Visual Rhetoric of Advertisement and its Mesmerising Impact on Consumerism

Culture is “ordinary” and is simply „the way of life'. If we try to define the culture of the „India today‟ we cannot turn a deaf ear to the consumerist culture of our country. Advertisements and shopping had penetrated deep into the mind of Indian people, thereby controlling and influencing their way of life, enough to change their outlook towards modern culture. Advertisements are luring people into buying things, out of their interest rather than necessity. In other words, consumption is taken for granted to maintain comfort in life. Copywriters are in search of new vistas and avenues and are leaving no stone unturned to launch their product pleasingly luring. In this endeavour, they eloquently play with human sentiments, emotions and intellect and create a very persuasive verbal and visual rhetoric to inculcate a consumerist culture in the masses. Advertisement, as a popular visual rhetoric, conveys information about a product or service in general and subtly it creates, perpetuates transfer and manipulates culture or way of life of people. The visual rhetoric of some selected advertisements as the pivotal, this study, tries to analyse how meaning is encoded and decoded to create a visual impact in the audience to bring about a desired response towards the product or service in the light of visual semiotics. It also focuses on the positive and negative effects on culture which is subtly communicated through the visual rhetoric.