The Discourse of Western Marketing Professionals in Central and Eastern Europe: Their Role in the Creation of a Context for Marketing and Advertising Messages

Abstract

It is principally through western media and marketing professionals that new, `capitalist' and market discourses have been brought to the former centrally planned economies of central and eastern Europe. Such discourses have not only come to play a ubiquitous role in these countries, but have also acted as media of social and economic change. The producers of such market discourses teach citizens the language of the market, its processes and rituals, how to interpret its advertising, the symbolism of consumption and how to participate in the process of consumption. A major feature of this process has been the proselytizing attitude of many media companies, who see their role as that of bringing the new ideology of consumption to the countries of the former eastern bloc. The objective of the study is to examine what these marketers and advertisers are saying about the necessity for an ideologically compatible context and intertextual sphere within which their texts can be received; what their discourse tells us implicitly and what they themselves tell us explicitly about the operation of a dominating, hegemonic discourse on an everyday basis.