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Francis subjected Decoding Advertisementsto a critical reading. He claims to have identified a number of major fallacies in the assumptions made about advertising, products and viewers which impact on the status of several methodological assumptions within structuralism and its use to analyse advertising. Francis argues that there are three main fallacies on which Decoding Advertisements is based. He calls these the description fallacy, the technical reading fallacy and the formal knowledge fallacy.

The description fallacy, according to Francis, is assuming that the function of an advertisement is to describe the details of the product.

Williamson, claims Francis, criticizes advertisements for not describing products: this criticism is based on her assumption that the function of an advertisement is to describe a product and advertisements that do not do this are deceptive. As a case in point, she cites a perfume advertisement for Chanel No. 5 in which Catherine Deneuve (a French model and actress) is pictured with a bottle of Chanel. Williamson claims that adver-tisements like those for perfume are 'hollow referent' images — they are used because no real information can be given. Francis observes, however, that 'if we cease to conceive of descriptions as essential to the nature of advertising, the basis of Williamson's charge of deception disappears' (1986: 209). He follows this up with: 'I assume Williamson is not suggest-ing . . . that we cannot describe smells. In everyday life we routinely do so' (1986: 209). What Francis has done here is to show the fallacy of making an assumption about the function of something, in this case, an advertisement. He has also shown that if one changes or drops (suspends) that particular assumption, the substance of much criticism about adver-tisements disappears.

A second fallacy, the technical reading fallacy, made by Williamson is that of assuming viewers of advertisements have insufficient mental ability

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to see the structures by which she believes an advertisement works. She assumes that advertisements have hidden structures that cannot readily be perceived by looking at the manifest image. On the basis of this she criticizes advertising agencies for hiding the technical work that went into the production of an advertisement. Williamson has, Francis observes, conflated 'two different perspectives on advertisements. She has conflated the everyday and routine viewing of adverts with a technical interest in adverts. It is because of this that Williamson is able to claim that "we" the general viewer do not "see" the "real" structure and purpose of adver-tisements' (1986: 210). Williamson fails to realize, Francis argues, that the whole objective of the technical construction of an advertisement is aimed at the production of an 'object that can be understood . . . by anyone' (1986:

221).

The third fallacy Francis finds in Decoding Advertisements is the formal knowledge fallacy. On the basis of assuming advertisements convey messages, Williamson proposes that these are structured and work at a level where most people are unaware of them. Viewers of advertisements do not know they are receiving a powerful advertising sales pitch.

Referring to the work of Toulmin, Francis points out the formal tautology in this. In attributing objective existence to unconscious and covert struc-tures of ideas, Williamson is attributing concrete reality (misplaced concreteness) to an ideational notion. But for the notion to hold she must continue to assume that viewers cannot see how advertisements are structured. She therefore claims that the only way to get at these structures is through analysis and uses elements from psychoanalytical theory to do this. But as Francis makes clear, ^'unless we clearly distinguish between the phenomena and the representations we use to picture them, our theories will remain self-sustaining tautologies' (1986: 213). In short, what Decoding Advertisements does is to claim the existence of formal structures and then apply formal analysis to demonstrate the adequacy of the approach: it does not describe advertisements or products, it describes the procedures of its

own theory.

We can see that Francis intends to approach advertising, not as a phenomenon, but to examine properties as the phenomena. It is this difference of project that sets the two appart. There is no reason why we should see Francis's critique as negating the work of Williamson. We might even want to look at what criticisms could be made of Francis's reading of Decoding Advertisements. Assessing the original argument and the critique a common theme in the social sciences. In terms of Francis's critique we might see a counter-argument develop on the lines of a clarification of what Williamson intended, thereby attempting to correct the reading Francis gives us. For example, it might be claimed that Williamson did not criticize advertisements for not describing products. If this is the case – and we can only see if it is by reading Decoding Advertisements for ourselves – then ';

Francis^'s claim about Williamson regarding advertising as deception might be thrown into doubt. But let us assume Williamson did argue that

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advertisements contain no real information, we have the issue of what we mean by information. This takes us back to Husserl's phenomenology: we need to inquire into what makes information what it is in order to be able to recognize it as such. Williamson might therefore have an idea about what information should be and it is this that Francis is criticizing. It is these kinds of problems that can often lead to new topics for research.

Again, following this through, we might then show in defence of Williamson that she thought some products, such as perfume, were difficult to describe. Hence, what she is critical about is the association of perfume with certain images. It is this association, not the product or even advertising as an institution, that she is interested in. Williamson is therefore concerned with the issue of persuasion. If this is the case her analysis is of the strategies used by advertising to persuade. But does this clarification distract from the original critique made by Francis? From a phenomenological approach there are strong grounds for claiming that Williamson is more concerned with procedures of analysis than with the thing in itself, whether an advertisement or information.

But why should Williamson be interested in a phenomenological approach? As with most research, the answer is that it is up to the researcher to make choices about what their topic is to be and how they are to study it. However, Francis might observe that a researcher also has the responsibility to understand the consequences of the choices they make. In this case, he might claim that the choices Williamson made had more to do with demonstrating preconceived views about advertising than with describing the properties of advertisements. Here, then, Francis would be looking to show the motivation for Williamson's interest in advertising.

Again a correction of this might be attempted by saying that Francis has misunderstood the methodological tradition within which Williamson is working. As a consequence, he misunderstands her arguments about how smell is packaged as a perfume and how this has meaning for consumers. This line might therefore take us towards another aspect of the debate, that of understanding the traditions within which different researchers work.

The importance of this cannot be overestimated. We have already shown something of this in our explication of the origins of the phenomenological reading technique. The same, therefore, could be done for the tradition within which Williamson worked. Again, it is such inquiries that can form the basis of further research. It is finding these unexplained areas in arguments or assumptions that have not been defined that can often be the starting point for a new piece of research. For example, we have just seen that Willaimson might, it could be claimed, be interested in the symbolic and cultural meaning and signification of perfume. If this is the case, then Francis^'s criticism could be the starting point of research into perfume, such as the question of what makes particular smells perfume.

This takes us back to the debate. Francis might be criticized for not defining what he takes an advertisement to be or what he takes to be the

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essential properties of perfume. He might therefore have made a number of fallacies, principally of referring to something without clearly defining it.

But is this serious criticism of the critique Francis has put together? There is no definitive answer to this question. It depends on how you, the reader, want to understand the argument; and this itself might be based on your prior interests, concerns and ideas about the role of social science. It is in many ways the different idea that Williamson and Francis each have about social science that makes their positions incompatible. Williamson works within a tradition that seeks to apply semiological theory, a tradition that aims among other things to show the ways in which messages are struc-tured to convey certain meanings. Her book Decoding Advertisements was a major step in synthesizing work in structuralism and psychoanalysis from a feminist perspective. Francis, however, works from within a different tradition. As we have seen, his interests are with foundational issues that centre on the general question of just what rather than how and why. He wants to redirect our attention to the question of just what is an adver-tisement: to think first about what it is that we are going to research.