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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 12:4 (2021) ► pp.567–590

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“Boom! You bought them.”

A metalinguistic analysis of Apple infomercials based on Aristotle’s modes of persuasion

 | Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
 | Khorramshahr University of Marine Science and Technology
 | Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
Published online: 29 October 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18055.jal
Abstract
A review of advertisement studies shows that there has been little attempt to examine infomercials in terms of rhetorical appeals and persuasive strategies. Therefore, this study sought to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the persuasive elements of Apple infomercials through Aristotle’s modes of persuasion to reveal the most frequent persuasive language features and structures and to study how such elements were utilized to promote the products and services of the company. A top-down approach based on Aristotle’s modes of persuasion was adopted to identify the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos and pathos as well as the promotional tokens and patterns in the text. The descriptive findings provided evidence to demonstrate that although all the rhetorical proofs were employed in the corpus, emotional appeal was the most dominant. The findings of this research open new horizons for further studies on infomercials in general and persuasive rhetoric in specific.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The art of rhetoric
    • 1.2Infomercials as a genre
    • 1.3Promotional persuasive features and studies on infomercials
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Material selection
    • 2.2Procedure
  • 3.Findings and discussion
    • A.Ethos and goodwill
      • a.Greeting and thanking
      • b.Sharing and free offers
      • c.Goodwill toward partners
    • B.Attributive adjectives
    • C.Comparative and superlative adjectives
  • 4.Conclusion
  • References
References (54)
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