Recepção subliminar: o poder sedutor das mensagens indiscerníveis

Abstract

The regular meaning of the expression subliminal is associated with the idea of stimuli outside of conscious awareness placed in advertisement, more specifically motion pictures. There are classical examples of broadcasted commercials which included such low exposition messages aiming at inducing behaviors. This leads to the recognition that there is an area of non discernible messages. This work intends to focus on the explanations of two prominent authors on this subject (Calazans and Ferrés) and evaluate their statements by means of a language study approach, more specifically the view of the functioning of the sign and the categories as stated by Charles Peirce's sign theory. A selection of advertising prints from a remarkable jewelry showed that non discernible contents take a different format when part of these messages. Nevertheless they exist as well, and can lead to the belief that traditional vision of subliminal becomes an expanded concept inasmuch as those messages carry identical mechanisms to the ones found in prior classic experiments. A contribution,of the study would be the comprehension of a whole process which could receive various kinds of frames of reference and encourage further analysis and update on how the human mind works when faced with some sort of messages