| This thesis is intended to provide a relatively new approach to the analysis ofadvertisement text from the perspective of Kenneth Burke's new rhetoric by constructing aframework for rhetorical analysis of advertisement text. The focus of the study is upon theconstruction of the framework which is designed to reveal the rhetorical process of anadvertisement text and explain the rhetorical motive embodied in the advertisement text.In this thesis, Burke's ideas of new rhetoric are studied from three aspects: rhetoric ofidentification, dramatism, and logology, which constitute three dimensions of the frameworkproposed in the present study. Identification analysis focuses on three major identificationstrategies: identification by sympathy, identification by antithesis, and identification byinaccuracy. These strategies are shown in various advertisements which move theadvertisement readers to identify with the advertiser and the advertised matter. In dramatisticanalysis, the pattern of an advertisement text is analyzed in terms of ratios of act, agent,agency, scene and purpose, demonstrating how the advertiser shapes advertisement readers'perception of the advertiser and the advertised matter. With the vocabulary of logology as thetool to analyze the relationship of human nature and rhetoric, logological analysis of anadvertisement text studies how the text constructs hierarchy, creates principle of perfectionand marks mystery so as to drive the target audience for the advertised matter.By introducing Kenneth Burke's perspective, the present study opens up newpossibilities for the study of advertisement texts and helps to understand how language inadvertisement supplies rhetorical motive and shapes relations among the participants ofadvertising as rhetorical act. The present study also has practical implications for businessEnglish writing. With the knowledge of this rhetorical framework based on Kenneth Burke'stheory, a student writer can be more adapted to the audience. |
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