Abstract

The article identifies the peculiarity of advertising images in their specific normative status: comparing to other forms or types of images the advertising image doesn't show particular additional esthetics or cognitive features. Its peculiarity consists in the normative task it has to fulfill. An advertisement neither is an image that is more or less beautiful then other images produced by art, nor has a more consistent cognitive content then others. On the contrary it is an image, which fulfill a normative function: it has to shape social conducts, individual behaviors and common taste more than any other image that a given society can produce or consume. The article therefore questions the nature and the working principle of a norm, which presents an iconic substance rather than a linguistic or verbal one. On the one hand the text tries to understand what is a norm, which has to work within the visual sphere and with a perceptible and sensitive communication form. On the other hand it tries to break the identification of law system, normativity and language. Law and norm have to be conceived as a peculiar way of existence of the most diverse symbolic forms