Week 6 - The Ancient Art of Rhetoric and Persuasion.

Rhetoric is the way on how we are able to persuade or manipulate the audiences through visual context such as images or text on the advertisement. According to Scott (1994), “rhetoric is an interpretive theory that structures a message as an interested party’s try to influence viewers.”  Indeed, the reason of using this theory is because it will indicate either the advertisement had an argument or persuasion in it or not. 

 Moreover, through rhetoric it could shows on how the meaning from the advertisement is being expressed. The audiences would create different emotional responses from every difference of visual genres. Griffin (2009) stated that Aristotle defined rhetoric as "an ability, in each case, to see the available means of persuasion."

 Visual argument is one way to communicate and how to persuade more effectively with a combination of graphic elements in the context of visual, written and oral. This is because the audience live in a visual world without destroying the interests of consumers to the argument. The arguments can give us a motive to accept the view or not. 

 Meanwhile, persuasion is defined on how we are able to make consumers interested or believe in our products, services and etc. In other words, it is how to convince the people to think or act in a certain way. Blair (2004) claimed that “what seems to be a necessary ingredient in persuasion as a kind of cause of behaviour change is that the person persuaded assents to the pressure of the vector of influence.”  It means that the effect of persuasion could change the attitude, behaviours and beliefs of people who are persuaded.

Print advertisement is more concern with the style than the content. Everyone have the same point, aims, purposes or goal but it is on how the way they delivered for it. Take example from the above advertisement. It is an anti-smoking ad. The purpose of the ad is to prevent the people from smoking. The advertiser creates this ad to illustrate the effect of smoking and to show them what can happen if they decide to start smoking. This ad was made to show the danger of smoking that can cause great harm; finally it can eventually kill you and cause death. The message from this ad can be conveyed by anyone. We can see from the picture above there that the cigarette is like ourselves that hanging on the rope. 

 There is an argument that can persuade the people soon after they were able to perceived the message or reason from the ads above. For this advertisement, there is called a deductive argument(premise + premise = conclusion). Premise 1 – Smoking to me like suicide. Premise 2 – It is death in anticipation. Therefore, the conclusion can be seen through the image itself - smoking is like suicide that can cause death. So, for me with social knowledge background from health areas would be persuading with the ad. It clearly showed that through visual also could persuade or convince the people. Well, from what I looking that the creator of this ad aims using the image and text media to promote the dangers of smoking (anti-smoking).

References:

• Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look at Communication Theory. (7th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
•  Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragramtics. United Kingdom: University Press Cambridge.
• McQuarrie, E. F., & Mick, D. G., (1999). Visual Rhetoric in Advertising: Text-Interpretive, Experimental, and Reader-Respond Analyses. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol.26, 37-40.
• McQuarrie, E. F., & Phillips, B. J., (2007). Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric (p. 3-15). Armonk, NY, USA: M.E Sharpe, Inc.
• Scott, L. M. (1994). Images in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric. Journal of Consumer Research, vol.21, 252-256.