Abstract:
Highly visual global advertising is deployed by many advertisers and yet there are few studies in the literature that help explain variations in visual advertising interpretations and little theory for adequately accounting for the interpretation of visuals or the role of visual rhetoric in a global context. The purpose of this review paper is to extend current thinking about global advertising imagery and to propose how a visual rhetoric approach might enrich our understanding of advertising imagery interpretation in the global context. The paper reviews the literature regarding the interpretation of visuals as related to global advertisements and identifies gaps in knowledge, theoretical conflicts and paradoxes in the literature. It concludes by identifying research priorities and provides a research agenda that suggests how a visual rhetoric approach might provide a theoretically useful contribution in this important area.
