would have an exclusive, anaphoric connotation. 
It is necessary to revert to ‘they’ to give the last clause an axiomatic
interpretation more in line with the categorical tone of the whole.

As to the image that accompanies this text, it
is taken from the front cover of a sports magazine – ESPN.  In its original context it showed Michael
Phelps (the Olympic swimmer) seemingly emerging from the pool with his goggles
clouded up and in the act of taking them off. 
The photograph was accompanied by titles which referred to Phelphs’
sexual attraction and sporting prowess. 
The photograph in its original form was taken by Jim Fiscus who was
elected photographer of the year in the 2005 Lucies and is known for his
post-produced work in high-profile advertising campaigns for Levi’s and Nike.

The image that accompanies the advertisement
has been altered to become both a symbolic image and a narrative image.  It is narrative because there is a clear
vector or direction to the gaze of the man in the photo which stares directly
out of the frame and thus participates with the reader.  It is symbolic because of its suggestive
power.  The focus, the action, the
framing of the hands and the face (in close up) symbolise many of the
dichotomies that are referred to in the accompanying text.

This has been achieved primarily through
cropping.  Firstly the frame of the photo
has been tightened to emphasise the eyes, the face and the hands and remove
both banner and magazine title.  Michael
Phelps loses his name and becomes, literally, a symbol: of sport, power and determination.

In cropping, the frame has also been elongated
to emphasise the physiognomy of Michael Phelps. 
His mouth has thus become smaller, less generous and his eyes have been
displaced from centre to top of frame giving the photo a lower angle and
introducing notions such as domination of frame, superiority etc.

Focus has been changed through cropping.  The goggles are salient and their being
clouded up now takes on a new significance through the accompanying text.  In their new setting (both in-frame and
out-of-frame) there is ambivalence between the internet and magazine reading
with vision being obstructed to become the object of the reader’s gaze.  The similarity between the words google /
goggle is exploited and the focus of the photograph serves as a visual metaphor
for the verbs used in the text: ‘surfing’, ‘reading’, ‘noticing’, ‘demonstration’
and ‘display’.

In a photo dominated by regularity and
symmetry there is only one stray end so to speak – the elastic which breaks – and
therefore emphasises – the gesture of hands and composition of frame.  As said above, the proportions of the
original photograph have been changed to situate the eyes of the man towards
the top of the frame instead of slightly off-centre as in the original.  This has a further consequence.  Following the table in Janks (2010) there is
a correspondence in images with what Halliday notices in phrase onset.  The right therefore corresponds to the new
and the bottom to the given, whilst the top corresponds to the ideal and the
bottom to the real.

The top (the ideal) is now dominated by the
gaze, by the corresponding actions of seeing and touching with the hand.  The parallel with the text is now even more
evident.  Whereas the text juxtaposes
internet and magazine, the photo now juxtaposes the virtual and the
tangible.  In addition, the left hand
(the given), with the fingers curled away from the thumb and index seems to
recall a pincer movement, framing in turn the lens of the goggles and providing
horizontality.  The photo is literally
cut at the level of the eyes.  On the
right (the new) the hand is flatter and evokes more an action of shielding the
eyes to look into the distance, the future.

Salience has been achieved with respect to the
gaze and gesture but cropping has also given salience to the picture as a
whole.  The photo has become a close-up
as opposed to a medium shot.  The effect
of a close up is to enhance invasiveness, the reader is closer to the image
than he or she would be in real life. 
The details of the face portrayed impose a feigned intimacy that gives
little away and forces a movement of the reader’s eye across the face whereas
in a medium shot the face as a whole can be captured.  One is literally reading the face in this
kind of close up and what is read (flattened by absence of perspective and the
featureless blue background) achieves meaning.

We have seen how, textually, the reader is
interpelled once, in a vocative, mental process and how the text as a whole
constructs its meaning using reference, connotation, synonymy and control of
theme and process.  In a similar way the
image has been cropped and modified to better reinforce the meaning that
emerges from the text.

It is now time to turn to the questions that Janks
poses of a text: Who is speaking to whom? 
What is going on? Who is involved? 
What relations exist between them? 
What is the discourse type? What is the socio-historical context?  What power relations: social, institutional,
situational shape this discourse?

A first approach to these questions could look
at the signs of agency in this advert. 
These are effaced and minimalised, but they achieve more impact from
being underemphasised.  The logo
‘Magazines’ is in fact a word composed with the letters from a collection of
famous magazines: the ‘T’ is from Time, the ‘Es’ from Esquire, the ‘G’ from GQ,
the ‘A’ from Marie-Claire, the ‘N’ from National Geographic etc.[1]  Agency is therefore shared, collective and
the slogan: “The Power of Print” with the italics (not hypertext)
and alliterative appeal reinforces this. 
It is not one specific agent that is being represented but a concept:
print, font, the printed word, a typeface printed on paper as opposed to being
projected on a screen.

This can be offset (literally and
figuratively) against the identification of the photograph itself.  Whereas one could expect to see Michael
Phelps’ name under the image we read that of the photographer and of the
magazine from which it is taken.  This is
copyright information and at the same time a means of reinforcing magazines as
actors, sponsors and promoters of events and of other media.

But the transition to magazines as actors in
the full sense of the word leads to a further consideration of discourse and of
discursive frames.  In this new situation
magazine texts become a part of the intertextual context of magazine discourse
and in turn magazines themselves become a frame of reference.  What is then projected out from this one
advert with its categorical phrasing and its photograph of a man with virile,
dominant undertones is the whole institution of magazine publishing.

Press kiosks and shelves strike us with their objectified,
glossy rendering of both men and women.  How
many times is the word ‘sex’ used to sell a magazine issue?  How many photos of semi-naked women in
bikinis boost headlines from sliming to holidays?  How many fat or middle-aged men adorn covers
… unless of course they have the advantage of being in key financial and
institutional positions such as CEO or finance minister?

The point of Fairclough’s successive contextualisation
is to allow us to make these links between text, discourse and ideology and to
see behind seemingly anodyne texts the deeper questions of power and subjection
to the gaze of naturalised positions on age, sex, media and reading habits.

As I noted in a previous assignment however,
this is to use language to access understandings
of power and to use power to
understand the choices in meaning potential of language.  Language itself is however, in essence,
expressive and communicative.  To return
to the link between photograph and text, the photographer himself, Jim Fiscus, puts
it nicely, “The photo has to illustrate the concept, obviously, but the look of
that photo is what determines the emotional response.” (Stocklandmartel
accessed September 2011).

It would be advantageous to take language in
its own terms and to seek a model that allows expressive features to be tackled
in their own right.  One theory that does
this is interactionism (Goffman, 1959). 
The idea of performance, of a projection
and an impression of reality serves
to investigate human beings’ expressive behaviour.  In many ways this theory parallels and
extends the contextualising movement of an analysis such as Fairclough’s based
on orders of discourse and ideology.

Reality, when projected, must involve belief -
or cynicism – in what is being projected but the operation of such an
impression of reality on a societal scale leads to use of front and idealisation.  Idealisation
recalls the manner in which ideology supposes the naturalisation of discourse
and is the adaptation (or failure to do so in the case of negative
idealisation) of a performance to the common, official values of society.  Fronts are those generalised,
institutionalised and abstract standardisations of appearance (status) and
manner (behaviour) into which given situations which are infinite and varied
can fit more or less tightly. 
Conceptually and in terms of behaviour this concept is not dissimilar to
that of frames or schemata of reference but with a double operation since they
are used both naively and cynically.

The motivation of performance is thus different
to the enervation of power.  The performer seeks coherence in his/her
act.  The impression of reality projected
must not be found to be cynical.  Maintenance of expressive control,
mystification and contrivance are called upon to ensure communicative and
performative success.

This will shed a new light on the ‘Magazines’
text because in fact the advert as a whole is just a standardised front. 
There is no company called ‘Magazines’, this is not an advert.  It is a contrived performance which attempts
to convince would-be advertisers to
invest their communications budgets in printed media.  For, behind what is not a logo (‘Magazines’ as such is an unregistered and inutilisable
trademark) lies MPA (presumably the Magazine Publishing Association although no
information on the acronym was available) the ‘Association of Magazine Media’
which was founded in 1919.  As a
commercial association of magazines its role is to be seen to promote magazine publishing as such and this is why it
must adopt a categorical, positive outlook on the growth and health of the
sector.  The slogan which can be registered under the association
reflects this nicely, ‘The power of print’.

What an interactionist analysis accesses that
a critique based on power cannot is the fact that this ‘advert’ is intended as
much for the members of MPA themselves as it is for future magazine readers and
advertisers.

Times have obviously changed since 1919 and
html isn’t what it used to be.  The claim
made within the ‘Magazines’ advert (that in the last twelve years magazine
readership has increased 11%) rings hollow when compared to internet access
statistics from 1998 to 2008.  In America
Internet grew from just over 84 million to more than 230 million (almost 300%
growth) whilst in South
Africa comparable figures give a rise in use
from 1,266, 000 to 4,187, 000 (more than 300% growth)[2].

It is this fragility of the medium that this
text is designed to opacify.  The
categorical tone, the carefully cropped and edited photograph, the argument of
the text and the control over reference, theme and process used in the wording
are there to hide a discrepant reality.  An
idealised front is here projected through language but the actor who projects
this reality is aware of the misrepresentation
and connivance; purposely using a naturalised discourse as a tool in a projection of reality.

References:

Statistics on internet use available from BBC
website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8552410.stm
(consulted September 2011).

Bruce Dale photograph used in National
Geographic available at http://powerofmagazines.com/latest-ad.html
(consulted September 2011).

Biography of Jim Fiscus captured on
Stocklandmartel (accessed September 2011). 
http://www.stocklandmartel.com/talent/jim-fiscus/bio

Fairclough, N.
(1989). Language and power. New
York: Longman.

Goffman, E. (1959). The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (original re-edition ed.). New York: Anchor Books,
Random House.

Halliday, M. A. K.
(1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar: Second Edition. London, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward Arnold.

Janks, H. (1998).
Reading womanpower. Pretexts: studies in writing and culture, 7(2),
195-211.

Janks, H. (2010).
“Language as a system of meaning potential”: the reading and design
of verbal texts. In T. Locke (Ed.), Beyond the grammar wars (pp.
151-169). New York:
Routledge.

Janks, H. (2010). Literacy
and power. London and New York: Routledge.

Kress, G., & van
Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal
Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.

[1] I would have identified more, but to be honest, I don’t often read
magazines, and, in addition, most of the information for this analysis I got –
ironically – from an internet search!

[2] Statistics available on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8552410.stm