A critical analysis of the use of humor in television advertisements

Today the main purpose of the advertisements which have surrounded almost every where, to convince the people for buying the advertise dproduct/service. The narrative styles which have been of tenused and become popular in advertisements are being used to make this purpose happen. One of these narrative styles is humor. The humor used to appear as a critical phenomenon in the historical roots. However in the conditions of capitalism it has been seen that the humor has been articulated to the hegemon values. In this context starting from the assumption that the humor which was used as a criticism tool in the past, is articulated to dominant ideology in contemporary capitalist societies; the main purpose of this study is to reveal how the use of humor in advertising serves to protect the statusquo and reproduct the hegemony. In accordance with this purpose 413 ads which constitute the sample of the study were subjected to quantitative content analysis and then the ads which were chosen in accordance with the aims of the study were examined deeply through qualitative content analysis. In conclusion it has been revealed that the audience is often made laugh and entertain with exaggerated even ridiculous contents, use of exaggerated language/body language and appearence-clothes-makeup through use of humor in advertisements and thus it has been also detected that the hegemon values such as wealth, luxurious life, individualism, hedonism, competition,entertainment which are corresponding to the capitalism are reproduced by constrainted the audience from thinking and questioning. Keywords: Advertisements, Humor, Quantitative/Qualitative Content Analysis