Modern English advertisements of toothpaste: rhetoric perspective

Abstract

This article focuses on toothpaste advertisements in English online discourse. The article analyses modern English Internet texts advertising toothpaste from the standpoint of rhetoric and systemic hierarchy of needs. The paper provides comparative analysis of words and phrases in toothpaste advertising texts that appeal to different human needs as identified by Abraham Maslow: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, need, reputation and self-actualization need.

The paper considers advertising discourse as a commercially oriented activity of creating positive and attractive images of objects and activities (services) that potentially provide income for their producer / provider. Advertising discourse involves a promoter and a recipient, as well as the process and result of their discursive interaction through respective texts. Advertising discourse provides sets of signals that impact potential consumers at the level of consciousness and/or sub-consciousness thus encouraging them to buy the advertised product. The paper focuses on the slogans used in the advertisements of toothpaste. A slogan as a short independent advertising message can be both used within a specific advertising construal and operate separately from other advertising products and represent the condensed content of the whole advertising campaign. The paper analyses specific verbal means that inspire the feeling of trust towards the advertised products, different sorts of toothpaste in particular. The said means of influence and manipulation are interpreted through the scope of pathos, ethos and logos. Pathos can be explained as an emotional coefficient of buying behaviour, ethos focuses our attention on the credibility of data and sources, while logos can be understood as the logic of buying a particular product. Specific correlations between the said modes if informational impact are determined by causative-consecutive logic as well by primary axiomatic irrational incentives related to fundamental "mythic" mental structures.

Key words: discourse analysis, advertisement text, toothpaste slogan, ethos, logos, pathos, rhetoric.