The rhetoric of seduction in Advertising: what promises to comply?

Abstract

We are heirs of a classical tradition that still gives us several skills and provides us with many tools to rethink the rhetorical potentialities in all its manifestations and performative extensions. The rhetoric of seduction in advertising deals mostly with certain logical rhetorical resources – figurae per detractionem – due to specific demands of percursio and all the strategies associated with it. The rhetorical functions mouere and delectare are privileged in order to arouse the pathos in a complex process of ‘coerseduction’. The first goal is to promote the identification with a product or an idea, developing a sequence of wills and impulses (mouere), rethinking values, myths and stereotypes (docere) along with fruition and a strong appeal to the imagination (delectare). Therefore, induction becomes more important than revelation because it is in this barrier effect that the heuristic exercise grows, in a dialectical role between information versus suggestion, rationality versus emotion.

If we think that nowadays we are exposed to 3000 advertisements per day, we should consider the following issues as the focus of our work: what are the main strategies and rhetorical figures of the classical tradition handled by advertising? How does advertising articulates the rhetorical functions docere–delectare-mouere in its seduction process? Which are the main figures to activate the hermeneutical exercise, having in mind that purpose and consequence are different goals? Thus, in this present paper we aim to scrutinize some examples of advertising shedding light the classical precepts and exploring the rhetoric images.