Now that our eyes have been opened to rhetoric I have begun to notice how rhetoric is used everywhere. I tend to specifically notice rhetoric in media, really just advertisements. Many advertisements will use a rhetorical appeal to build and construct arguments to sway consumers to pursue and purchase whatever product or service the company is selling. With advertisements in media, it's a bit different than the rhetoric we have been studying in class, in-class we only really see rhetoric in say a court setting, or someone talking to a group of people with there full attention. But with advertisements people aren't usually paying close attention to them, so ad companies have to find a way to get the important information across, while grabbing, and keeping, the attention of the consumer, all while within a thirty second to a couple minute time frame. So what advertisements are, is a simple version of rhetoric where a company is trying to convince masses to purchase whatever they are selling, with little information. I would even say its a more difficult version of rhetoric.
In class, we've been constantly discussing how people do or don't have a responsibility to society, looking at that, what we need to think about is what each person's motivations are, and what leads them to do actions. As an example, take a wealthy public figure and imagine they did something to make the public or media mad, so next to get back on the good side of the public, they would make an expensive donation, or start a charity, or even just apologize to have the public and media back on their side. Now some would, no most would say that's just them that doesn't apply to the "average joe," then think of this, a complete random person, "your average joe" if you will, donates to a charity. Why did they do this? To be a good person or because they have a duty to society, no, they did this because, in the end, it makes them look better to the public, or even if it's an anonymous donation, they are still making themselves feel better by doing
I agree that I started to notice that rhetoric is used in advertisements very often rather it is ethos logos, or pathos. Every advertisement is either used to sell a product or to make money for a cause. At first I did not understand but as Dr. Mike began to explain and give us multiple examples and explaining how they represented ethos, logos, or pathos it became very clearly on which one the advertisement was referring to.
ReplyDeleteAfter learning more about rhetoric I've definitely started to see it too. Advertisements are everywhere and they all have the same goal; to get us to spend money. I think that it's important to keep that in mind while seeing these advertisements. I find myself being pulled into these advertisements when they say they're having "deals" when really it is a small discount on items but the businesses are still getting our money. These elements of ethos, logos and pathos are definitely seen in advertisements.
ReplyDeleteRhetoric has been around us all of our lives, and I did not notice this until recently. Advertisements do a great way of swaying consumers into purchasing a product or voting for a certain political party. Ethos, Logos, Pathos are in nearly every advertisement, and i find myself looking into advertisements more to see what persuasion technique is used. I have fell victim to a few a few advertisements such purchasing subscriptions to game fly but I think I learned a bit in class with this lesson.
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