The Rhetorical Motives Of Pragmatic Fallacies In American TV Political Advertisements

In contemporary America, TV political advertising has become a major form in presidential campaign. Since candidates have complete control over the political advertisements, the candidates can say what they assume the voters want to hear in their advertisements. Improper advertising languages are prevalent in some political advertisements, which will result in pragmatic fallacies. Although fallacy violates logic, it can elicit voters’emotional reactions, inspiring support for a candidate or raising doubts about his opponent, which remains an effective persuasive strategy.Pragma-Dialectical theory offers an approach to analyze and evaluate argumentation in actual practice. Given the characteristics of political advertising discourse, an analytical framework is constructed by modifying Pragma-Dialectics’four stages of a critical discussion.The study takes324pieces of American TV political advertisements from1952to2012as its data. Firstly, the study identifies pragmatic fallacies in American TV political advertisements with the Ten Commandments of Reasonable Discussants as fallacy identification standards. Totally six types of pragmatic fallacies are identified. They are appeal to the majority, appeal to inappropriate authority, appeal to fear, appeal to pity, evading the burden of proof and straw man fallacy. Then the study analyzes their rhetorical motives with psychological knowledge and communication studies. The respective rhetorical motives corresponds to the above six types of fallacies are:to make voters generate herd mentality; to make voters transfer their faith in a celebrity towards the candidate; to make voters produce Protection Motivation; to evoke voters’ empathy; to inflict pressure on voters and lead voters to a feeling of secure and trust; to trick and mislead voters intentionally.