TEACHING ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING AS NARRATIVE
Advertising has long been a staple of media literacy study in English classrooms. Usually, this study includes helping students recognize advertising strategies, such as "the bandwagon approach." However, there are many other sophisticated ways that print advertising can be used to support media literate practices. For example, print advertising can provoke a narrative, a sense that we are seeing a snapshot of ongoing events. We can make use of the narrative aspects of ads to help students build on the interpretive and critical practices that are at the core of media literacy.
In Reading Images, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) propose that images are either "conceptual" or "narrative." In conceptual images the participants/objects are placed in stable positions that describe attributes or that clarify classification systems. The image below is an example of a conceptual image.
On the other hand, in Narrative Representations participants or objects seem to be caught in the course of ongoing actions that signal relationships, responses, and goals. The image below is an example of a Narrative Representation. For a full discussion, click HERE.
We can use narrative representations in the classroom and teach metalanguages for analyzing and evaluating these types of images and how they are designed (New London Group, 1996).
For example, in the Wurlitzer ad on the right, the participants are engaged in an unfolding action. Imaginary "lines" or "vectors" connect the participants to each other and to the object of focus (the jukebox). Note, for example, the line formed by the bent arm of the man smoking a pipe. Additionally the arms of the man and the woman standing by the jukebox form a line that connects them to the jukebox. You can also track an eye line in the gaze of the man with the pipe as he appears to look at the woman touching the jukebox. Lines or vectors are always present in narrative representations. They serve to connect the participants and objects in relationship.
These vectors help signify the relationships in the ad and the various roles (actors and reactors) that people/objects in the ad play. The active participants are actors. In this narrative representation, the man and woman by the jukebox are the actors. The man with the pipe is a reactor who is responding to what the actors are doing and the goal of that action.
Students can use terms such as vectors, actors, reacter, and goals to describe the elements in a narrative representation. They can discuss patterns of action and reaction and what ideas these positions suggests about products, people, and contemporary life. For example, the woman in the above ad appears to have the goal of hearing music. The reactor seems to think this is an acceptable goal and he gives an approving glance. He also is represented with a pipe, a prop that characterizes him.
In narrative representations with multiple participants actors have goals, and reacters respond to those goals in an explicit visible way. Sometimes the goal is difficult to pin down and viewers must confront the ambiguity of the image. However, puzzling through the underlying attributes of ads in an organized way supports students' heuristic development and enriches their literacy practices.
Such work not only provides opportunities for looking critically at advertising, but it also give students opportunities for thinking about ads as texts and for making connections between school literacies and literacy practices that are useful in other contexts.
