Eliciting Emotions as Cultural Mediation: Advertising and the Non-rational Space between Culture and the Economy

Abstract

The present study explores the connections between emotions, culture and economy within the framework of advertising practices. In this way, grounded on the discourses of London-based advertising practitioners, this research analyses the role of emotions in advertising communication in order to comprehend how advertisers organise the elicitation of emotions as a process of cultural mediation. Starting from the premise that emotions are social dispositions that circulate and are reproduced among social agents (Ahmed, 2004a; Scribano, 2019), it is argued that the elicitation of emotions in advertising constitutes what Moor (2012) denominates a work of ‘culturalisation’, a process that comprises the continuous interpretation and redefinition of culture through emotionally-laden messages to foster advertising communication. In the case of British advertising, this is observable in the mobilisation of consumers through humour and feelings associated with togetherness, which the interviewees identified as the most typical emotional resources in Britain’s advertising communication. It is concluded that advertising’s cultural mediation depends not only on the interpretation of cultural meanings but also on the identification of the prevailing social sensibilities that shape culture, which constitutes an example of how emotions mediate the relationship between culture and economy.