Visual grammar and cultural identity in contemporary Korean advertisements

¶ … language is defined by a unique grammar, every culture and society is also defined by a unique visual grammar. This latter is usually much less obvious even to the "natives" of a culture. One reason for this lack of transparency of visual grammar is that it is not explicitly taught in the same way that linguistic grammar is. Another reason that the visual grammar of any society is less obvious to its members is that there is not necessarily a single correct reading. Linguistic grammar is a cultural phenomenon that exhibits a high level of consensus. As such, it serves as a model for those aspects of culture over which the individual has very little control and yet are individually highly significant.

Individuals may vary in their choice of vocabulary; however, they rarely disagree fundamentally on how a sentence should be constructed. Another way of expressing this idea is that individuals (such as the designer of a specific advertisement or an individual consumer who is affected by that ad) will always bring a measure of individuality to every act of sign-making and the interpretation of any sign or symbol. However, their ability and inclination to alter or adapt the entire symbolic and semiotic system of their culture is far less possible. Indeed, it is arguably impossible: Those who try to bring about systematic changes tend to be seen as tyrants and dictators in retrospect. The grammar of a culture is remarkably resistant to change within a single generation.

However, different groups within a culture are more likely than not to "read" the visual aspects of their culture differently. Women will see different aspects of their culture and lives reflected in certain aspects of a culture's visual expression than will men, for example, and other demographic categories will also produce different experiences and different readings. These points of difference can be the birthplace of conflict or of growth.

This chapter explores the visual grammar of contemporary Korean culture as it is evidenced through a series of advertisements. There are a number of possible images that could have been selected for this analysis from political events to sports rallies to fashion to the ways in which food is presented. Each of these cultural categories is guided by an underlying grammar of images that is relevant and revelatory of underlying social dynamics.

However, advertisements are arguably an ideal set of images to be put to such an analysis. Ads are intentionally constructed to refer to and appeal to different cultural grammars. They are -- to borrow a useful term from postmodernism -- over-determined. It is true (or at least arguable) that every piece of material culture from baby clothes to desserts can be read by a researcher to learn about the underlying rules of that culture. However, ads, because of the ways in which they are created, are the distillation of the visual culture of a specific time and place. Advertisements can be seen as distinct from the authentic culture of a place given that they are the expressions of capitalist enterprises. But they can also tell genuine stories in the grammar of the culture in a particular time.

Kress and van Leeuwen make a number of key points in both the work cited here as well as in their opus as a whole. These points will be used throughout the analyses of advertisements that comprise the bulk of this chapter.

All human societies create a range of representations to express what is complex and ambivalent.

Each different type of representation has unique properties that limit it as well as create unique opportunities.

Each individual combines different forms of representation to create a sense of meaning of their own world and the larger communities in which they live and participate.

Each person uses different modes of representation (including speech, visual symbols, art, music, etc.) in unique combinations. No individual has exactly the same mixture of visual, linguistic, corporal, etc. ways of representing and interacting with the world.

Every form of human communication shifts over time, both in the lifetime of any individual and over the course of history.

The authors summarize the above: "as modes of representation are made and remade, they contribute to the making and remaking of human societies and the subjectivities of their members."[footnoteRef:1] [1: Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen -- Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 40.]

Every advertisement tells a story, a requirement of the function of ads to sell a company's product or service. The art of advertising is based on the fact that an entire story has to be told by a single image. No ad could accomplish such a complicated feat if it could not draw on a vast range of cultural and social codes and conventions, if it could not utilize with consummate skill the visual grammar of a culture.

No successful advertisement can work with an entirely new story or even a new way to tell an old story. An ad has to link a collection of images (clustered around a product or service) to an established story using an established visual grammar. Effective advertisements use the traditional visual and linguistic grammars of a culture but not necessarily in un-ironic ways.

Each person in a culture, and each group in a community, is susceptible to certain stories. Much of the skill in defining the most effective ads is based on the ability to know which specific stories will help a target population feel connected to a specific product. That feeling of connectedness is based on the fact that an advertisement utilizes a cultural visual grammar.

It is imperative at this point to clarify what is meant in this section by the word "story." It might refer to stories in the more ordinary sense of the word -- such as a traditional fairy tale, or the plot of a popular television show or movie; however within the context of the type of the analysis of visual grammar employed in this thesis, the idea of "story" in this paper is the one established within postmodern and deconstructionist criticism. A synonym for story in this sense might be narrative. Visual grammar provides a tool for interpreting the narratives of culture.

Visual Grammar

Kress and Van Leewen are among the most important scholars in terms of defining and implementing the concept of visual grammar. While their work has been on the grammar of Western imagery, it is entirely possible to transfer their ideas to Korea and other Asian cultures. Their concept of visual grammar comprises, first, creating an inventory of the semiotics of a culture. That is, to create an inventory of the significant signs and symbols of a culture. Having established what the most important symbols of a culture are, Kress and van Leewen then advocate an analysis of the ways in which these symbols have gained significance within the culture.

After a researcher analyzes why certain symbols have gained such cultural and psychological weight, s/he should analyze the ways in which these symbols interact with each other. In the same way that no one can learn to speak or understand a language if one knows only individual words, one cannot understand the visual grammar of a culture without understanding the semiotics, or connections, between and among the different symbols.

Although it is certainly possible to extend the analogy of linguistic grammar too far, it is nevertheless useful to consider the ways in which visual grammars and linguistic grammars can be used in the same way. Individual symbols -- such as the woman in the Korean Air advertisement that is analyzed in the next section -- can be seen as being analogous in function to the individual word in a sentence.

The relationship between and among different symbols can be seen to function like the grammatical rules that govern sentences and paragraphs. Analyzing the visual grammar of a culture is not unlike the practice (now practically moribund) of diagramming sentences.

Kress and van Leeuwen summarize this key point as follows:

Our insistence on drawing comparisons between language and visual communication stems from this objective. We seek to break down the disciplinary boundaries between the study of language and the study of images, and we seek, as much as possible, to use compatible language, and compatible terminology in speaking about both, for in actual communication the two and indeed many others come together to form integrated texts.[footnoteRef:2] [2: Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen -- Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 183.]

The way in which postmodernists such as Kress and van Leeuwen use the word "text" is synonymous with the way in which I have previously used the terms "narrative" and "story." They are responding in many ways to earlier research in postmodernism (and certainly the body of deconstructionist writing) that views semiotics as a non-systematic study of symbols.

The multivalence of gender in a selection of South Korean advertisements

As would be true in looking at a collection of print advertisements from almost any country or region of the world, one of the most obvious (indeed, probably the most obvious) aspect of the imagery is the way in which women's bodies are used in the most blatantly sexual ways. The analyses of the following specific advertisements serve as a means of talking more broadly about the ways in which female sexuality is sculpted and manipulated.

The ways in which the female body is represented in these advertisements is a key element of the analysis of the grammar of South Korea as it reflects and is reflecting through the lens of the West. While it is, of course, essential to examine South Korean culture and semiotics from an internal perspective, it is also imperative to examine South Korean culture and semiotics from an outward-looking perspective. This latter is especially true given that many of the advertisements analyzed here are directed at Western consumers.

Indeed, advertisements are arguably one of the most appropriate sets of cultural texts to use for such an analysis. Some of the ads are aimed at a Western (or at least an international) audience while others are aimed at a domestic audience. This fact allows for an analysis of the distinction between the ways in which visual grammar is created (and in which different signs are used and connected) depending on the audience.

The first advertisement to be analyzed is a Korean Air advertisement that presents us with a woman seen in profile, holding something that looks a little like a crystal ball in her hands. This ball -- or bubble? -- holds a romantic scene of the kind of place where a Westerner might meet the Orient. The woman herself is held in a sort of bubble: She is sitting in an improbable, almost contorted position inside the frame of an airline window. Of course, such a position would never be allowed by an airline crew, and would not even be physically possible given that plane windows are set nearly flush to the body of the plane.

Few advertisements have a great deal to do with the world the way it actually is. The visual grammar of this ad is designed to sell the idea of a certain kind of sexuality. The model is marked as Asian, although just barely so. She is clearly Asian in terms of race, but her complexion is lighter than that of most Asian women. Her hair is braided in a traditional Asian style, but the braid is almost entirely hidden. Her hairstyle is in general Western, with just a touch of Aisan-ness/Korean-ness to create a gloss of an exoticized sexuality. The ad is creating a visual conversation about Korean women: This woman is sufficiently Westernized to be unthreatening to the Western men (and women) who will be flying Korean Air.

But she is also painted as sufficiently Asian and exotic that she will register as "other" to attract Western men (and some women) into thinking that the woman in this ad will be not only available to them sexually but will provide a sexual experience that is far beyond whatever they have experienced before. The fact that the woman is encapsulated in what could be seen as a sort of elegant cage also plays off Western tropes about an Asian woman: She is dangerous enough sexually that she has to be tamed and yet easily enough tamed that no Western man should be afraid.

However, while the above analysis is certainly accurate, it is also incomplete. For while this is the set of visual signs that is being directed at an outside audience, there are other possible readings that are directed at a domestic audience. The following analysis of the ways in which Korean women can use images of themselves and other women as a form of empowerment are outlined below.

Different types of images of women are obviously capable of different types of readings, and some images of women are more easily construed as empowering than are others. But -- contra Kress and van Leeuwen -- there are always minority ways in which images can be read and (visual) grammars created.

The following description focuses on Chinese woman appearing in Chinese advertisements; however many of the same dynamics apply, especially the fact that the women in ads serve the visual function of equating modernity with a sort of semi-Asian-ness, a concatenation of the West and Asia:

Replacing the "iron rice bowl" of job security in urban China in the 1990s is the craze of creating the "rice bowl of youth." Everywhere attractive young women have been sought to represent the shining image of "modernity." Booming service, commercial, and entertainment industries post numerous age-, gender-, and, often, height-specific advertisements seeking women under the age of 25 and above 165 centimeters in height.

Stylish, elegant, or sexy, young "Misses" are displayed in remodeled or newly built "modern" hotels, restaurants, department stores, travel services, night clubs, dance halls, and so on. As older state industries lay off women workers over 35, these modern young Misses, many with no particular education or technical skills, are entering the rising industries (mostly in the private sector, some with foreign investment) where their youth and beauty provide a ticket to incomes several times higher than those of their older sisters.[footnoteRef:4] [4: http://thegrandnarrative.com/category/korean-advertisements/]

The woman is turned slightly away, almost as if she might be modest, but her very short dress -- with a ribbon tied at the shoulder that could easily be untied to let the garment slide away -- and very high heels is certainly not displaying modesty in any other way. The ball that she holds in her hands looks as if it might slip at any moment from her cupped hands into her lap and perhaps even inside her body. The top of her braid can just barely be seen, a suggestion of her Korean-ness amid all of the signs of Western-ness.

If all of these details were somehow not sufficient to let us know that this is a woman who is willing and even eager to help the Western male find his way into the Korean soul/body, the words "Excellence in Flight" hover across from her. She is clearly labeled as being to provide all sorts of excellent services.

Women in Korean ads are sexualized in a variety of ways, some of which are much more relevant (or effective) to a domestic audience. For example, an ad for Laneige includes one of the most common visual tropes in Korean ads in terms of sexual availability: The head canted at an awkward angle on the neck -- an angle that would especially make it difficult to have a drink, in fact.

An excellent analysis of the visual grammar of Korean advertisements notes the widespread tendency of women to appear in advertisements for a range of products with their head tilted at an angle that would be highly uncomfortable in real life:

Well, just try it for yourself. Assuming that you have, and that your neck no longer hurts, then now you too may be wondering why her head was placed so awkwardly. Moreover, why is it overwhelmingly women that have this "head can't" in advertisements too, albeit not usually tilted quite so much?

.. tilting the head also serves to expose the neck, the obvious submissiveness of which is exaggerated by also having the effect of making the person shorter and/or smaller, which is quite the opposite of standing up straight to emphasize our height when we want to compete or fight with others in some sense.

But that doesn't mean it isn't problematic. Or rather, that seeing that pose so often on women in advertisements isn't. After all, there are many other ways to appeal to heterosexual men, some quite the opposite of looking submissive, so it's strange that that particular one would be so common (and, related, that you find women taller than accompanying men in ads much less than in real life). Moreover, why is the ad designed for a male gaze too, when presumably the intended consumers of the women's clothes advertised are women?[footnoteRef:5] [5: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2010/09/01/womens-poses-advertisements-korea/]

This last comment is especially important, because it emphasizes the fact that the same combination of visual symbols has such a wide range of potential readers and readings. Men and women from both a domestic and international audience are likely each to have their own and quite distinct readings of the visual text (or story) presented in an advertisements.

An advertisement that features three clearly Western women wearing very little as they wash a car with great enthusiasm. The pink of their clothes and the writing on their sashes matches the pink of the car. The ad uses the visual grammar of color: The pink of these women is reminiscent of the pink of the Barbie doll as well as the pink-wrapped infant. These women are being simultaneously sexualized and infantilized.

The most interesting aspect of this ad is the complex way in which the visual grammar of this image is an example of the multiple-mirroring effect discussed above. While Westerners often sexualize Asian women (although very rarely Asian men), the semiotics of Korean advertisements often center around the sexualization of Western women, who are often dressed in ways that are much more sexually explicit than what Korean women wear in advertisements. (This is not to say that Korean women are not sexualized in Korean ads, just that they are sexualized in quite different ways.)

Western women (and to a lesser extent Western men) crowd Korean ads:

Of the total of 644 female models found in selected advertisements (one page or bigger and showing full adults) from selected Korean women's magazines from 2002 and 2003, 57% were Korean and 43% were Western. Of 299 male models counted, 59.2% were Korean and 40.8% Western.[footnoteRef:6] [6: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2009/09/13/sexualizing-caucasian-women/]

Not only are Western women very common in Korean ads, but they tend to be portrayed as more sexually aggressive and as far more likely to be wearing far fewer clothes.

To be fair, this at least in part echoes the hypersexual state of Western advertising today. And rather than supporting the artificial dichotomy between chaste Koreans and oversexualized Caucasian (or Westerners) that at the heart of this post, the internal dynamics of the Korean magazine industry reveal that Korean women are active and willing consumers of the cultural and sexual norms that such advertisements literally embody, the incorporation of which into patriarchal Korea is not without friction. Not to imply that all positive changes in Korea are Western-derived of course, but regardless there are certainly a lot of advertisements with Caucasians out there.[footnoteRef:7] [7: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2009/09/13/sexualizing-caucasian-women/]

As noted above, the way in which sex is used in Korean advertisements is not necessarily all bad. Sex can certainly be used to demean individuals (and especially women). However, open sexuality can also be liberating. This has to be something that has a serious attraction to at least some Koreans:

To be fair, in many senses exaggerated notions of foreigners sexuality are merely a method by which particularly older Koreans deal with and account for the uncomfortable reality of Koreans' own sexuality, and so as Michael Hurt points out here, public displays of affection by young Koreans are often rationalized by certain Koreans by claiming that the couples involved are Japanese. No, really. But for a more tangible "other," you need the Occident of course, which is why Korean public opinion holds Western celebrities to such different standards to Korean ones.[footnoteRef:8] [8: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2009/09/13/sexualizing-caucasian-women/]

Certainly part of what is being sold in Korean ads is the idea that Western women offer sex as a symbol of both empowerment and moral laxity just as part of what is being sold in Korean ads is that Korean women are both chaste and sexually available to Western men. Of these two views of sexuality, the former must certainly appeal to some women. This runs counter to the argument put forth by Kress and van Leeuwen that there must be a single dominant cultural reading of any cultural grammar.

Kress and van Leeuwen are, of course, not alone in making such assumptions. Indeed, the argument that there is a single paradigm (or set of semiotic connections) that necessarily dominates all others and is more dominant the more capitalism dominates the culture in question. Such a claim lies at the heart of neo-Marxist analysis / (Which is not to say the Kress and van Leeuwen are writing archtetypical neo-Marxist analysis.) Philosophically neo-Marxists must argue that a single, capitalist grammar must dominate all others.

However, once one steps away neo-Marxist analysis, it becomes clear that minority perspectives ("minority" in the sociological sense of a group that has less power than other groups) can read texts very differently. I argue that this is the case in the area of gender and Korean advertisements.

Social relationships: Even in the family there is a grammar of sex

While the grammar of sexuality is one of the most striking and certainly one of the most common semiotic conversations that exist in Korean advertisements, other tropes are just as important. At the other end of the spectrum is the use of traditional Korean iconography, such as an ad for Korean ham that is produced in the country and that is being promoted by a family wearing traditional Korean clothing. The image is overtly desexualized, almost anti-sexual.

And yet, despite the fact that the ad is engaged in using symbols of the traditional family gathered around the eating of healthy food (and what can be more healthy and normal than eating a family meal?) it still is a part of the visual conversation about sexuality. Given that so many Korean ads are overtly sexual, when one comes across an ad that is absolutely devoid of sex, this very absence of sex summons it into the conversation.

And yet, sex has made its way into the semiotics of this advertisement, albeit in a very different form. The ad -- with its emphasis on both the traditional family and traditional femininity -- can be read as an oblique but unambiguous reference to the declining Korean birthrate. The aging of the population in South Korea is of growing concern, as it is in many nations.

The fall in Korea's fertility rate has been steeper than in other countries. It decreased by 3.45 from 1970 to 2005; it fell by 2.26 in the world as a whole during the same period. At the time, it fell by 0.87 in Japan, 0.41 in the United States and 0.63 in the United Kingdom.

In conjunction with economic development plans, Korea rigorously promoted a government-led birth control policy. Despite a birthrate below the ideal rate of 2.1 in 1983, the policy was maintained until 1996. In 2002, the problem of low fertility began attracting public attention. The government responded to the low TFR only after it dropped to the lowest level internationally. Accordingly, the government has been criticized for its sluggish response.[footnoteRef:9] [9: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2008/08/29/korea-as-a-social-laboratory-the-impending-depopulation-crisis/]

The fact that the woman in this advertisement is dressed in traditional clothes marks her not only as a mother and wife primarily, it also marks her as someone who is almost certainly not participating in the workforce. This too is an important aspect of this ad because birthrates have declined more in married women. This is a woman who is doing her duty to her family by first, having children, and then, second, feeding them healthy food and, third, by staying at home.

The female labor force participation rate in Korea -- as a percentage of the population aged 15 and older, both employed and unemployed -- increased from 39.3% in 1970 to 50.2% in 2007. In the same period, the men's labor force participation rate decreased from 77.9% to 74.0%.

The increase in female workforce participation seems to be connected with the decline in the total fertility rate. The rise in labor force participation of women of childbearing age is notable. The labor force participation rate of those aged 25-29 increased markedly, from 32% in 1970 to 68% in 2007. Among those age 30-34, it also increased substantially, from 40.8% to 53.6% in the same period. [footnoteRef:10] [10: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2008/08/29/korea-as-a-social-laboratory-the-impending-depopulation-crisis/]

Advertisements are written in the language of those who will consume the products and services that are being sold. Or rather in the languages of those who will consume the products and services that are being sold.

This means at the most basic level that the language itself must be understood. But at least as importantly, the grammar of symbols and signs must be readable to those who look, and see.