Marijuana

Sean Callahan

Annotated Bib

February 7 2012

Professor Martin

Article: " Analyzing rhetorical devices in print advertisements " by Margot van Mulken
Citation: van Mulken, Margot. “Analyzing rhetorical devices in print advertisements.” John Benjamin Publishing Company (2003): 114-127. Print.
Key Authors Mentioned: McQuarrie and Mick (1999), Scott (1994), Groupe Mu (1992), Meyers-Levy and Malaviya, 1999
Key Terms: Rhetoric, figures of speech, text-interpretive analysis, visual rhetoric, French print advertisements, Dutch print advertisements, tangibility
Key Texts Mentioned: Barthes’ Communications, Biswas’ Journal of Advertisement, Corbett’s Classical rhetoric for the Modern Student,
Cutler’s Journal of Advertising Research, Durand’s Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale, Leech’s A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry.
Key Theories: excess regularity and irregularity

Van Mulken starts by telling us that when people try to sell something, a picture is often used as an aid for trying to get people to buy a product. This is an example of “visual rhetoric”. From there, McQuarrie and Mick (1999) developed a classification scheme for visual rhetoric. They did not test how effective it was, but rather the different strategies people used with specific advertisements. Van Mulken then goes on to explain how people find it more pleasant or amusing to read slogans that have a little surprise at the end. Meyers-Levy and Malaviya (1999) have shown us that experiential processing plays an important part in persuasive advertisements. In other words, the pleasure of processing the advertisement influences the appreciation of the ad, and therefore might have more of an effect on the buyer. “People are likely to experience serendipitous sensations or feelings that might be generated from the process of processing the advertisement” (Meyers-Levy and Malaviya, 1999, p. 52).   She then goes on to ask do all... [continues]

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