Rhetorical Strategies in Selected Nigerian Print Media Advertisements

Abstract

The study “Rhetorical strategies in selected Nigerian print media advertisements” sought to investigate the interconnectedness between rhetoric and advertising. Privileging Aristote’s theory of  rhetoric (1991), Halliday’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and van Dijk’s (1993) Socio-Cognitive Approach (SCA) as theoretical frameworks, the study which adopted a descriptive qualitative case study research design and a purposive data collection method carried out a linguistic stylistic analysis as well as a critical discourse analysis of the selected data. The findings from the linguistic stylistic analysis showed that advertisers deploy various attractive and attention-seeking rhetorical strategies at the different levels of linguistic analysis in order to grab the interest and attention of the listener, while the critical discourse analysis revealed that the rhetorical strategies are employed as persuasive devices to cause a change in the buying choices and behaviour of customers. The critical discourse analysis further revealed that the advertisements aside selling a product also communicate socio-cultural values and ideologies. The study concluded amongst other things that rhetoric is a significant component of advertising and that the rhetorical strategies prevalent in the linguistic analysis of the advertisements function as persuasive elements that inform about the availability of goods and services as well as function in transmitting the socio-cultural values and ideologies of the environment in which they are created.