Week 6 - Visual Rhetorics

Week 6 highlights on another new theory of communication which is called Rhetoric. Rhetoric is known to be a very successful means of communication. The founder of Rhetoric is Aristotle who was a student of Plato in the Greek civilization. (Griffins,1997, pg.279). For this week’s journal, I will analyse how visual rhetoric is used in advertising and how does it successfully persuade the consumers to buy their products through the use of rhetoric. The image below is a Burger King advertisement. The reason why I chose to analyse this image is because I believe that this image contains a rhetorical visual and by analysing this image it will help me enhance my understanding towards this visual rhetoric and persuasion.

According to Aristotle, “Rhetoric is the art of discovering ways to make truth seem more probable to an audience that isn’t completely convinced. (Griffins,1997, pg.280). The available means of persuasion are based on three kinds of proof which is the “logical, ethical and emotional”. Logical proof comes from the line of argument in the speech whereas ethical proof reveals the speaker’s character through message. On the other hand, Emotional proof is the feeling the speech draws out of the hearers. (Griffins,1997, pg. 280)

Fig. 1

When we see Fig. 1, the visual elements shows a fast food restaurant and a lady serving the customer with a smile. It also shows a humanly figured customer purchasing some food. We obviously know that this is burger King because the logo is placed right in the centre of the counter. By looking at the human figure purchasing the product, we automatically infer or assume that it is the Ronald the clown from Mc. Donalds because of the colour of the hair and the red shoes. Here ,the clown is used as an enthememe. According to the theory of Rhetoric, the theory focuses on two forms of logos, which is the enthymeme and the example. An enthymeme is an incomplete version of a “formal deductive syllogism.” (Griffins,1997, pg. 281). For rhetorics to happen there must be an enthememe. Now the proposition is much clearer. Burger Kings is the greatest burger. Even the clown who resembles or we assume is Ronald Mc. Donald buys Burger King.


This advertisement targets audience of all ages from the young to the old. For people who have a schema of what Ronald Mc Donald’s look like and who are loyal customers of Mc. Donalds, they will automatically assume that the customer in the image is indeed Ronald Mc. Donald. In rhetorics, the purpose of the enthememe is to make the audience / viewers to assume and complete the argument. According to Aristotle, “ enthymemes intuitively unite speaker and audience and provide the strongest possible proof.....The audience itself helps construct the proof by which it is persuaded.” (Griffins, 1997)

I personally think that the overall argument and the purpose of this image is to show customers that Burger King is the best burger in the world and it is trying to show that even the mascot, Ronald Mc. Donald eats Burger King.

However, the enthememe of this image is the customer. We perceive the customer to be a clown which represents Mc. Donalds. Without the enthememe, this image will not be a rhetoric image as there will be no argument. Here, the customer who we perceive to be the Ronald Mc. Donald is the unstated premise of the argument. Thus this is part of the deductive argument. Although we cannot see the full body of the clown since he is facing backwards and wearing a raincoat, automatically we are already assuming that he is Ronald Mc. Donald and he is buying Burger King. Through this advertisement, it is telling the customers that Burger King is the greatest Burger outlet and even Ronald Mc. Donald is purchasing burger’s from Burger King. This is how they use the art of Rhetoric visuals to persuade customers to come to them .

Here we can see that both visual and verbal rhetorics work together very well to convey the argument. The Burger King Logo becomes the anchorage to this advertisement. Because of this anchorage, it changes the meaning of the image making a controversy out of a simple image. If there is no anchorage, it looks just like an ordinary clown buying burgers or people will not even notice or associate the clown with Mc. Donalds. The advertisement never said anything about Mc. Donalds or who the customer was. From the image, the viewers infer that it is the clown from Mc. Donalds because the advertiser has cleverly placed an enthememe and it depends on the interpretation of the viewers to achieve the advertiser’s motive. The clown is used a means of persuasion to make the viewers convinced that Burger King is the best. According to Kenneth Burke ( 1968 ), the key for persuasion is “identification”. Burke said that in order for persuasion to take place , one must identify the purpose of the speaker . This is also another evidence where the advertiser successfully makes the viewers identify the purpose which is Burger King is the best. The advertiser created this image in a way that the enthememe is made open to the interpretation of the viewers.

In conclusion, rhetorics is indeed a powerful tool especially when it is used in advertising. The best thing about rhetorics in advertising is that the enthememe is placed in a such as way that it leaves the premises open for the audience to interprete the purpose of the advertiser.



REFERENCES:

Chandler D., (2002), Semiotics, the basics, Great Britain :Routledge


Em Griffin (2000), A First Look at Communication,Mc Graw Hill, 7th Edition.