The Thin Invisible Line – Between Funny and Distasteful Multimodal Advertising Discourse

Many a time advertisers turn to infotaining practices, wrapping advertising content in humorous forms, often by means of contrasting verbal and visual elements for humorous effect. Nevertheless, the multimodal discourse of humour is double-edged in nature since, sometimes, it may become difficult to draw the line between what is perceived as funny and what may be seen as distasteful. The main objective of this paper is to investigate a collection of English multimodal ads intended to be humorous. In a qualitative analysis, the author shall enquire into the interplay between the visual and verbal meanings and the concomitant production of humorous effects in press and internet advertising messages. To this end, a comprehensive survey was conducted among students to ask them about their interpretations of and feelings towards the ads presented, as well as to check ad liking and comprehension of meaning-laden advertisements. This paper reports on the major findings and constitutes an attempt to answer the question whether there is any line between the appealing and the appalling in contemporary advertising discourse.