‘The work which transforms the latent dream into the manifest one is called the dream-work. The work which proceeds in the opposite direction, which endeavours to arrive at the latent dream from the manifest one, is our work of interpretation. This work of interpretation seeks to undo the dream-work.
The dream-work … consists in transforming thoughts into visual images…. And so… does the dream work succeed in expressing some of the content of the latent dream-thoughts by peculiarities in the form of the manifest dream—by its clarity or obscurity, by its division into several pieces, and so on. Thus the form of dreams is far from being without significance and itself calls for interpretation…. One cannot give the name of “dream” to anything other than the product of the dream-work—that is to say, the form into which the latent thoughts have been translated by the dream-work.’
Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Signifier, Signified, Sign
A sign is quite simply a thing—whether object, word, or picture—which has a particular meaning to a person or group of people. It is neither the thing nor the meaning alone, but the two together.
The sign consists of the Signifier, the material object, and the Signified, which is its meaning. These are only divided for analytical purposes: in practice a sign is always thing-plus-meaning.
We can only understand what advertisements mean by finding out how they mean, and analysing the way in which they work. What an advertisement ‘says’ is merely what it claims to say; it is part of the deceptive mythology of advertising to believe that an advertisement is simply a transparent vehicle for a ‘message’ behind it. Certainly a large part of any advertisement is this ‘message’: we are told something about a product, and asked to buy it. The information that we are given is frequently untrue, and even when it is true, we are often being persuaded to buy products which are unnecessary; products manufactured at the cost of damaging the environment and sold to make a profit at the expense of the people who made them. A criticism of advertising on these grounds is valid, and I would support it. However, such a criticism is in many ways the greatest obstacle of all to a true understanding of the role of advertisements in our society, because it is based on the assumption that ads are merely the invisible conveyors of certain undesirable messages, and only sees meaning in the overt ‘content’ of the ad rather than its ‘form’—in other words, ignoring the ‘content’ of the ‘form’.
That a ‘content’ of ‘form’ should be such a paradoxical idea draws attention to the assumptions inherent in the use of these words. ‘Form’ is invisible: a set of relations, a scaffolding to be filled out by ‘content’, which is seen as substantial, with a solidity of meaning. These connotations make the terms ‘form’ and ‘content’ particularly unsuited for my argument, since it is based on the assumption that the conveyors of messages are things—and significant things—in themselves; and that it is messages which exist in the realm of the ideal. So having introduced it only to make this clear at the outset, I am now going to drop the terminology of ‘form and content’. Although the word ‘form’ and the word ‘content’ may usefully be used singly, as a pair they constitute a conceptual attitude which I find unhelpful in any attempt to engage with meaning as a process, rather than as the end-result of a process.
The terminology which I will use in place of ‘form and content’ is that of ‘signifier and signified’. This is not a simple replacement, an updating of terms, but involves a total reversal of emphasis. Signifiers are things, while form is invisible; signifieds are ideas, while content implies materiality. Furthermore, while form and content are usually seen as separable and their conceptual unity is one of opposition (form vs. content), signifier and signified are materially inseparable, since they are bound together in the sign, which is their totality. What is meant by a sign, the signified, may be talked about separately from what means it, the signifier; but an understanding of this terminology involves the realisation that the two are not in fact separated either in time or space: the signified is neither anterior nor exterior to the sign as a whole. Therefore my use of these words has in itself a very particular significance: it emphasises both the materiality and the meaning of the signifier in any communication.
The role played by the signifier in creating meaning is shown very clearly in the following advertisement for tyres:
A1
A1: The ostensible meaning of this advertisement is that Goodyear Tyres have a very good braking performance. The written message states this: ‘That set of Supersteels had already done thirty-six thousand miles when I drove onto a jetty at Bridport, Dorset for a test of braking performance. We set our marks only 66 feet apart, and from 50mph, those Supersteels pulled me up in half the Highway Code stopping distance (125 feet). And on that same jetty they still held a clean, firm line through a slalom—even after 36,000 miles of motoring.’
This is a rational message: it describes actual tests and results and gives a logical argument to show that Goodyear tyres are safe and durable.
Now look at the picture. The jetty is supposedly here as a test of braking power; it provides an element of risk (will the car be able to stop before reaching the end?) in the experiment, a convenient and yet dramatic way of measuring the maximum braking distance. It has a place in a rational ‘scientific’ proof, and its function thus seems to arise merely from its place in the transmission of the ‘signified’ in the ad.
However, the significance of the jetty is actually the opposite of risk and danger and it works in a way that is not part of the rational narrative sequence of the verbal ad; it functions in its second role as signifier on a completely different axis from that of the signified and cuts vertically through it. The outside of the jetty resembles the outside of a tyre and the curve is suggestive of its shape: the whole jetty is one big tyre. In case we need a mental nudge to make the connection, there are actually some tyres attached to the outside of the jetty, on the right hand side of the picture. The jetty is tough and strong, it withstands water and erosion and does not wear down: because of the visual resemblance, we assume that this is true of the tyre as well. In the picture the jetty actually encloses the car, protectively surrounding it with solidity in the middle of dangerous water: similarly, the whole safety of the car and driver is wrapped up in the tyre, which stands up to the elements and supports the car. Thus what seemed to be merely a part of the apparatus for conveying a message about braking speed, turns out to be a message in itself, one that works not on the overt but almost on the unconscious level; and one which involves a connection being made, a correlation between two objects (tyre and jetty) not on a rational basis but by a leap made on the basis of appearance, juxtaposition and connotation.
This advertisement shows how the signifier of the overt meaning in an advertisement has a function of its own, a place in the process of creating another, less obvious meaning. It has already emerged that this ‘latent’ meaning, unlike the open ‘manifest’ message, does not simply lie completed in the words, for us to read as a finished statement. There are three crucial points here. In the first place this ‘meaning of the signifier’ involves a correlation of two things: the significance of one (the jetty) is transferred to the other (the tyre). This correlation is non-sequential; the two things are linked not by the line of an argument or a narrative but by their place in a picture, by its formal structure. In the second place this transference of significance does not exist as completed in the ad, but requires us to make the connection; it is nowhere stated that the tyre is as strong as the jetty, therefore this meaning does not exist until we complete the transference ourselves. In the third place, the transference is based on the fact that the first object (the jetty) has a significance to be transferred: the advertisement does not create meaning initially but invites us to make a transaction whereby it is passed from one thing to another. A system of meaning must already exist, in which jetties are seen as strong, and this system is exterior to the ad—which simply refers to it, using one of its components as a carrier of value (in the case of Al, strength, durability)—i.e. as a currency.
The systems which provide ads with this basic ‘meaning’ material—a grist of significance for the ad mill—are what I call ‘Referent Systems’: the subject of Part II. They are clearly ideological systems and draw their significance from areas outside advertising. But the way in which this material is used and ordered inside advertisements, and is made to mean, is the subject of this half of the book; in the course of which I hope it will be made clear that this process of meaning, the work of the signifiers, is as much a part of ideology and social convention as the more obvious ‘signifieds’.
Therefore I have used the term ‘advertising-work’ deliberately, because of Freud’s crucial emphasis, in understanding dreams, on the ‘dream-work’ that is the system of creating meaning.
I intend to start with an investigation of signifiers and their systems in ads.