week6: the ancient art of rhetoric and persuasion

"We saw in what sense text can help anchor a picture, that is, contribute toward its presumably intended interpretation. But it is not merely linguistic information that helps anchor elements in pictures; often that role is played by information in the same medium- that is by other pictorial elements. "(Charles Forceville,1996,75) During the journey of learning visual communication, I come to realize that sometimes pictures are much more powerful than words.

  

One of Gail Tom and Anmarie Eves's(1999) findings indicate that "advertisements that use rhetorical figures result in superior recall and superior persuasion." I find it true when I was doing some research about this visual journal. We learned "seeing and perception" in the previous chapter and know that everyone has their own interpretation of a picture. Therefore, it will be more effective if the advertiser let the customers come out the idea themselves. 

 Figure 1

Look at this ad. Enthymeme is employed in it. When people see it at the first sight, they’ll focus on the right part because: 1.People usually see things from left to right.  2. Something is usual there. A shoe is put in the place where we usually put the tie.

Then we look at the right part. We can see there are 3 shoes and it’s obvious that one shoe is missing. The hidden message of this ad is that the Clerget shoes are so beautiful. They will be unnoticeable if people just wear them on the feet. They would rather show them to others like how they show their tie. ( Is it a bit weird?)

Figure 2

Look at the figure 2. There 2 points that make us focus on the jaguar of the left car.

• The background is dark and the cars are silver. Therefore, the cars stand out from the dark background.
• The trademark jaguar is different from what we used to see before and therefore attract our attention

 The ad shows that the jaguar is face-off in fear from the BMW because it's too powerful. The enthymeme in this ad is that BMW is superior than any other brand. It's consumers' best choice. The rhetoric lies in it simulate consumers to buy its car because of BMW's superiority.

In conclusion, rhetoric and persuasion are vital in the advertisement. They help to deliver the message in a completely different way, which can create more reader response. 

References:

1.Forceville,C.(1996),Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. Britain:Routledge.pp.75

2.Tom,G.& Eves,A. (1999), The use of rhetorical devices of advertising.Journal of Advertising Research.39-43