Rhetoric in the advertisements 广告中的英语修辞

Rhetoric in the advertisements

1204402048 英语学术班夏松

Advertisement is not only an economic activity, but also a cultural communication. In the advertisement, the application of all kinds of rhetoric is very common. Advertisements generally use simile, metaphor, personification, pun, alliteration etc. Most sorts of figures are concise, vivid and humorous. The application of rhetoric is to make the thought expressed more striking and effective, for the rhetoric has the power to illustrate and vivify it. After taking this semester’s course of English Rhetoric, I would like to looking into the application of rhetoric in advertisement by discussing some typical cases one by one.

Parallelism comes the first. Parallelism means giving two or more parts of the sentences a similar form so as to give the whole a definite pattern. It’s a balance of two or more similar words, phrases, or clauses. The application of parallelism in sentence construction can sometimes improve writing style clearness and readability. It helps create balanced structure, powerful tone; improves expressive force, appeal; and illustrate the idea clearly. Hence, it is widely used in advertisement.

“For racer, is speed.

For child, is red.

For father, is blood.

For car fan, is lover.

For individual, is challenge.

For group, is legend.

For us, is everything.”

This is a piece of advertisement of Ferrari. The seven sentences are in a parallel structure that can impress the listeners deeply. It can make the listeners have a brief view of this sort of car. It seems to be attracted by all kind of people, no matter what you are and no matter you are. In that case, the consumers are likely to pay attention to this for the sake of their eager for appreciation from others.

And Repetition comes the second. Like parallelism, it has the same elements, but the repetition focuses on the repeated parts while parallelism with similar structure and related content does not concentrate on the same elements. Poems, songs and advertising slogan make full use of repetition. It is mainly to emphasize, to clarify the meaning of a piece of writing or to express strong feelings. There are two examples.

“Introducing FITNESS magazine. It’s about health, it’s about exercise, it’s about your image, your energy, and your outlook.”

The use of repetition forms a strong tone to convince readers of the abundant content of the magazine. It seems that this magazine cares about

everything of yourself and all the consumers will care about the fitness of themselves and their families. And this piece of advertisement is able to drive the consumers to pay attention to it.

And now we can move on to Antithesis. Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition. In setting the opposite, an individual brings out a contrast in the meaning by an obvious contrast in the expression.

“Going East , Staying Westin.”

The slogan of the hotel, Westin, is designed subtly. Westin looks and pronounces like West which corresponds to East. It makes customers feel like going across a long distance. And followed are some other examples.

“We lead, others copy. (Ricoh Company)”

“No business too small，

no problem too big. (IBM)”

“Tide’s in, Dirt’s out. (Tide)”

“The choice is yours.

The honor is ours.”

The slogans not only have nice rhythms but also express the products performance.And there is another function of this kind of advertisements. For example, “Tide’s in, Dirt’s out. (Tide)”, when us consumers hear this piece of advertisement, we can have an illusion that Tide is the best company to produce washing powder. In that case, when