On Aristotle's Persuasion Principles In Advertising

Advertising is playing a more and more important role in modern society, propagandizing for sale, for sponsor, for company image. It nearly appears everywhere and its influence on us is so deep that we may say"no advertising, no life". Advertising is a persuasion activity, and the core is persuasion. The advertisers use verbal or nonverbal ways to transfer the information of one certain product to the potential audience and ultimately persuade the audience to buy their goods or services. This phenomenon has aroused scholars'interests. Scholars in different fields pay their attention on the advertisements study. They research the phenomenon from the angles of linguistics, mass-communication, psychology, rhetoric, etc, and their studies include various levels and aspects of advertising. But researches on advertising from Aristotle's persuasion principles are really rare.Aristotle's persuasion theory can be traced back to its Greek origin. In ancient Greek, when the whole city-state was full of democracy in Aristotle's times, Aristotle, the great philosopher, scientist, and educator, put forward his famous persuasion principles. In his masterpiece Rhetoric, Aristotle has stated three main principles of persuasion:ethos (appeal to the personality of the persuader), logos (appeal to the logic and reason of the persuasion content), and pathos (appeal to the receiver's emotion or sensibility). They are also regarded as"Aristotle's three main persuasion principles". The inspiration of the thesis stems from careful thinking of Aristotle's persuasion theory in western classical rhetoric.The paper begins with the motivation, purpose and organization of the study. In chapter 2, the author makes a systematic narration of the theories about persuasion study, which includes the general knowledge of advertising, persuasion, and Aristotle's persuasion principles. Next, in chapter 3, the author indicts the research methodology of the study. Chapter 4 is the main part of the paper in which the author mainly discusses Aristotle's persuasion theory in advertisements based on linguistic, psychology, western classical rhetoric and mass-communication theories. Through the analysis of 24 advertisements, the author finds out the regularity of Aristotle's persuasion principles distributed in advertising, and expounds the routes how the advertisers use Aristotle's persuasion principles to achieve their persuasion aims. The conclusion of the paper is that persuasion is a complicated phenomenon and widely used in advertisements, but it still has certain regularity. We hope the study can give positive help to advertisers in advertisement producing, and offer aids to the audience in advertisement comprehension and appreciation.