Abstract
Advertising, in its modern forms ...operates to preserve the consumption ideal from the criticism inexorably made of it by experience. If the consumption of individual goods leaves that whole area of human need unsatisfied, the attempt is made, by magic, to associate this consumption with human desires to which it has no real reference. You do not only buy an object: you buy social respect, discrimination, health, beauty, success, power to control your environment. The magic obscures the real sources of general satisfaction because their discovery would involve radical change in the whole common way of life.
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Notes
Raymond Williams, ‘Advertising: The Magic System’, Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980), p. 178.
The language of advertising is usefully discussed in Geoffrey N. Leach, English in Advertising (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1966)
Guy Cook, The Discourse of Advertising (London: Routledge, 1992)
Angela Goddard, The Language of Advertising (London: Routledge, 1998)
Keiko Tanaka, Advertising Language (London: Routledge, 1999).
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© 2009 Suman Gupta
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Gupta, S. (2009). The Magic System of Advertising. In: Re-Reading Harry Potter. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230279711_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230279711_18
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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