| Advertising, widely informed, has already become a crucial part of life. This paper takes 60 advertisements ——30 commercial advertisements(CAs)and 30 public service advertisement(PSAs) as the data base, employs Aristotle’s three persuasive principles as the theoretical basis, and makes a comparison between CA and PSA in persuading.Commercial advertising is a kind of propagandizing activity which aims at recommending products and gaining profit. In a sense, CA represents the economic condition of a country. It is part of material civilization. The public service advertising gives more priority to public interest instead of making profit. It focuses on the topics of social problems, moral issues. It tries to cause public attention by advertising, increases the morality, the spiritual quality and the legal consciousness of the public. The PSA aims to affect people’s thought and make some changes in their behavior. Rather than CA, it is part of spiritual civilization.As the CA and PSA are different in many aspects such as content,purpose and so on, they will definitely differ from each other in persuasion.Aristotle’s persuasion can be generally divided into two parts. One is not in the technical scope, which is called “inartificial” method including proofs, witness, and legal provision and so on. The other is in the technical scope, called “artificial”method, which includes three persuasive principles: ethos, pathos and logos.This paper will take advantage of the three persuasive principles to analyze CA and PSA separately. This research found that inviting celebrity in advertising is very popular, especially in CA. That is because the CA focuses much more on public attention and the possible profit rather than on the cost. However, the PSA has to take the cost into consideration because it is not for profit. It focuses on public attention and the cost. Inviting ordinary people in advertising has also become very common both in CA and PSA. It is not only because the inexpensive cost, but alsofor its emotional resonance with the potential consumers. Experts in advertising are not as much as celebrity and ordinary people. CA invites more experts than that of PSA. Since the PSA focuses on the public interest instead of the personal benefit, it will get some attention at the beginning. On the contrary, the CA is to persuade people to consume. It needs to find out some powerful proof to verify its credibility.And the experts do help a lot in this aspect.For pathos, the CA tends to employ the positive emotion. That is because the consumers are easy to have the appetite for consuming in positive and vigorous emotions. While in PSA, it want to make people feel pathetic, sorry and fear in advertising first, and then make some change in their attitude and behavior.Therefore, the PSA uses the negative emotion most.Both CA and PSA have widely used logos. Logos is about the logic and reason in advertising. They are the prerequisite for being understood. To publicize widely,the first point to be considered is to be understood. Therefore, logos is very crucial both for CA and PSA.Some of the pervious researches have already used Aristotle’s three persuasive principles to analyze advertisement. However, most of them focused the CAs only or the PSA only. Few of them have put the two kinds of advertisements together to make a comparison. This paper also uses Aristotle’s three persuasive principles as theoretical basis, but to analyze both of them. The research found that there are some differences in persuading between CA and PSA and tried to give some explanation.These findings may offer some beneficial proposals for the advertising production and help readers to get a better understanding of the persuading in CA and PSA. |
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