Dlaczego reklama może być interesująca dla literaturoznawcy?

Abstract

The interest in interdisciplinarity in contemporary culture in Poland goes back to the turn of 1980-ties and 1990-ties. It also encompasses the sphere of communication which is the meeting point of two important areas, namely the study of the new media (commercials) and the theory of literature. The very approach towards the media has been transformed from the passive to the critical one. The research, however, lags behind such changes as it is very difficult, for the literature specialist to depart from the model of culture represented by the book, a symbol of the linear literature, towards the medial culture whose metaphor is TV or the Web. The essay investigates advertising which influences us by using metaphor, among others, or intertextual associations, not only as “an icon of the consumer culture” but as the one that has a co-creative power. It also answers the question of why academics should analyse advertising. In the section devoted to the metaphor, the issue is considered whether it functions merely as a rhetorical figure with autotelic functions; whether it is a descriptive factor (communication and description); or whether, first of all, it influences connotation of the message (additional informative and aesthetic or emotional values created through associations). The conclusion is reached that in the commercial, the metaphor is primarily a model of cognition, a figure of thought, and not just a stylistic device.