Cultural Rhetoric

When I am on the internet, I usually ignore the ads on the side of the web site. However recently I have begun to pay more attention to them.  I found two images advertising for the same things in the same way. They were saying that cigarettes led to death. Both had a simple layout, with as little words as possible. The first photo had a picture of a bullet and under it said ‘Quick’ then a picture of a cigarette and below that ‘Slow.’ The second photo is what looks like a car after an accident. The car was crunched and smoking. However if you look closer the car has taken the place of a cigarette after it has been put out.   To the side of the car it says “Do you know how much you really spend on cigarettes?” This ad takes a lot more thought to figure what it is actually saying.  I was curious, was this ad saying that a cigarette can hurt you more than a car accident? Or that smoking in some way can cause an accident? So I googled the website at the bottom of the photo...

I was watching TV with my sisters one night over Christmas break and Cheerios commercial came on. The commercial was about a family: the Dad had to work a 3rd shift and you could tell it was a struggle for everyone. It starts with the mom and son eating breakfast and the dad leaving. You see the son, Max, looking slightly heartbroken. Then the camera shows a house at night. The little boy gets out of bed and sneaks into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and is pulling out the milk when his clearly exhausted dad enters. When he sees his son awake, he asks what he is doing and, with complete innocence the little boy replies “I just wanted to eat breakfast with you.” At this point, my sisters and I all went “Aww!” (as I am sure most of women would say). The commercial ends with the father and the son sitting at the table eating cheerios. The commercial was effectively trying to persuade you to buy cheerios. The video almost entirely relies on pathos to make its argument strong. I thin...

This girl is fighting poverty, she along with many other women. She has the power to change her world, and you have the power to help her. CARE is an organization working with women to fight poverty. This is an example of pathos, the appeal to our emotion. It is how many advertisements convince you to do or buy something. . This advertisement does use the logical fallacy, appeal to emotion, more specifically appeal to emotion. This is when they distract you by making you feel sorry for something. In this advertisement it is the women in poverty. This advertisement above uses pathos along with this logical fallacy. For example they use a photo of a sad, but beautiful little girl. It catches your attention by focusing on the girl. They made the background black to put more emphasis on the girl as well as to emphasis the sadness and hopelessness. It is an advertisement for helping women fight poverty. They give you the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling by telling you that ‘She has the power t...