Interpellation

In the textbook Practices of Looking, interpellation is defined as a way of referring to, "the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position" (446). For the purposes of this blog, interpellation, then, is the methods in which advertisers and technical writers situate their audience by furthering an ideology they believe their audience already participates, or should participate, in.

This method is helpful to marketers because it narrows down a target audience by using sometimes very general principles. Good writing is always aimed at an audience. When was the last time you purchased a product that didn't seem to be aimed directly at your demographic? Writers and advertisers are skilled at making it appear that a product is tailor-made to fit your exact needs and desires, while at the same time opening up the venue for a broad audience to participate in whichever ideology they are touching on in their ad. The more personalized a product feels, and the more a consumer feels that his/her needs are addressed, the more likely it is that that consumer will purchase a product or participate in a community.

Along with interpellation comes "encoding" and "decoding"--basically, encoding is the way a writer/marketer/advertiser intended a message to be absorbed, and decoding is the way it is actually absorbed by a consumer. Everybody decodes differently, and encoding and decoding don't always match up as well as an advertiser would like.

Given this overview, we will examine two ad campaigns in the next post that use the principles of interpellation, encoding, and decoding.