Rhetorical Analysis Of English Horror Film Posters From Burke's Theoretical Perspective

The rapid advancement of economy and technology and tremendous flourishment of culture and art nowadays have supplied great momentum for the development and integration of the industry of film and advertising.As one of the most prominent and universal forms of film promotion advertisements,film posters are not only benefiting from modern advanced technologies and apparatus,but also closely related to the improvement of people's living standard,spiritual pursuit,values and aesthetic standard.The great value of film promotion advertisements lies in their strong appeals and persuasive forces,which makes it concerned and interpreted by an increasing number of film audience.Nonetheless,film audience tend to remain their attention only on the exterior beauty of design and novelty of contents,and overlook the intrinsic values and functions of film promotion advertisements,which are to appeal to and persuade the audience through artistic rhetoric and then realize the commercial value of the advertisements.The theoretical system of new rhetoric proposed by Kenneth Burke is of paramount significance in modern rhetoric and even the whole domain of linguistics.Its great value and function not only simply lie in its force of persuasion,but are further realized through exploring the motives and their modes of realization underlying in rhetorical acts or human symbolic actions.The unique value of Burke's new rhetoric associates subtly with the purpose of film promotion advertisements,that is,the persuasion interpreted and facilitated by new rhetoric is the very demand and expectation from the film promotion advertisements as the peculiar symbolic actions of human beings for the audience;and the motives explored in these symbolic actions explored by new rhetoric are the best explanation for the realization modes of the purposes of film promotion advertisements.That's how Burke's new rhetoric remains applicable to the interpretation and analysis of film promotion advertisements and supplies new perspectives for the designs,analyses and studies of film promotion advertisements.Based on Kenneth Burke's theoretical system of new rhetoric,this thesis carries out a rhetorical analysis on both the graphic and verbal information presented by a collection of 38 English horror film posters by virtue of the three perspectives of Burkean thoughts,i.e.identification,dramatism and logology.Specifically,identification covers two large aspects,content and form.The content of identification is divided into identification via sympathy,identification via antithesis,identification via inaccuracy,and identification via non-verbal symbolic actions;and the form of identification is divided into identification via conventional form,identification via repetitive form and identification via progressive form.Dramatism consists of the analysis of the five pentadic elements and the ratios formed by the interrelation of these five elements.Logology focuses on the aspects of the negative,hierarchy,perfection and mystery.All these analyses aim at probing into the rhetorical motives hidden in the film posters,thus realizing more accurate interpretation and appreciation of the form and content of film posters and supplying new insights for the audience and the designers of film posters and reference and perfection for studies relevant to Burke's new rhetoric.The major findings drawn from the analysis in this study are as follows:to begin with,horror film posters conventionally present the background,atmosphere,situations or scenes that are terrifying,depressing,desperate,weird,desolate,gloomy and the like,or set the fate of the protagonists in the images of the posters into misery,pain and death,etc.,all of which are inclined to arouse the audience's attention,interest,curiosity,anxiety,and sympathy,which further lead to identification with the designers of the posters.There are chances that identification via antithesis,inaccuracy,repetitive form may not be realized due to the conciseness of the poster.Then,the five pentadic elements,"act","agent","agency","scene" and "purpose" are not difficult to be recognized in the images of film posters,yet some of the ratios formed by the interrelations of these elements are not always appropriate for every situation,and some of the ratios turn out more meaningful and full of explanatory power,such as the ratio "scene-act",which usually reveals the motives more accurate while other ratios function with more restricts in meaning.The last aspect of finding is that the images in horror film posters exceed far beyond the reality though they are originated from the reality.The images such as monsters,devils,etc.,are not existential in the real world and thus are the negative form of the reality.The world in the poster is actually the epitome of the real society,in which exists different hierarchies,so does in the images of the posters,and the designers seldom completely contort and overturn the prototype of the persons or things appeared in the posters,which is actually for saving or preserving hierarchies,and it is in these hierarchies that perfections are approached,then the mysteries vanish.Only if the image in the posters are created via imagination can logology be realized.More profoundly and comprehensively,apart from various practical strategies of identification,dramatic pentad and logology formidably enrich and deepen Burke's thought of new rhetoric,which contributes to much greater prominence of new rhetoric comparing to the traditional one.The rhetorical analyses of film posters via Burke's new rhetoric aims not only at revealing the "persuasion" and "appealing" of film posters themselves for the audience,but at demonstrating the ways film posters as dramatic and symbolic social behaviors realize identification via different strategies and with different rhetorical motives.This study supplies new theoretical reference for the studies of film posters and new insights for the studies of new rhetoric.Furthermore,film poster designers and the audience are to be inspired as well.In addition,this study also supplies rhetorical strategies and reference for analyzing the motives for the communication in teaching,especially English teaching,thus bearing multiple theoretical and practical implications.