Rhetorical Devices and Strategies in Advertising Slogans for Pizza Hut Commercials

Abstract

Slogans have become an interesting topic to discuss in relation to advertising and advertising is one of the fields in which rhetorical devices and strategies can be utilized. Considering the importance of a slogan in advertising since some of the purposes of a slogan is to describe and promote certain products and encourage people to purchase, companies have to invent slogans in a creative, effective, and beneficial way. Since rhetorics have a purpose of influencing audiences, it can be implemented to achieve one of the purposes of advertising, to influence people to buy the products being advertised. Moreover, rhetorics can be implemented in creating advertising slogans. This thesis attempts to investigate the types of rhetorical devices and strategies used in the slogans from the commercials of Pizza Hut presented in English. The theories applied are the classification of rhetorical devices proposed by McQuarrie and Mick (1996) and other researchers and the three types of rhetorical strategies (ethos, pathos, and logos) proposed by Aristotle. It also attempts to discuss the reason behind such implementation from the slogans collected for this research. One of the purposes of rhetorics is persuasion, which is also related to advertising, since one of the main goals of advertising is to persuade consumers to enjoy the products promoted. Kenechukwu et al. (2019) argued that “the language of persuasion is very important for a successful advertising campaign.” In other words, while slogans might be one of the reasons why a marketing campaign is a success, persuasion plays a part in advertising, especially when it comes to slogans. Aristotle proposed three types of persuasion: (1) ethos, related to work ethics and credibility, (2) pathos, emphasizing on influencing people’s emotions, and (3) logos, associated with factual statements and statistics. McQuarrie and Mick (1996) conducted a research on the usage of rhetorical devices in advertising slogans and taglines. The research was done in order to bridge the gaps from previous researches regarding linguistic persuasive techniques in advertising. They proposed that rhetorical devices in advertising are divided into two types of figurative modes: scheme and trope. Scheme focuses on excessive order such as rhyme, alliteration, anadiplosis, and antithesis, while trope focuses on deficiency of order with examples of hyperbole, ellipsis and metaphor. The type of research in this thesis is qualitative research in that this thesis attempts to describe rhetorical devices and strategies from the slogans from Pizza Hut commercials through contextualization, interpretation, and perspectives (Headlam (2011:8)). For this thesis, ten slogans will be obtained from Pizza Hut commercial shown in Youtube videos, and the slogans are the only element examined regarding the topic of this thesis. The slogans are examined using the classification of rhetorical devices from McQuarrie and Mick (1996) and other scholars and the three types of persuasive strategies proposed by Aristotle. From the results, only four types of rhetorical devices are easily identifiable from the slogans: comparison, metalepsis, alliteration, and anthimera. However, each one of the slogans has its own rhetorical strategy. Based on the author’s observation, 8 of the slogans use pathos as a persuasive strategy, while 2 others apply ethos. Schematic modes such as alliteration is believed to be more effective to persuade audiences rather than tropic modes in that schematic modes are easier to understand and more memorable. Tropic modes are harder to interpret because one of the words in a slogan implementing a tropic mode can have multiple meanings. In terms of persuasive strategy, pathos is the most common type used in Pizza Hut commercials because the commercials emphasizes more on customers’ feelings and emotions rather than work ethics, probably one of the reasons why Pizza Hut sales saw significant increase.