Blog 7

Kanika Khanna commented, “I’d like to hear more about the pictoral aspect of this add. You do a great job focusing on the verbal context – why not elaborate on the visual?” This is a valuable comment because it points out a whole other side of the aspect, which is weak in my essay, therefore resulting in my argument having a weakness. Incorporating more on the pictorial aspect of the advertisement will provide further backing up for my claim, and further assimilate the use of immediate visual context.

Rhetoric seems to be the most important term learned in class so far. Rhetoric encompasses a whole world of meanings and situations. As we defined in class, “rhetoric is the human use of signs and symbols to communicate.” Rhetoric is found everywhere in life, and therefore it becomes a form of communication in its entirety. As I stated in a previous blog, “We live through rhetoric or more specifically rhetoric lives through us… Rhetoric doesn’t necessarily need words, sometimes it is just found in the actions of others and oneself.” Therefore if we are a part of rhetoric and rhetoric is a part of us, it can be said to be the most important term, because we live it everyday.

My adnalysis placed a heavy emphasis upon gender stereotyping within advertisements, in which women are portrayed to be the weaker or subordinate sex. The emphasis upon this gender stereotyping is relatable to emotional proof, which “is used to appeal to and arouse the feelings of the audience.” (Wood, 149) I took my interpretation of the advertisement and attempted to invoke the pathos of an audience just like the advertisement tries to invoke pathos. Except I tried to sway the audience into seeing my interpretation that women are subordinate by saying this such as: “The overall body position of the female appeals to the ritualization of subordination; which states that the positioning of the body ‘renders one very dependent on the benignness of the surround.’ (Goffman, 9)” Through that statement I was attempting to pain a picture that the woman was relying heavily on the man instead of supporting herself, therefore providing support, emotional proof, to my claims that women are weak, subordinate and have rely on men.

Works Citied:
1. Wood, Nancy. Essentials of Argument. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.
2. Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisments. Harper Collins, 1979.
3. Tozzi, Stefanie. "Blog 1." Web Log post. Web. http://www.stefanietozzi.blogspot.com/.
4. Class (mainly Stein, Averick, Lella, and Lehrfield). Rhetoric. 2 Feb. 2010