The persuasive mechanism of monoglossic propositions in advertisments

Abstract

As a genre, advertising is generally characterized by its persuasive and communicative rhetoric, i.e. it uses language and strategies effectively as a means of “structured” and “paid nonpersonal communication” to influence or persuade the potential consumer to buy the product (Wells et al., 2000, 6; Arens et al., 2008, 7). Persuasive rhetoric has its origins in Aristotle’s rhetorical theory; according to Barnes (1984), advertisements utilize three modes of persuasion: ethos (the appeal to one’s character), pathos (the appeal to emotion) and logos (the appeal to reason). As illustrated in the paper, it is the evaluative nature of appraisals in seemingly factual monoglossic propositions that helps realise those appeals, in particular pathos. Perloff (2010) and Jefkins and Yadin (2000, 13-15) define advertising persuasion in terms of changing and influencing the consumer’s attitudes or behaviour. This is principally achieved through the social values, norms and attitudes that they mirror and shape (White, 2000; Vestergaard, Schroder, 1985). The social activity of advertisements, as of most genre types, is managed particularly through interpersonal meanings1, which closely pertain to the persuasive rhetoric, since their realization reflects the participants’ (advertiser vs advertisee) interaction, their mutual influence, the construction and fulfilment of social roles, the adoption of attitudinal positions, and the establishment of relationships (White, 2000). One of the linguistic tools that realizes the interpersonal function is the appraisal, defined as “one of three major discourse-semantic resources for construing interpersonal meaning” (Martin, White, 2005). In the appraisal model, all utterances (verbal and print) are considered “dialogic”, i.e. they refer to, respond to, affirm or stay neutral toward value judgements: they also anticipate the possible responses of an actual and imagined reader, and so on (Martin, White, 2005, 92). Such a view is based on Bakhtin (1981, 281), who states that all utterances exist “... against backdrop of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions,