Abstract
A personal advertisement has two aims; to promote its author and to attract potential love interest. In addition to providing textual information about physical appearance, occupation and interests, accompanying images in personal ads create meanings that are instrumental in building imaginary relations between the advertiser and the readers. This paper explores the notions of body language and interpersonal attitude and courtship initiation behaviour in online personal ads. Using Kress & van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design (2006) and Mehrabian’s dominant and affiliative dimensions (1981) this study examines how interpersonal relations are represented through the embodiment of affiliative and non-affiliative attitudes in images. Analysis of 581 images reveals several common visual personas through specific clusters of bodily stance and facial articulation that are instrumental in creating and establishing represented affiliation between the participants in the images and the viewers. As such this study is a contribution to scholars working in the area of visual analysis, identity and social semiotics as it identifies non-verbal realizations of affiliative and non-affiliative attitudes and demonstrates their interaction through a corpus-based analysis of personal ad images.
Highlights
A personal advertisement constitutes a distinct generic form, which is related to the small ad family of genres
This paper explores the notions of body language and interpersonal attitude and courtship initiation behaviour in online personal ads
This paper focuses on how images in personal ads function as a tool for for affiliating with others; the ways in which the advertisers enact imaginary relationships with the viewers through their body language
Summary
A personal advertisement constitutes a distinct generic form, which is related to the small ad family of genres. While small ads traditionally offer a thing (e.g. a car) or a service (e.g. plumbing), the personal ad ‘offers but, most essentially, seeks’ (Shalom, 1997) a romantic partner. The self becomes a commodified entity and advertisers compete for the time and effort of other members to read and respond to their profiles. With these aims in mind, advertisers are pushed into crafting an advert that will positively highlight their identity in ways that they believe will help them achieve these objectives
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