A Pragma-dialectical Study Of Argument By Appeal To Fear In Medical Advertising Discourse

Central to medical advertisements are consumers’ health problems and the advertisers’ suggestions.In such an implicit communication,advertisers may provide arguments to induce consumers to purchase an advertised medicine.Although advertisers normally lay out medicine outcomes and side effects,it is up to consumers to judge whether or not they find the medical advice convincing.Taking the targeted consumers’ opinions into consideration,advertisers may resort to fearful information in advertising discourse to justify their medical advice.Theoretically,there are various subtypes of fear appeal arguments that can be used in support of advertisers’ standpoints,each of which is characterized by representing a particular justificatory relationship between a reason and a standpoint.To give further substance to the soundness conditions that apply to medical advertising discourse by fear appeal arguments,this thesis takes a pragma-dialectical approach.The data are gathered from well-renowned pharmaceutical companies.A total of 300 declarative advertisements are gathered,118 of which are discarded because non-argumentative advertisements to discourse analysis are insufficiently provided.Within the remaining 182 advertisements,there are 156 advertisements with arguments by appeal to fear.The research questions arise under which institutional conditions the advertisers’ arguments by appeal to fear in medical advertisements can be viewed as unreasonable.In general,the following research questions are addressed in this thesis: 1.What institutional preconditions constrain the medical advertising discourse? 2.What kinds of “appeal to fear” arguments can be utilized by advertisers in specific institutional context? 3.How do the advertisers maneuver strategically in convincing their audiences by means of various subtypes of “appeal to fear”arguments? 4.What general soundness criteria should be observed in using “appeal to fear” arguments in medical advertising discourse by advertisers?The findings suggest that medical advertisements use different kinds of fearappeal arguments.In terms of the fear appeals consequences,the if/when-then construction is the most commonly used in the medical advertisements,while fear appeal arguments in counterfactual form and exclusive form are not often used.In the pragma-dialectical approach,medical advertisements can be reconstructed as an argumentative exchange.The communicative activity type of medical advertising discourse can be seen as a mix of two “genres”: promotion and consultation.The choice for a particular argument by appeal to fear can be regarded as a strategic manoeuvre aimed at reconciling the dialectical and rhetorical objectives of the argumentative stage in this implicit discussion.Fear appeal arguments in factual form and possible form contribute to the resolution of the presupposed difference of opinion by describing a true or an uncertain fact.Counterfactual form and exclusive form of fear appeal arguments stress that negative results can be avoided by following advertisers’ advice.If advertisers violate the discussion rules,the strategic function of variants caused by fear appeal arguments can be considered fallacious.Fear appeal arguments are regarded as a subtype of argument scheme based on a causal relation.Advertisers violate the argument scheme rule by fear appeal arguments in factual,possible and exclusive form,and the general language use rule will be violated if advertisers provide a personal guarantee of the rightness of the standpoint in counterfactual form of fear appeal argument.Overall,advertisers use fallacies in different forms to achieve promotion effectiveness when they present arguments for the use of advertised drug.The results of this thesis can shed a new light on the understanding of fear appeal arguments in medical advertising discourse.Future research could also focus on the opening stage and conditional constructions of various medical advertisements by a quantitative research.