From a Semiotic Perspective: Inference Formation and the Critical Comprehension of Television Advertising

Don Langrehr

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I have always been interested in the subtleties of literary form...taking pleasure in their different intricacies, studying the means with which great authors of the past have resolved the technical problems presented by each. Sometimes I have even tried my hand at solving the problems myself -- delightful and salubrious exercise for the mind. And now I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement.

Aldous Huxley, Essays Old and New (1927)

During 2002, the U.S. advertising industry spent upward of $239 billion dollars exposing U.S. consumers to marketing messages; this figure represents a direct “advertising ration” of approximately $16 per person per week and does not include the millions of dollars invested in marketing research (Coen, 2002, online document). The average American child is exposed to 30,000 television commercials a year (“Numbers,” 1999), and Trelease (2001) estimates that by age 17, that child has seen 350,000 commercials. Some quick arithmetic reveals that, on average, American children spend the equivalent of almost three school years viewing commercials, a figure equivalent to 25% of the total time a typical student spends in primary and secondary classrooms. This figure does not include the contact with print and environmental ads (billboards, banners, radio ads, product placements, etc.) that helps drive the dosage to approximately 3,000 advertising messages per day (Harris, 1999; Potter, 2001). Adding insult to injury, each school day, over 8 million (40%) of the nation’s secondary students view 2 minutes of television commercials packaged specifically for an adolescent audience and delivered by the Channel One news network. These figures suggest that, from a contemporary student’s perspective, classrooms, libraries, textbooks, and literature may be the least relevant of information sources. Mass media have become the virtual little brick schoolhouse and advertisements the preferred lesson plan. Considering such cultural conditions, it may be prudent to recognize the role of media and their concomitant fiscal benefactor, advertising, as the prevalent curriculum.

Related Postings from the Archives Classroom Strategies for Exploring Realism and Authenticity in Media Messages by Rene Hobbs Crossing the Information Highway by Ladislaus Semali Making a Case for Media Literacy in the Classroom by Erica Sharrer Image, Language, and Sound by Donna Alvermann et al.

Obviously, mass media consumption has progressed beyond pure recreation and entertainment; the processing and packaging of electronic media (including the World Wide Web) with relentless product and service promotion has transformed not only our buying habits, but also the learning habits of our contemporary culture (Klein, 2000). The appeal of visual imagery compounded by consumer desires has cultivated a new, more commerce-based consciousness. Traditional perceptions and constructions of literacy and information processing have been transformed, and we now have commerce-driven learning environments of consumer cognition and conditioning.

But despite regular exposure to mass media, students may remain incapable of adequately comprehending these dominant information sources found in our post-typographic world (Luke, 1999; Reinking, 1998). Further, because literature has become a secondary media form, it should come as no surprise that many students are unable to interpret narrative and expository text. For most literacy educators, this is a bitter pill to swallow.

Arguably, television advertising has evolved into the omnipotent media application. Seventy-nine percent of American adults can identify the slogan of the Nike athletic clothing manufacturer -- “Just do it” -- while only 47 percent recognize the source of the phrase “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Johnston, 2000). Our students may be learning more social science from television commercials than from any other informal or formal educational setting. Undoubtedly, this situation should be challenged and perhaps modified and rehabilitated to result in authentic educational gains.

In the study described in this article, television advertising supplied the text that college students were challenged to interpret. The language and images of this advertising posed a complex, cognitive challenge -- even to these students at advanced levels of education. Assessing the ability of college students to accurately decode and comprehend implications embedded in TV commercial texts was the crux of this project.

Advertising as a Linguistic Charade

Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams...
Like the movies they infect the routine futility of our days
with purposeful adventure.
Their weapons are our weaknesses:
fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire and ignorance.
And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.

E.B. White, “Talk of the Town” (The New Yorker, 1936)

Authors including Aldous Huxley and E.B. White have long warned of advertising’s elusive, tenacious, and manipulative nature; language and communication researchers including S.I. Hayakawa, Mario Pei, and Frank Smith have urged educators to consider the strength of advertising discourse, particularly in relation to the limited opportunity it affords for viewer/listener reflection. But only in the past two decades has advertising language, and particularly the vernacular of TV advertising, gained consideration as a worthy area for linguistic research.

Scholars in linguistics have now taken a comprehensive look at advertising language, but the advertising industry itself has conducted a more formidable amount of research on this topic. From this vantage, Stern (1988, 1989, 1992) describes the means and motive of advertising language and portrays this text type as a portfolio worthy of literary criticism. These analyses offer a more holistic understanding of the literary devices utilized within the advertising domain. Her honest perspective, though somewhat contrary to the goals of the advertising and marketing industries, is a gentle reminder to those involved in the creation and distribution of language that is often considered deceitful:

Advertisements frequently use poetic license to say one thing and mean another, borrowing literary tactics to convey messages by means other than or in addition to the words. Both literature and advertising share similar creative techniques to say things in ways other than by direct statements of fact.... (Stern, 1992, p. 72)

Traditional education has routinely infused literary analysis into language arts curricula, yet advertising as a form of applied literature has been virtually ignored. Recently, however, calls for a media literacy curriculum have strengthened, with mass media-related criteria now included in state and proposed national reading and language arts standards (International Reading Association and National Council of Teachers of English, 1996). Similarly, an “adbuster” mentality has recently gained favor with many educators who are concerned with the information processing of advertising and its effects on the critical thinking abilities of their students (Curry-Tash, 1998).

Although a speech event such as a TV commercial is normally considered one-sided, with all context and meaning delivered by a single party (the advertiser), there is still a communicative transaction to be considered: Viewers are ultimately responsible for interpreting consumer messages and constructing meaning. Similarly, novelists and essayists often allude to concepts and themes as they guide readers to make inferences. Discriminating among speaker or author assertions and implications is no simple feat. Critical thinking abilities are taxed as the reader/viewer is challenged by cleverly encrypted information. Perhaps by recognizing and understanding the clever methods used by marketing professionals, we may develop more efficient critical comprehension, particularly in the area of inference formation.

Television advertisements pose a particular comprehension challenge since they are constructed, often purposely, to induce viewers to construct invalid inferences. Geis (1982) offers a psycholinguistic analysis of TV commercials as he illustrates the often inaccurate meaning making that results from transactions between advertising language and the recipients of these marketing messages. Positing a comprehension stance analogous to Rosenblatt’s (1994) transactional theory, Geis emphasizes the information-processing responsibilities of viewers and listeners as they confront the multiple implications found in television advertisements.

Under U.S. law, any formal assertion or claim made in an advertisement requires substantive evidence. Marketers therefore avoid making assertions of fact and provide product information through less exact implications. Advertising writers expect viewers to perceive and process these implications in favorable ways that may culminate in a behavioral reaction at the store shelves and cash register. Advertisers deny responsibility for any inferences drawn by the viewers or listeners by arguing that all consumers infer their own meanings. Unsurprisingly, implication has become a valued advertising technique; weak and unsubstantiated product claims are easily reworked into convincing sales pitches that potentially can mislead consumers to infer more than is actually said.

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A Semiotic Perspective of the Inferencing Process

In a world dominated by electronic media and popular culture, print culture has become subordinate. Choreographers, sound technicians, graphic artists, image consultants, and cinematographers all provide signs and symbols that affect our meaning-making process. Logos, body language, and photographic or computer-generated images all play a role in our comprehension of the media messages targeted toward us. Semiotics offers a focused perspective for recognizing the effects of these other sign systems on critical literacy abilities (Alvermann, Hagood, & Moon, 1999; Baker, 2000).

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), an American philosopher and patriarchal figure in semiotics, depicted the differences in types of logical reasoning employed during the meaning-making process. Peirce (1958) surmised that meaning generation involved three different forms of inferential thinking: deduction, induction, and abduction. Verbal and nonverbal signs, along with the prior sociocultural experiences of the reader, would affect these inference forms. Thus, Peirce suggested that study of logical reasoning could not be limited to word-based theories (i.e. semantics, linguistics). His description of the strategic steps involved in the three inference processes may be useful in the design of critical comprehension curricula, especially if visual and media literacy are targeted objectives.

Peirce described deductive inferencing as the logical production of a conclusion that follows directly from the supplied premises. Author implications and prior knowledge are not necessary for the formation of a deductive inference.

Object A is heavier than Object B; Object B is heavier than Object C.
Deductive inferenece: Object A must be heavier than Object C.

An inductive inference is considered to be a probable conclusion. This level of reasoning requires that the premises supplied by the author, either as assertions or implications, combine with the prior knowledge of the reader to render the formation of a probable inference. As such, inductive inferencing is a constructive process that requires reader input. Most common inferencing opportunities found in traditional literature forms are of this inductive type.

Eric concluded his phone call and left the house immediately. It was a typical London winter evening as he walked the three miles to his mother’s house. Arriving thoroughly drenched, he entered the front hallway and proceeded to knock furiously on the door.
Inductive inference: A typical London winter evening is rainy.

Abductive inferencing designates the reasoning process by which hypotheses, rather than definitive conclusions, are initially constructed (Peirce, 1991). An abductive inference is formed by combining implications (incomplete information) provided by the message producer with various schema (including prior knowledge, attitudes, associations, etc.) that may have been socioculturally learned. This application of prior knowledge should be differentiated from the type utilized in inductive processing. From a semiotic perspective, abduction often includes meanings gleaned from nonverbal messages (Moriarty, 1996, 2002). Intrinsic qualities and responses, such as intuition, emotions, and physical senses, can play a part in the message recipient’s cognitive process. Eco (1979) refers to this type of extended or open interpretation as “unlimited semiosis.” Here, the message recipient is seen as an investigator or message detective who is trying to reach a conclusion by making educated guesses about seemingly ambiguous information (Eco & Sebeok, 1983).

Abduction results in the formation of one of a number of multiple plausible inferences. In terms of logical reasoning, Peirce (1991) considered abduction to be somewhat syllogistically based and more similar to conjecture and hypothesizing. He provided the following language-based example to demonstrate the oblique nature of the abduction and its similarity to unsubstantiated conjecture (Peirce, 1957):

All the beans from this bag are white.
These beans are white.
These beans are from this bag.

The final statement is a hypothesis (abduction) based on provided information. Peirce’s descriptions of abduction more often portray this inference process in a positive light, as an act of intuition and insight (Moriarty, 1996). However, the basis for abduction is the generation of hypotheses -- and ultimately, not all hypotheses are confirmed. As such, misinterpretation must be recognized as a potential byproduct of abductive thought. For a more trustworthy inference (accurate comprehension), the message recipient must consider and evaluate other relevant hypotheses.

Fortunately, most authors will account for potential prior understandings and provide adequate information, both graphic and language based, that allows for the formation of valid and trustworthy inferences. But in other instances, there may not be enough information to help synthesize an accurate meaning-making episode. Critical comprehenders are capable of recognizing and evaluating the weak implications and possible hypotheses that cause these ambiguous abductive inferencing options. The following passage provides a language-based abductive opportunity where only conjecture can be extrapolated:

The girls loved to ride their bicycles together. Gloria was given a pink bike for her birthday and Sally received a red bike as a Christmas gift. One day Gloria was riding her bike and got a flat tire. Immediately, the younger girl went to look for help.

Was it Sally or Gloria that went looking for help? Skilled readers would either reread previous text or proceed further into the text with a goal of correctly identifying the younger girl. They recognize when insufficient information is provided for the construction of a valid inference and continue to generate questions concerning the issue.

Abduction and Advertising

From a semiotic perspective, television advertisements consist of language and image information -- that is, both verbal and nonverbal signs -- and provide a particularly effective environment for examining the ambiguous nature of abductive inferencing. As described earlier, skilled copywriters value elusiveness and incorporate the incomplete reasoning of abduction into their messages.

It is impractical simply to analyze the verbal language of TV advertisements. As Cook (2001) explains, marketing messages require an expanded discourse analysis that scrutinizes the paralanguage accompanying the ad copy. Paralanguage consists of various forms of rich nonverbal communication that serve to make implications. Physical gestures, eye contact, body language, evocative settings, clothing, and so on subtly transmit meaning without words. Paralanguage functions to express attitudes and emotions as well as social and cultural sensibilities -- for example, an image of an expensively dressed woman exiting a sports car creates a much different mood and message than does a harried mom parking a minivan.

In all visual media forms, including advertisements, paralanguage “connives” with language to induce inferences from the audience. Thus, paralanguage provides multiple devices to communicate oblique messages that are not wholly supported by the ad copy. “Paralanguage interacts with language and on occasion outweighs it” (Cook, 2001, p. 71). Such semiotic and linguistic blending serves to create a meaning-rich environment in which viewers may unconsciously form unsubstantiated abductions.

As an example, consider a scene from a commercial for the pesticide RID, a topical ointment that kills lice. While the narrator says, “And RID leaves no active residue behind,” a mother is shown hugging her daughter as she boards a schoolbus. From a semiotic perspective, this paralanguage evokes a sense of concern for safety on the part of the parent, and implies similar concern on the part of the manufacturer. After watching this commercial, many viewers may recall that RID leaves no residue behind. The visual image, in conjunction with the cleverly written copy, implies this is the case, but does not actually assert or guarantee the nonexistence of all residue -- only of active residue. Only a skilled, critical comprehender may accurately surmise that RID actually does leave some sort of chemical remnant behind.

Using visual and verbal signs, producers of advertising exploit the abduction process to mislead consumers. Here, the challenge in abductive reasoning is for the message recipient to ensure that every relevant alternative receives consideration as a proposition. These propositions must be scrutinized and evaluated before the meaning-making process is concluded and a final inference is formed.

This form of implied meaning that is unverifiable or unsubstantiated has been recognized as a rhetorical tool for centuries. Aristotle would probably have referred to the abductive inference as an enthymeme, a form of syllogism in which premises may be probable but are not affirmed. With this type of message, the author or producer predicates an implication on the prior experiences, understandings, values, and attitudes of the intended audience. The reader or viewer depends on these personal understandings to form a “fragile” conclusion -- an enthymeme -- which is not entirely supported by the original information. Burnyeat (1996, p. 99) labels this type of inference as “a degenerate deduction that can be applied to contexts where conclusive proof is not to be had.”

The cognitive process of abduction also may use personal and social perceptions inculcated through culturally based images, symbols, and meanings. For example, audiences may begin to infer media-delivered stereotypes as logical and common sense -- they may accept, for example, that most unwed mothers are members of a minority race. Though not specifically labeled as abductions, these types of socially derived inferences have been exhaustively scrutinized as predominate perceptions in the communications field. Researchers in the area of cultivation analysis (e.g., Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorelli, 1994) hypothesize that television viewing advances particular values, attitudes, and understandings (abductive inferences) through repeated exposure. These researchers attempt to identify, measure, and correlate perceptual changes and social inferences to the amounts and types of programming commonly viewed.

Advertisers are as well acquainted with the study of semiotics as are academics (Harvey & Evans, 2001; Houghton, 1987; Mick, 1986, 1988). Surely, Charles Peirce would have recognized television advertising as a semiotic playground where the abductive process is exploited; both meaning-laden signs and shrewdly produced language forms are employed to misdirect the inferencing process and mislead viewer comprehension. Firm declarations of product attributes, once essential for the language of persuasion, are rarely used. Instead, TV ads are dominated by images that captivate viewers, prompt fantasies and aspirations, and serve to strengthen the unsupported implications that often make up the text portion of the message. Multiple possibilities for meaning are generally ignored as the stealthily written text in conjunction with the beguiling visuals manipulate consumer reasoning toward the one inference preferred by the marketing authors.

In a conceptually related area, Harris and associates (Bruno & Harris, 1980; Harris, 1974, 1977; Harris et al., 1983) conducted a series of advertising-based experiments focused on the semantic information-processing abilities of students of various ages. Early studies had suggested that information implied through advertising is often interpreted and recalled as fact, thereby debilitating consumer decision-making processes. Harris and his colleagues were primarily interested in the consequences of teaching advertising analysis strategies to students so they would learn to discriminate between assertions and implications. Subjects in the experiments viewed simulated advertisements that contained both asserted and implied claims; they were then challenged to discriminate between these claims in statements paraphrased from the ads. Emphasis was placed on both declarative and procedural knowledge. Subjects were then trained to recognize the differences between asserted and implied claims and also to construct and reword both claim types (Bruno & Harris, 1980). These studies indicated that direct instruction in discrimination strategies resulted in improved interpretation of implied claims; students were less inclined to construct unsubstantiated inferences based on the misleading advertisements.

The study described in the remainder of this article attempted to display the critical misinterpretation that regularly occurs for viewers and readers of television advertisements. From a semiotic perspective, viewers/readers may be taking a deductive stance while considering advertising information and may unconsciously formulate an inductive inference they consider probable. In actuality, they have constructed an unsubstantiated and untested abduction that has been shrewdly influenced by advertiser-supplied implications.

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The Study

Advertisers attempt to manipulate viewers’ critical thinking skills by using psycholinguistic techniques that educators may wish to appraise and strategically target. Moriarty (1996, 2002) suggests that semiotics and the recognition of the abductive process could serve as the basis for further study in visual communications and critical literacy. In the study described here, television commercials provide an effective, contemporary environment for examining these concepts. The study was designed to partially replicate that of Bruno and Harris (1980). However, authentic, rather than simulated, television commercials were used, and no explicit training on the discrimination of persuasive language was provided.

Subjects were 172 students enrolled in eight undergraduate teacher education classes at a large public university in the southeastern United States. The eight classes were randomly parceled into subsets with nearly equivalent numbers of students. Each subset encountered television commercials under three different conditions:

• TV/SC Group -- viewed television commercials and read printed scripts of the advertising text (3 classes, n = 59)
• TV Group -- viewed television commercials only (3 classes, n = 61)
• SC Group -- read printed scripts of the advertising texts only (2 classes, n = 52)

Subjects were told that they were key informants participating in an ongoing project to study the effects of television commercials on visual and verbal comprehension, and that the focus of the experiment was the comprehensibility of the commercials.

As with most clinical studies, the ecological validity of the research environment for this study is a relevant concern. Particularly when media effects are a variable, the segregation of subjects in unnatural settings during the treatment presents a research design dilemma: Subjects who watch TV commercials in a classroom may take on a different perspective toward the televiewing process. Unlike the comfortable confines of the living- or bedroom, subjects can be expected to pay more attention to televised content when it is encountered in a classroom or clinical setting. Similarly, the nontraditional nature of reading advertising texts may place more emphasis on the script-reading activity than on the text content. However, as Salomon (1983, 1984) has reported, students perceive any televiewing assignment as less cognitively challenging than related reading assignments. Thus, even in a clinical setting, a lower level of cognitive effort can be expected while televiewing than during a print text engagement.

Actual commercials were chosen to further strengthen the experiment’s ecological validity. Any previous exposure to these marketing messages was considered a routine part of the typical subject’s viewing experience. Furthermore, any attempt to control prior viewing of authentic TV ads is impossible. Pre-experimental contact with specific advertising messages should be recognized as an uncontrollable variable that may affect comprehension in either clinical or natural settings. Additional support for this design decision was found in previous research that discounted the effect of repeated viewings on language discrimination ability (Bruno & Harris, 1980).

Approximately 20 television commercials had been videotaped and transcribed for a previous content analysis project. Of these, four were selected as text sources for this present analysis. Transcripts were made available to two of the three subgroups, TV/SC and SC. These unabridged scripts may offer substantially more ecological validity than the texts typically used in reading comprehension tests. In traditional assessments, students are often presented with condensed or excerpted passages that have been modified for test use. In this experiment, the linguistic context of the TV commercials was not compromised.

In some ways, advertising is even better suited than most language to laboratory use, since most real world ads are shorter discrete units than types of text-like stories, articles, or descriptions. Thus, ads are more easily directly adaptable to the demands of the laboratory with less distortion of their real world nature. Thus they bring more ecological validity to the laboratory than, for example, studying scientific prose by using unrealistically short excerpts designed purely for experimental use (Harris et al., 1986, p. 22).

Though the printed texts offered them the complete linguistic information contained in the advertisements, students in the SC group were not allowed to view the actual TV commercials. Somewhat paradoxically, this treatment (independent variable) of “less available information” is hypothesized to result in an improved level of critical comprehension. Without the visual and aural distractions of the complete video versions of the commercials, the readers of television scripts may be better able to recognize and identify weak implications.

For the purposes of quantifying accurate comprehension of the TV commercials, a test was constructed to evaluate the ability of subjects to recognize unsubstantiated implications. The test included paraphrased statements based on the implications subtly expressed in the advertisements (Figure 1) and may be considered an inferencing exercise. Test items were introduced to the subjects as “statements based on the products advertised in the TV commercials.” Subjects were directed to rate the statements as false, probably false, indeterminate, probably true, or true, based “only on the information provided by the TV commercial.” Statements 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 were considered the critical test items; statements 2, 5, 7, and 9 were included as control items.

The six critical test items constructed for this test portray product or competitor characteristics that are implied, but never directly asserted in the TV commercials. Any inferences formed on the basis of this implied information represent what Peirce would label as abductions; these inference opportunities are not verifiable from any available content information or prior knowledge sources (Colapietro, 1993).

In regard to the construct validity of the test, the critical items were designed to complement the motives of the advertisers. Advertisers cleverly construct misleading implications using various linguistic devices, such as hedge or “weasel” words (may, help, can, etc.) and comparative adjectives in statements where no comparison exists because of a missing object clause (“Our oranges are sweeter”). In the four TV commercials selected for this study, vague or inappropriate modifiers (“kill completely”), rhetorical questions that imply consequence (“Want whiter teeth in two weeks?”), and judgmental language (“tougher,” “leading,” “maximum”) are some of the devices used to misdirect audience members to formulate unsubstantiated inferences.

This test was structured as an examination of inferencing using one specific criterion; test subjects were assessed only on their ability to discriminate the unsupported implications made within the text of the television advertisements. The TV commercials provided the misleading inferencing environment; the six critical test items provided the potential invalid inferences that could be formed while reading or viewing these commercials. For example, item 8 states, “Most hard-working police forces in the U.S. use Castrol GTX.” The actual text information presented in the commercial is less specific: “That’s why hard-working police forces use Castrol GTX.” However, the combination of paralanguage in the forms of compelling video footage and a piercing audio track, along with a shrewdly-authored script, may entice viewers to miscomprehend and read more meaning into the commercial message than is actually offered. (See the appendix for a detailed content analysis and description of each critical test item.) The test was not meant to determine specific levels of inferencing proficiency. Instead, it was constructed as a practical, descriptive activity to assist in the evaluation of media effect.

Following exposure to the TV commercials, subjects responded to the test items (Figure 1) by rating the validity of each statement on a 5-point scale: false, probably false, indeterminate, probably true, or true. Based on the results of similarly designed prior research, the sample groups were expected to evaluate the six critical test items inaccurately as either true or probably true (Bruno & Harris, 1980). Therefore, “to prevent a response bias towards the true end of the scale,” the four control items were included as conspicuously false statements used as noncritical distracters (Bruno & Harris, 1980, p. 312). These distracter items can be classified as inductive inferences that are not plausible based on the available text information and sufficient prior knowledge available to the typical subject.

Any attempt to assess critical thinking, particularly with a quantitative design, is confronted with both theoretical and measurement obstacles. Unlike the more typical reading comprehension tests that rely on literal recall or true-false evaluation, examinations of higher order cognition are more complex and delicate. The ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information critically does not lend itself naturally to numeric measurement. Inference formation as an element of critical comprehension essentially becomes a question of personal semantic interpretation. Unlike deduction and induction, the construction of abductive inferences is less conspicuous and demands a cognitive process that is self-regulated and reflective. Particularly, the formation and evaluation of complex inferences are generated in varying abstract degrees of credence. Objective truth or falsity cannot be discerned readily during critical comprehension encounters with abductions.

Here, subjects ’ varying levels of doubt or acceptance of language and paralanguage in television commercials can be expressed in relative degree. The five-point scale was used to mitigate this problem of confidence in inferencing by allowing for variability among respondents. However, for measurement purposes, responses were categorized and classified as either in a true-end or false-end category.

For each of the six critical test items, there are three possible false-end answers that were considered correct: false, probably false, and indeterminate. These defensible responses to the test items draw solely on the specific information presented in the verbal text of the commercials. Subjects who selected these false-end responses were judged to have formulated accurate inferences based on the information provided.

The television ads do not provide enough evidence for true-end responses to any of the test statements; a response of probably true or true indicated that the subject created an invalid inference based on the available information and was categorized as incorrect. Subjects who selected true-end responses to the critical test items were judged to have executed a less than accurate meaning-making transaction (abduction) with the commercial message and may have been prejudiced by implications portrayed in accompanying visual images or in ambiguous language.

Individual total scores were calculated on the number of correct false-end responses made to the six critical test items. A mean score for each subgroup (TV, TV/SC, and SC) was calculated and considered as the dependent variable. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine any significant differences in mean scores that may have been related to the media treatment (independent variable), and a significance level of .05 was utilized. Since the ANOVA disclosed that the three groups differed significantly from one another, a post-hoc test (Tukey HSD) for multiple comparisons was conducted and reported for specific mean differences between the three groups.

Subjects in all three subgroups were expected to exhibit difficulty in recognizing the unsubstantiated implications made in the four television commercials. These students were expected to generate inferences that could not be considered valid or testable on the basis of the information provided within the context of the commercials. The primary purpose of this experiment was to determine if the printed text of the television commercials would assist students to evaluate the information presented in the advertisements more critically. It was hypothesized that those students who had the opportunity to read the commercial texts (SC and TV/SC groups) would be more likely to critically comprehend those texts (by recognizing weak implications) than would those subjects who viewed the commercials without text assistance (TV group). The parallel hypothesis was that students in the TV group would construct more invalid inferences based on unsubstantiated implications.

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Results

Results from the inferencing test revealed a significant difference in mean scores among the TV, SC, and TV/SC groups. The information-processing abilities of college students appeared to be hampered by the video component of the advertising messages. The experimental variable of script reading does appear to have a positive effect on students’ critical comprehension of the TV advertising message, but only when the option of television viewing is eliminated. The simple act of reading the printed text of these complex, and often deceptive, messages in isolation from the on-screen visual depiction may improve performance in the production of valid inferences.

The mean correct scores for the TV and TV/SC groups were both less than 2 out of a possible 6; invalid inferences were generated approximately 70 percent of the time. On the other hand, the mean score of the SC subset was 2.59; these students were inaccurately evaluating approximately 60 percent of the weak implications made in the TV ads, a slightly better performance than the two video-supplied groups. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) utilizing multiple comparisons between treatment groups (Tukey HSD) revealed the mean differences between the SC group and the TV and TV/SC groups to be significant (Tables 1 to 3).

Interestingly, this effect was only statistically significant for the SC group. These students who were restricted to the print mode were more successful at evaluating the implications made in the advertisements. Both groups that had the opportunity to view the TV commercials were less able to evaluate the weak implications made in the ads. These video-viewing students (TV and TV/SC) appear to have presumed more, and carefully analyzed less. A comparison of the mean scores between the TV and SC/TV treatment groups did not prove to be statistically significant; both groups displayed a similar frequency of commercial conjecture.

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Discussion

The results of this study indicate that information processing of television advertising presents a formidable comprehension task that cannot be mitigated simply by a passive text analysis. The students in the TV and TV/SC subgroups who viewed the commercials tended to presume more information regarding the advertised products and were less vigilant about analyzing the presented claims. Students “limited” to the printed scripts (SC group) were more successful in evaluating the unsubstantiated implications. However, the original hypotheses of this study were only partially supported, as the availability of a script did not assist the readers in the SC/TV group, who also viewed the commercials. Somewhat paradoxically, the combination of visual and aural input in conjunction with print text did not result in a more effective discernment of unsupported implications. The critical comprehension process of inference formation appeared to weaken under either research condition that included television viewing.

From a semiotic perspective, an interesting psycholinguistic phenomenon occurs when creative visual images are juxtaposed with an elusive language form: Attention to linguistic information seems to diminish. Evidently, a proficient interpretation of TV ads requires cognitive capability much greater than that necessary for other everyday communications. During the viewing of televised ad messages, a dubious visual and listening comprehension reaction appears to overwhelm or divert accurate text interpretation. In this tightly controlled environment of sparse language, quick-cutting images, and multiple sound effects, the prognosis for a successful meaning-making transaction is fairly grim. As described in the appendix and displayed in the results of this study, a reader or viewer cannot rely on the linguistic components of television advertising as a valid information source. Even though students in the SC group were more successful at recognizing invalid inferences than were their counterparts in other subgroups, their rate of successful evaluation was still very low. Though the reading of the scripts assisted their interpretations, these students exhibited considerable difficulty in distinguishing verifiable information from conjecture; accurate inference formation was hampered by the misleading copy of the television commercials.

Undoubtedly, many youthful viewers can recognize the constructs, purposes, and prevalent values of the television medium. Media researchers have demonstrated that young people develop a fairly sophisticated understanding of television’s commercial nature (Buckingham, 1993; Fisherkeller, 2000). Nevertheless, the present research indicates that TV consumers may not be capable of detecting and appraising the extensive, subsurface implications found in television advertising. Apparently, across media forms, students are not sufficiently prepared to confront the cognitive challenge of interpreting shrewdly constructed inference opportunities in marketing messages. Likewise, our faculties for visual literacy are challenged by the creatively produced images that seem to support product myth rather than fact.

Particularly during the early years of language development, an intuitive priority is placed on inference creation; proficient inferencing allows for effective scaffolded learning experiences in both early social and academic settings (Keene & Zimmerman, 1997). As this study illustrates with older students, advertisers have learned to exploit the inferencing process as they effectively manipulate and cultivate these natural inferencing proclivities to favor the marketing motive. In this sense, the language of television advertising becomes more manipulative than simply persuasive in nature. Such results support the recommendations made by media educators for increased instruction in critical comprehension skills, particularly in the area of inference formation. Extensive classroom use of media literacy methods, such as “intermediality experiences” and “deep viewing” strategies, would serve to sharpen the critical analysis and interpretive skills of our students (Watts Pailliotet, Semali, Rodenberg, Giles, & Macaul, 2000).

The deep-viewing process offers a systematic approach to the deconstruction of advertisements. Students are directed to analyze advertisements at three different levels -- literal, interpretive, and applied -- using specific criteria:

• Sequence and structure -- How is the meaning of the advertisement affected by the organization of visual and print text?
• Semes and forms -- How are objects and people used to affect meaning in the advertisement? (This category begins to focus on relevant paralanguage.)
• Language and discourse -- How is the actual script language used to imply or assert specific meanings?
• Proximity and spacing: Does physical shape and size affect meaning within the advertisement? (This is another paralanguage objective.)
• Culture and context -- Students are challenged to recognize the social and cultural mores and messages imparted by the advertisement.
• Effects and production -- How do production devices and effects enhance the underlying message of the advertisement?

This deep-viewing model fortifies traditional literacy practices (e.g., comparing and contrasting, identifying themes and biases, analyzing rhetorical and persuasive devices, evaluating and responding, etc.) and, from a visual literacy perspective, applies them in the realm of advertising. Through this deliberate process, it is hoped that students will begin to recognize deep viewing techniques as critically literate patterns of thought that are transferable across various media forms (Watts Pailliotet, 1997).

Fortunately, teachers can avail themselves of multiple strategies that focus student attention on the evasive context of many advertisements. Numerous media literacy websites offer lesson plans that prompt deeper analysis of the semiotic devices employed by marketers. Here, elementary and secondary students become apprentice semioticians, as they participate in discourse analysis and visual literacy techniques that expose evasive marketing techniques. Such resources include

• Ad Dissection 101 (for secondary level)
• A Television Commercial WebQuest (upper elementary through secondary)
• Don’t Buy it...Get Media Smart (upper elementary)
• Deconstructing Cigarette Ads in a Counter Advertising Workshop (upper elementary through secondary)
• Critical Consumerism (secondary)
• Deception and Advertising: When Is It Misleading and When Is It Puffery? (middle school)
• You've Gotta Have a Gimmick! A Lesson in Junk Food Advertising (elementary and middle)

Marketers are well aware of their ability to manipulate the interpretations of viewers. As noted earlier, typical viewers have extensive contact with TV ads. These logically weak yet persuasive communications may be contributing to the development of flawed patterns of information processing. Repeated interaction with elusive content as found in advertising messages may establish an undesirable pattern of thinking in a captive audience. As this type of incomplete expression becomes a standard, accepted form of input, the ability to discern between substantiated fact and clever suggestion may diminish.

From a semiotic perspective, the preponderance of abductive opportunities encountered in present-day mass media communications may have inculcated weaker patterns of cognitive processing. As a result, our logical reasoning abilities may have become malleable. Cialdini (1993, 2000) likened this thinking predilection to an “automatic pilot” approach to cognition. As we are imbued by more information that resembles indirect connotation rather than explicit assertion, we become desensitized to incomplete messages. A reluctance toward conscious deliberation (critical comprehension) develops into an unconscious pattern of “static thinking” (Postman, 1992; Salomon, 1997).

Healy (1990) theorized this form of cognitive deconditioning as a symptom of “neural plasticity,” where the predominant language form of a culture affects information-processing skills. A less elaborated code (e.g., advertising language) desensitizes or devolves the message recipient’s ability to process more complex informational codes and, as a result, manifests in a less analytic interpretation of language. Thus, language consistently encountered in the form of unsubstantiated implications may go unnoticed and come to be comprehended in a superficial manner. As the reliable products of logical reasoning become less frequent, mass media audiences may become less aware of and reliant on the significance of deductive and inductive processing. This less vigilant cognitive stance will result in the formation of untested, inaccurate abductions.

For centuries, a predominately print environment has provided a base for the construction of discourse rules patterned on the tenets of logic and rhetoric. The cognitive “art” of logical reasoning as represented by the formulation of deductions and plausible inductions has become anchored in our print text forms. Various print confirmations have served to ensure a verifiable understanding of intent. Written documents, including legal briefs and decisions, natural and social science research, treatises, personal and corporate contracts, and so on, rely on lexical representation of this reasoning for substantiation.

As clearly exhibited in our popular culture, however, a majority of our present-day communications include ever-increasing numbers of occasions for less informative abductive inferencing (infomercials, political rhetoric, economic forecasting, religious proselytizing, consumer salesmanship, etc.). Usually, these messages are presented in a visually graphic or aural mode and offer less-than-thorough substantiation. Increasingly, we are overwhelmed with these often unrecognized opportunities for conjecture as opposed to deduction. An obvious question arises: Has long-term exposure to these inadequate propositions affected our overall cognitive patterns? In terms of cognition, are we gradually becoming less aware of and resistant to unsubstantiated implications and more likely to form weaker, unsupported inferences over the longer term? The study described here, though limited to a small experimental setting, has attempted to take one step toward exploring these much broader information-processing issues.

Television commercials provide indisputable examples of the semiotic obfuscation prevalent in our media-saturated culture. For students nurtured by and addicted to MTV, Teletubbies, and Power Rangers, the likes of Dickens and Angelou may serve no relevant or effective purpose. Teachers “armed” with transcripts of commercial propaganda texts are better prepared to guide learners in a thorough language deconstruction lesson. Until such lessons become commonplace, the most pervasive and persuasive method of modern communication may continue to be comprehended inaccurately. There is a fine line drawn between the language of persuasion and that of manipulation. Our students should be equipped to make that distinction.

The most useful piece of learning for the use of life is to unlearn what is untrue.

Antisthenes
(445-365 B.C., Greek philosopher and founder of the Cynic school)

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About the Author

Don Langrehr is an assistant professor of elementary and reading education in the Department of Educational Studies and Human Development at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, USA, and chairs the Teacher Research Committee of the Virginia State Reading Association. He holds a Ph.D. in reading education from Florida State University and has extensive experience as a literacy instructor and teacher educator. He is also active in the development of partnerships among the Radford City schools and with the improvement of literacy teaching in these schools. This network supports a learning community that includes preservice and inservice teachers’ long-term development of effective and appropriate literacy curriculum. Don has undertaken research in the following areas: A historical survey of metacognitive research The role of media literacy curricula in teacher education programs The use of closed-caption television as an elementary and secondary reading curriculum The design of Web-supported and Web-based literacy and teacher education courses

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Citation: Langrehr, D. (2003, May). From a semiotic perspective: Inference formation and the critical comprehension of television advertising. Reading Online, 6(9). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=langrehr/index.html

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Posted May 2003
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