George Rossolatos
Biographic Data
| ID | 86701 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Rossolatos |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Rossolatos |
| SIGNATURE | ROSSOLATOS G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kassel |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8884-646X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
On the Discursive Appropriation of the Antinatalist Ideology in Social Media
Antinatalism, a relatively recent moral philosophical perspective and ideology that avows “it is better not to have ever existed,” has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. This study draws on the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis for offering a firm understanding as to how the collective identity of the Facebook antinatalist NSM is formed. The findings from the analysis of the sit…
Impossibly good looks: A pragma-ontological approach to unearthing the latent rhetorical structure of anti-ageing advertising discourse
This paper aims at unearthing the appeals, the argumentative schemes and the modes of rhetorical configuration that make up the rhetorical structure of the anti-ageing skin care product category’s print advertising discourse. To this end, the pragma-ontological approach is put forward as an offshoot of the pragma-dialectical perspective in rhetorical analysis and criticism. The pragma-ontological approach adds interpretative depth to the overt ar…
A sociosemiotic approach to consumer engagement in user-generated advertising
User-generated advertising (UGA) has been booming over the past few years as marketers have been actively seeking to enhance consumer engagement. Yet, our understanding of the implications, the importance and the potential of UGA from a cultural branding point of view remains limited. This study furnishes the conceptual model of consumer cultural engagement in order to appreciate in a more nuanced manner than afforded by consumer sentiment analys…
Brand image re-revisited: A semiotic note on brand iconicity and brand symbols
Brand image constitutes one of the most extensively and intensively explored and operationalized constructs in marketing theory and practice. This paper problematizes the way brand image has been conceptualized in the traditional branding and cultural branding streams by seeking to disentangle primarily the definitional ambiguities involved in the concepts of brand symbol and brand icon. Then, it elaborates on a critical missing component in the …
Toy stories: On the disciplinary regime of vibration
Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category's consumption. By drawing on Foucault's theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 s…
Good Vibrations: Charting the Dominant and Emergent Discursive Regimes of Sex Toys
Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category’s consumption. By drawing on Foucault’s theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 s…
Carpool Karaoke: Deconstructing the directly lived experience of hearing oneself singing
The various ways whereby spatial conditions afford to monumentalize culture and to appropriate geographically demarcated places in terms of individual and collective meaning structures has been amply documented in urban cultural studies. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how cultural identity is produced against the background of musical temporality. By way of a phenomenological inquiry into the staged spectacle of James Corde…
A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement
Product placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leverag…
Before the consummation what? On the role of the semiotic economy of seduction
The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is p…
Double or … Nothing: Deconstructing Cultural Heritage
This paper draws on the deconstruction(ist) toolbox and specifically on the textual unweaving tactics of supplementarity, exemplarity, and parergonality, with a view to critically assessing institutional (UNESCO’s) and ordinary tourists’ claims to authenticity as regards artifacts and sites of ‘cultural heritage’. Through the ‘destru[k]tion’ of claims to ‘originality’ and ‘myths of origin’, that function as preservatives for canning such artifact…
The Ice-Bucket Challenge: The Legitimacy of the Memetic Mode of Cultural Reproduction Is the Message
The multimodal video meme of the ice-bucket challenge raises a “bucketful” of questions for media and cultural studies. This article focuses narrowly on unearthing who speaks in this message and what is ultimately communicated. By unpeeling the multiple layers of message structuration with view to discerning the formal structure of the concerned multimodal message, the analysis proceeds with an exploration of the function of the message in the co…
Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework
This paper furnishes a structuralist rhetorical semiotic conceptual framework for brand equity planning. The main source of brand equity that is employed for exemplification purposes is the advertising filmic text. The conceptual framework assumes as its general blueprint Greimas’s generativist model of the trajectory of signification. Structuralist operations and operations of rhetorical transformation are posited as the basis for the generation…
Servicing a heavy metal fandom posthumously: A sociosemiotic account of collective identity formation in Dio's memorial
This study is positioned in the burgeoning research field of collective memory and identity by offering a sociosemiotic account of the formation of fandom identity in the context of Ronnie James Dio's memorial. By drawing on the three major categories whereby collective memory is formed – that is artifacts, processes, places, as well as on the three key sociosemiotic metafunctions which are responsible for shaping a cultural event as sign system …
Lady Gaga as (dis)simulacrum of monstrosity
Lady Gaga’s celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of monstrosity, as well as by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the relatively underexplored live …
Taking the "multimodal turn" in interpreting consumption experiences
This paper highlights the contributions of sociosemiotically informed multimodal research in framing and systematically interpreting experiential consumption phenomena. By dint of tried and tested sociosemiotic mappings of cultural practices, consumer researchers may benefit considerably by following available avenues for the modal segmentation of cultural practices, inasmuch as by methodically yielding stratified accounts of experiences in terms…
A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures
The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for Brand Equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification (Rossolatos 2013a, 2013g) it will be displayed in a step-wise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its interna…
On the Pathology of the Enthymeme: Accounting for Hidden Visual Premises in Advertising Discourse
One of the key reasons that have been put forward for justifying the superior argumentative force of visuals over verbal arguments in advertising discourse is their immediacy. The immediate resonance of visuals and their forceful appeal bear considerable resemblance to the argumentative force of enthymemes as hidden premises in informal rhetorical argumentation. In this article an attempt is made at bridging the logical and pathemic appeals of en…
A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures
The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for brand equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification it will be displayed in a stepwise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a bra…
Exploring the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films with multivariate mapping techniques
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of multivariate mapping techniques to the exploration of the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films. By drawing on correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling, two techniques that are amply used in corpus linguistics and in marketing research, but also on the data reduction technique of factor analysis, it will be displayed how a set of nuclear semes and classemes o…
I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I do not know which half (J. Wannamaker)”: Semiotic answers to perennial branding troubles
Marketing maverick J. Wannamaker's famous dictum has been hovering over marketing effectiveness ever since the late nineteenth century. Providing tentative answers to such a tantalizing question does not rest solely with the media-mix of a brand campaign. As argued in this paper, even more fundamentally than budget allocation lie issues about the semiotic structure of an intended brand positioning. By drawing on structuralist semiotics and partic…
Applying structuralist semiotics to brand image research
The aim of this paper is to display a conceptual and methodological framework for brand image research by drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics. Upon a critical review of existing research from key authors in the brand semiotics literature and through an engagement with the concept of brand image as formulated by key authors in the marketing literature, a semiotic model is furnished for the formation of brand image and brand identi…
Before the consummation what? On the role of the semiotic economy of seduction
The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is p…
The Ice-Bucket Challenge: The Legitimacy of the Memetic Mode of Cultural Reproduction Is the Message
The multimodal video meme of the ice-bucket challenge raises a “bucketful” of questions for media and cultural studies. This article focuses narrowly on unearthing who speaks in this message and what is ultimately communicated. By unpeeling the multiple layers of message structuration with view to discerning the formal structure of the concerned multimodal message, the analysis proceeds with an exploration of the function of the message in the co…
Taking the "multimodal turn" in interpreting consumption experiences
This paper highlights the contributions of sociosemiotically informed multimodal research in framing and systematically interpreting experiential consumption phenomena. By dint of tried and tested sociosemiotic mappings of cultural practices, consumer researchers may benefit considerably by following available avenues for the modal segmentation of cultural practices, inasmuch as by methodically yielding stratified accounts of experiences in terms…
Brand image re-revisited: A semiotic note on brand iconicity and brand symbols
Brand image constitutes one of the most extensively and intensively explored and operationalized constructs in marketing theory and practice. This paper problematizes the way brand image has been conceptualized in the traditional branding and cultural branding streams by seeking to disentangle primarily the definitional ambiguities involved in the concepts of brand symbol and brand icon. Then, it elaborates on a critical missing component in the …
Toy stories: On the disciplinary regime of vibration
Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category's consumption. By drawing on Foucault's theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 s…
Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework
This paper furnishes a structuralist rhetorical semiotic conceptual framework for brand equity planning. The main source of brand equity that is employed for exemplification purposes is the advertising filmic text. The conceptual framework assumes as its general blueprint Greimas’s generativist model of the trajectory of signification. Structuralist operations and operations of rhetorical transformation are posited as the basis for the generation…
A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures
The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for brand equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification it will be displayed in a stepwise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a bra…
Applying structuralist semiotics to brand image research
The aim of this paper is to display a conceptual and methodological framework for brand image research by drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics. Upon a critical review of existing research from key authors in the brand semiotics literature and through an engagement with the concept of brand image as formulated by key authors in the marketing literature, a semiotic model is furnished for the formation of brand image and brand identi…
Applying structuralist semiotics to brand image research
The aim of this paper is to display a conceptual and methodological framework for brand image research by drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics. Upon a critical review of existing research from key authors in the brand semiotics literature and through an engagement with the concept of brand image as formulated by key authors in the marketing literature, a semiotic model is furnished for the formation of brand image and brand identi…
I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I do not know which half (J. Wannamaker)”: Semiotic answers to perennial branding troubles
Marketing maverick J. Wannamaker's famous dictum has been hovering over marketing effectiveness ever since the late nineteenth century. Providing tentative answers to such a tantalizing question does not rest solely with the media-mix of a brand campaign. As argued in this paper, even more fundamentally than budget allocation lie issues about the semiotic structure of an intended brand positioning. By drawing on structuralist semiotics and partic…
A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures
The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for Brand Equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification (Rossolatos 2013a, 2013g) it will be displayed in a step-wise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its interna…
On the Pathology of the Enthymeme: Accounting for Hidden Visual Premises in Advertising Discourse
One of the key reasons that have been put forward for justifying the superior argumentative force of visuals over verbal arguments in advertising discourse is their immediacy. The immediate resonance of visuals and their forceful appeal bear considerable resemblance to the argumentative force of enthymemes as hidden premises in informal rhetorical argumentation. In this article an attempt is made at bridging the logical and pathemic appeals of en…
A Methodological Framework for Projecting Brand Equity: Putting Back the Imaginary into Brand Knowledge Structures
The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for brand equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionist conceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification it will be displayed in a stepwise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a bra…
Exploring the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films with multivariate mapping techniques
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of multivariate mapping techniques to the exploration of the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films. By drawing on correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling, two techniques that are amply used in corpus linguistics and in marketing research, but also on the data reduction technique of factor analysis, it will be displayed how a set of nuclear semes and classemes o…
Double or … Nothing: Deconstructing Cultural Heritage
This paper draws on the deconstruction(ist) toolbox and specifically on the textual unweaving tactics of supplementarity, exemplarity, and parergonality, with a view to critically assessing institutional (UNESCO’s) and ordinary tourists’ claims to authenticity as regards artifacts and sites of ‘cultural heritage’. Through the ‘destru[k]tion’ of claims to ‘originality’ and ‘myths of origin’, that function as preservatives for canning such artifact…
The Ice-Bucket Challenge: The Legitimacy of the Memetic Mode of Cultural Reproduction Is the Message
The multimodal video meme of the ice-bucket challenge raises a “bucketful” of questions for media and cultural studies. This article focuses narrowly on unearthing who speaks in this message and what is ultimately communicated. By unpeeling the multiple layers of message structuration with view to discerning the formal structure of the concerned multimodal message, the analysis proceeds with an exploration of the function of the message in the co…
Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework
This paper furnishes a structuralist rhetorical semiotic conceptual framework for brand equity planning. The main source of brand equity that is employed for exemplification purposes is the advertising filmic text. The conceptual framework assumes as its general blueprint Greimas’s generativist model of the trajectory of signification. Structuralist operations and operations of rhetorical transformation are posited as the basis for the generation…
Servicing a heavy metal fandom posthumously: A sociosemiotic account of collective identity formation in Dio's memorial
This study is positioned in the burgeoning research field of collective memory and identity by offering a sociosemiotic account of the formation of fandom identity in the context of Ronnie James Dio's memorial. By drawing on the three major categories whereby collective memory is formed – that is artifacts, processes, places, as well as on the three key sociosemiotic metafunctions which are responsible for shaping a cultural event as sign system …
Lady Gaga as (dis)simulacrum of monstrosity
Lady Gaga’s celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of monstrosity, as well as by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the relatively underexplored live …
Taking the "multimodal turn" in interpreting consumption experiences
This paper highlights the contributions of sociosemiotically informed multimodal research in framing and systematically interpreting experiential consumption phenomena. By dint of tried and tested sociosemiotic mappings of cultural practices, consumer researchers may benefit considerably by following available avenues for the modal segmentation of cultural practices, inasmuch as by methodically yielding stratified accounts of experiences in terms…
Good Vibrations: Charting the Dominant and Emergent Discursive Regimes of Sex Toys
Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category’s consumption. By drawing on Foucault’s theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 s…
Carpool Karaoke: Deconstructing the directly lived experience of hearing oneself singing
The various ways whereby spatial conditions afford to monumentalize culture and to appropriate geographically demarcated places in terms of individual and collective meaning structures has been amply documented in urban cultural studies. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how cultural identity is produced against the background of musical temporality. By way of a phenomenological inquiry into the staged spectacle of James Corde…
A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement
Product placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leverag…
Before the consummation what? On the role of the semiotic economy of seduction
The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is p…
A sociosemiotic approach to consumer engagement in user-generated advertising
User-generated advertising (UGA) has been booming over the past few years as marketers have been actively seeking to enhance consumer engagement. Yet, our understanding of the implications, the importance and the potential of UGA from a cultural branding point of view remains limited. This study furnishes the conceptual model of consumer cultural engagement in order to appreciate in a more nuanced manner than afforded by consumer sentiment analys…
Brand image re-revisited: A semiotic note on brand iconicity and brand symbols
Brand image constitutes one of the most extensively and intensively explored and operationalized constructs in marketing theory and practice. This paper problematizes the way brand image has been conceptualized in the traditional branding and cultural branding streams by seeking to disentangle primarily the definitional ambiguities involved in the concepts of brand symbol and brand icon. Then, it elaborates on a critical missing component in the …
Toy stories: On the disciplinary regime of vibration
Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category's consumption. By drawing on Foucault's theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 s…
Impossibly good looks: A pragma-ontological approach to unearthing the latent rhetorical structure of anti-ageing advertising discourse
This paper aims at unearthing the appeals, the argumentative schemes and the modes of rhetorical configuration that make up the rhetorical structure of the anti-ageing skin care product category’s print advertising discourse. To this end, the pragma-ontological approach is put forward as an offshoot of the pragma-dialectical perspective in rhetorical analysis and criticism. The pragma-ontological approach adds interpretative depth to the overt ar…
On the Discursive Appropriation of the Antinatalist Ideology in Social Media
Antinatalism, a relatively recent moral philosophical perspective and ideology that avows “it is better not to have ever existed,” has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. This study draws on the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis for offering a firm understanding as to how the collective identity of the Facebook antinatalist NSM is formed. The findings from the analysis of the sit…
Sociology (19 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Advertising (8 works) · Art (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (8 works)