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Rhetoric and Advertising

Rhetoric and Advertising. Text and Culture 2 Magnus.ullen@kau.se. Efficient advertising:. makes the content seem important stands out from other ads seems part of a greater whole –advertises a brand as much as a product. What is this ad trying to persuade us of?.

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Rhetoric and Advertising

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  1. Rhetoric and Advertising Text and Culture 2 Magnus.ullen@kau.se

  2. Efficient advertising: • makes the content seem important • stands out from other ads • seems part of a greater whole –advertises a brand as much as a product

  3. What is this ad trying to persuade us of? The world is your playground. Look at it from a fresh perspective and you’ll find opportunities everywhere with your EOS 400D. It’s time to experiment so go out there and play. To find out more visit www.canon.co.uk/eos400d

  4. Remember • All cultural artifacts come with a symbolic dimension, over and above their functional one, and for that reason can be read as signs.

  5. Signs have two sides: Sign Signifier Signified tomato (English) pomodoro (Italian) rajče (Czech)

  6. In a sign • the relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary • to connect a certain signifier with a certain signified, we need to learn that they are connected • the relation is not natural, but cultural

  7. Signs have a surplus of sense ”tomato” denotation connotation (precise association) (imprecise associations) kitchen, vegetable, ketchup, red, blood, etc.

  8. Connotations are culturally coded. • In rhetoric, such culturally coded connotations are called doxa,

  9. Doxa is • ”belief” or ”opinion” • that which goes without saying • a cultural and historical phenomenon which is misread as a natural one

  10. Roland Barthes, ”The Rhetoric of the Image” Connotations: ”Italienicity” freshness completeness beauty

  11. Rhetoric can help us analyze ads by drawing on • Inventio • Dispositio • Elocutio

  12. Inventio The seven questions • What is the message? • Who is the audience? • Why are they targeted? How is message adapted to audience and medium? • Where is the ad published? How is message adapted to audience and medium? • When is the ad published? • How does the ad try to persuade? Logos, ethos, pathos? • With what arguments does it try to persuade? Head? Heart?

  13. Dispositio • Deals less with temporal order than with functional order. • Compare to the AIDA model

  14. AIDA Attention Interest Desire Action

  15. AIDA • A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer. • I - Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising). • D - Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs. • A - Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

  16. Elocutio • What is the style of the ad? Serious? Comical? Ironical? How can you tell? In what way does the chosen stylistic mode strengthen the thesis of the ad? • What stylistic devices does the ad use to persuade? Slogans, punchlines, puns? Other verbal effects? What are their functions? • Remember that images and pictures can function like tropes and figures just as words can! • What is depicted? The product and its functional use? • The effects of using the product? (Beauty, pleasure, community, fame, status.) • People or things associated with the product?

  17. Canon ad analysis • Attention / exordium: Welcome to the playground • Interest / narratio: The image as an enigma, directing our attention to the copy to find an explanation of it. • / propositio: Picture and name of product • Desire / argumentatio: The world is your playground. Look at it from a fresh perspective and you’ll find opportunities everywhere with your EOS 400D. It’s time to experiment so go out there and play. To find out more visit www.canon.co.uk/eos400d • Action We are directed to a website, which demonstrates the product. • / peroratio: Slogan/logotype.

  18. Gender as doxa

  19. What is the doxa behind • H&M selling underwear to women showing women; • and JBS selling underwear to men showing women?

  20. doxa ”Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

  21. Remember • doxa are cultural, not natural • exposing doxa helps us see how we have been taught to see the world • rhetorical analysis can help us expose cultural myths

  22. Homework for session 3 Read: • The Sample Analysis of Churchill’s speech (posted at Kurstorget) • Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address • Curie’s speech • Thatcher’s speech • The five wikipedia articles on the rhetorical parts (links in course outline).

  23. Homework for session 3 Analyze • Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (group 1-2), • Marie Curie’s On the Discovery of Radium (group 3-4) • Margaret Thatcher’s Remarks on becoming Prime Minister (group 5-6).

  24. Homework for session 3 Present: • A discussion of Inventio • A discussion of Dispositio • A discussion of Elocutio • Each group presents on Inventio & Elocutio, OR Dispositio and Elocutio! • 10-15 minutes per group.

  25. Homework for session 4: • Work in groups. Find an ad in an English newspaper or magazine, and • analyze it from a rhetorical perspective • present your analysis in class. • If possible, mail me an electronic copy of the ad before class! • Further details, p. 16 of course outline.

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