ABSTRACT
First published in 1978, Decoding Advertisements, subtitled ‘Ideology and Meaning in Advertising’, explores the appeal of advertising and analyses ways in which advertisements assume meaning. Drawing upon the work of Saussure and Barthes, Judith Williamson’s interest was not in what advertisements mean, but in how they mean. She was concerned to forge analytical links between Marxism and a critique of capitalism, on the one hand, and systematic structuralist methods of analysis, on the other. The book was located within the Ideas in Progress series published by Marion Boyars. It became prominent very quickly and, by 1982, was in its fourth impression. In her preface to the original edition of the book she uses the metaphor of a motor maintenance handbook, suggesting that what she has to offer are the tools for dismantling advertising imagery. The purpose of such deconstruction is, of course, to understand better the ideological processes whereby advertising not only functions economically to sell products but also reinforces the social, political and economic discourses of capitalism.
