The Rhetorical Dimension of Printed Advertising: a Discourse-Analytical Approach

The study of the rhetorical uses of language in advertising can be approached from different disciplines - discourse analysis, media studies, metaphor theory-. Although normally focusing on different aspects according to their objects of study, these fields share two basic assumptions: 1. the recognition that all advertising is clearly rhetorical; 2. the observation that metaphor is a frequent device in this genre (Williamson, 1978; Fiske, 1982; Vestergaard; Schroeder, 1985; Chandler, 1994; Forceville, 1996, 2006; Cook, 2001). Taking this into consideration, this paper attempts to provide a hierarchical top-down model of analysis as a means to examine the rhetorical dimension of printed commercial adverts. For this purpose, I adopt some theoretical and methodological analytical tools provided by discourse analysis and social semiotics, and incorporate elements from advertising studies and metaphor theory. Special attention is paid to studies on visual rhetoric and to representations of one specific trope, metaphor.