Understanding Jingles and Needledrop: A Rhetorical Approach to Music in Advertising

Abstract

Studies of music in advertising have tended to characterize music as a nonsemantic, affective stimulus working independently of meaning or context. This implicit theory is reflected in methodology and procedures that separate music from its syntax of verbal and visual elements. Consequently, the consumer's ability to judge and interpret music as part of an overall rhetorical intention is overlooked. This article proposes an alternative theory—that music is meaningful, language-like—and calls for both interpretive and empirical research as ways of exploring a richer, potentially more explanatory concept.