engleski

Rhetorical Modes of Persuasion in Contemporary English, German and Croatian Print Advertisements

Advertisements are intended to convince recipients of the quality of the advertised product and/or service. Senders of the advertising message have the ability and power to choose what they want to highlight and put in the foreground and what they do not want to emphasize or mention at all in order to achieve their goals. Based on an analysis conducted on a corpus of 80 print advertisements from contemporary English, German and Croatian magazines, this paper presents how different rhetorical modes are used at the verbal and visual level of advertisements in order to persuade recipients of the benefits of the advertised product and/or service. The results indicate that, in the majority of advertisements, there is a prevailing rhetorical mode, however, almost all advertisements incorporate multiple modes. The prevailing mode, to a certain extent, depends on the type of the product/service advertised. In addition, the results may raise the question of the boundaries between persuasion and manipulation and the question of whether advertisements show human needs and ideals or create, reinforce and encourage them.

print advertisements, persuasion, rhetorical modes, verbal, visual

nije evidentirano