VOLUME 4 (2002) - ISSUE 8 (WINTER)

Color Coding: Globalization and the Ad

by Todd HOLDEN

SUMMARY

This article argues that color in commercial communication is more than a semiological tool; it can also provide a window into matters of greatest concern in the debate over globalization. Using data drawn from samples in Japan, America and Malaysia, sign-work pertaining to color is often found to be idiosyncratic and localized, while in other cases, it adheres to global convention. Certain meanings pertaining to desire, for instance, or gender, are loaded in color and are universally decipherable. Moreover, certain significations belong to categories shared across nations. Among these are the syntagms "black-and-white", "tonal vocabulary", "primary colors", "national colors", "cultural colors", and "privileged colors". Within these categories, though, unique contents appear that work to delimit globalization’s seemingly inexorable progress. What all of this ultimately means is that color is important for sociological - rather than merely semiological - reasons. Coloration can serve as an entrée into deeper, ontological questions concerning the nature of society, and for this reason, it must be understood as an essential code, in any commercial analysis.


KEYWORDS

Globalization - Semiotics - Television advertising - Color - Comparative Culture 


AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION

Todd Joseph Miles Holden is Professor of Mediated Sociology and Chair of the Department of Multi-Cultural Societies at Tohoku University, in Sendai, Japan. His research interests encompass social theory, semiology, advertising, gender, political communication and comparative culture. Publications include the forthcoming collection: Globalization, Inequality and Culture in Asia (co-edited with Tim Scrase and Scott Baum) and the book (in Japanese), Reading Signs: Language, Culture and Society. His empirical studies in context include nation-building in Malaysian advertising, political advertising in Japan, and Japanese cyber-dating.


HOW TO CITE THIS SITE:

Author Name (Year), “Title”, in: The International Scope Review, Volume Number, Issue Number, TSCF Editions, Brussels.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is based on a conference article presented at the 2002 conference of the Asia-Pacific Sociological Association in Brisbane, Australia ("Asia-Pacific Societies: Contrasts, Challenges, and Crises"). 

COPYRIGHT

All work published in The International Scope Review is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any manner or in any medium – unless written consent is given by The Social Capital Foundation represented by its President, unless the author’s name and the one of The International Scope Review as the first publication medium appear on the work or the excerpt, and unless no charge is made for the copy containing the work or excerpt.

Any demands for obtaining consent for reproduction should be sent to sg@socialcapital.is

Download

get_acrobat_reader.gif (712 bytes)

This is a PDF document.You may need  Acrobat Plugin to view it.