SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

i$o I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes
The next important step in this regimentation of the referential function of
language was the Supreme Court's ruling in 1976 in Virginia Stàie~~Éoard of
Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. (425 U.S. 748) that
purely commercial advertisements enjoy some degree of constitutional protection.
This case involved the advertising of prescription drug prices. At issue are
no cultural, political, or philosophical ideas, nor any "generalized observations
about commercial matters." Rather, the only "idea" these ads communicate is
the purely commercial "I will sell you the X prescription drug at the Y price."
In justifying overturning the previous state decision, the Court stated clearly the
principle that "society also may have a strong interest in the free flow of commercial
information." The decision then continues to make explicit the grounds
for this reification of information:
Moreover, there is another consideration that suggests that no line between
publicly "interesting" or "important" commercial advertising and the opposite
kind could ever be drawn. Advertising, however tasteless and excessive it sometimes
may seem, is nonetheless dissemination of information as to who is producing
and selling what product, for what reason, and at what price. So long
as we preserve a predominantly free enterprise economy, the allocation of our
resources in large measure will be made through numerous private economic
decisions. It is a matter of public interest that those decisions, in the aggregate,
be intelligent and well informed. To this end, the free flow of commercial information
is indispensable. And if it is indispensable to the proper allocation
of resources in a free enterprise, it is also indispensable to the formation of
intelligent opinions as to how that system ought to be regulated or altered.
Therefore, even if the First Amendment were thought to be primarily an instrument
to enlighten public decision making in a democracy, we could not say
that the free flow of information does not serve that goal. (Virginia, 425 U.S.
748 [1976] 765)
So First Amendment protection and FTC regulations work together to ensure
the free flow of information that can be useful to citizens in that
quintessentially rational forum, the marketplace, for the purpose of making available
to them a dominant embodiment of social value, namely, commodities. The
Court in 1976 was actually legitimizing a widespread view of advertising's role
in a consumer-oriented society, a view which signals the end of the caveat emptor
tradition's recognition of the rhetorical nature of advertising. As the FTC's
Commissioner stated as early as 1973:
My view of advertising is of course strongly influenced by my view of business
in general. Just as I think well of the man who has the skill, energy, and imagination
to produce something needed and desired by his fellow human beings,
so I also think well of the one who has the skill, energy, and imagination to
sell it for him. If production is useful and honorable, then distribution—including
advertising—is entitled to the same honorable place in our esteem. The
purpose of advertising, as I understand it, is to provide information to potential
The Semiotic Regimentation of Social Life I 151
buyers—to tell consumers that a certain product exists, that it has certain properties,
that it sells for a certain price, that it can be bought at certain times
and places, and so forth. This information, in turn, has profound effects on
the workings of our economic system. (Thompson 82 FTC 76 [1973])
This understanding of advertising was condensed into a metapragmatic formula
in 1980 when the Supreme Court wrote: "First Amendment's concern for commercial
speech is based on the informational function of advertising" (Central
Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 557). In
fact, in drawing a contrast between protected speech and speech proposing a
commercial transaction the Court reasoned that commercial speech was "more
easily verifiable" than political commentary (Schmidt and Burns 1988:1288). In
other words, constitutional protection extends to commercial speech to the degree
that it is verifiably truthful. That corporations can now find First Amendment
protection in their efforts at commercial persuasion is surely one sign of the
dominance of corporate interests. But this has been interpreted, additionally, as
marking the culmination of a lengthy trend toward the homologization of speech
and commodities, whereby speech is conceived of as not merely about the flow
of commercial goods but as itself an objectified value (Tushnet 1982).
I have sketched the development of an institutionalized ideology of commercial
speech which_CQntribjU£s_jojt^
standardT of consumers and
which channds me.praduction of ads themselves. IronicallyTmt predictably, these
two effects operate in opposite directions: at the same time that consumers are
taught to rely on the informational function of advertising, the ads produced in
this regulatory atmosphere increasingly avoid factual claims of properties, price,
and availability. Taking advantage of the general referential ideology and faced
with new stringent requirements such as prior substantiation and affirmative disclosure,
ad agencies turn tp persuasion based on visuaJjmager^ emotional ap ";
r
peal, testimonials of the ricrTand famous, life-style S3s, and other sophisticated/
(and protected) forms of puffery (Schmidt and Burns 1988:1293). And the con- ,
sumer, believing both that it is illegal to make false representations and that ads
in general communicate useful information, is caught with weakened metaprag-^
matic defenses based on "healthy skepticism" (Preston 1989:66) against these
new forms of advertising. Nothing, then, could guarantee a better climate for
advertising than the failure of regulation to touch puffery and almost all aspects
of visual communication coupled with the social acceptance of the interpretive
rule that advertising is informational.
Several contemporary researchers have provided experimental documentation
of the fact that consumers do interpret puff claims as if they were informational
claims relevant to making consumption decisions. In a sense, of course,
such empirical research is a redundant restating of the obvious, since if puffery
is not widely successful in influencing consumer decision making it would have
long ago ceased being part of the advertiser's rhetorical tool kit. In a study by