Rhetoric: Available Everywhere

I used to check my mail everyday. I loved finagling the knobs to the right combination and peering into the little window of my mailbox. I soon realized though, that the girl who lived in my room last year found it necessary to subscribe to a slew of monthly newsletters and though she moved on, they did not.

Usually, upon the arrival of said subscriptions, I'll roll my eyes in annoyance and drop the magazines in the "Mixed Office Paper" bin. Sometimes though, something, usually a picture, on the cover will catch even my own wandering attention, whether it’s Delia’s newest sweater collection, or Alloy’s sale section. Which leads me to think: is rhetoric really so prevalent that it seeps into even the most seemingly trivial pages of a fashion magazine?

While rhetoric may be considered the study of effective language, I believe that advertisements also employ visual rhetoric to draw us in. Pictures can just as easily use pathos, logos, and ethos to convey meaning- after all, most ads are largely picture-based. There's a reason swimming suit ads always picture incredibly skinny, beautiful girls.

Take for example, this ad. Arezzo may be trying to sell bathing suits, but their use of pathos in this sells so much more. When I look at this ad I see not only swimming suits, but girls oozing with mystery, glamour and sex appeal. As with most ads, Arezzo is trying to displace these feelings upon us- buy this swimming suit, and feel sexy.

But if you look deeper, you’ll find more hidden elements of rhetoric. The ad also displays a sort of professional ethos. Everything about the ad is sleek, slim, and glossy. The primary colors are blue, white, and black and combine to showcase a sense of professionalism and class. The ad thus draws on ethos to prove to us that they are an upper class brand and pathos to convince us to buy the suits so that we can live this life. So while we may think we've seen the obvious, in your face rhetoric, there's always a chance that if you dig deeper, you'll find even more variations.