| dc.description.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. | en_US |
