Page 373 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 373
stakeholders in promotional genres:
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 373
This happens quite easily when speaker/writer and audience have the
same perception and evaluation of the factual condition and the interest
composing the exigency.
It is likely that speaker and audience disagree on one of these two as-
pects or even on both. However, “to the extent that apprehension of fac-
tual conditions and the experience of interests can be shared” (1980: 30)
an exigency can be communicated: “the rhetor, if he knows his audience
is capable of experiencing the exigency, will awaken it to the reality of
the exigency by providing a representation of the factual condition that
evokes or engages the required interest.” (Bitzer, 1980: 31)
This is what happens in advertising (1980: 31), where the speaker/
writer sees a factual condition (he offers either a product or a service to
clients), perceives an interest in relation to it (he wants to sell it), and de-
cides to produce an utterance in order to awaken the addressees’ inter-
est for the same factual condition. Once the addressees’ interest is awak-
ened the next step is to produce an audience’s action (to buy the product
or service) that modifies the audience’s exigency (the product or service
satisfies a need or a desire) and, as a consequence, a positive modification
of their exigency to sell the product.
This is the pivotal exigency at the basis of any promotional texts and
it identifies the purpose of the text, what the text aims at. It identifies a
basic task of promotional genres, their officium (i.e., the officium of a text
consists in positively modifying the exigency for which the text comes
into existence) and it is the central constituent of the related rhetorical
situation.
The speaker/writer of the ad is the person who first perceives the ex-
igency and decides to speak/write in order to positively change it. This
provides us with a first indication for the identification of the addresser
of advertising messages. The speaker/writer is the company that wants to
sell the advertised product, independently of the fact that they produce
the messages themselves or that they charge someone else with produc-
ing it. These latter are also actors in the production process of the mes-
sage, but they participate in it with a different role, which we will more
precisely identify in the following section. It is not even the “voice which
speaks in the ad”; as Cook (2001: 4) observes, the sender of the advertis-
ing message can differ from the person who actually speaks it. The lat-
ter can correspond both to what the tradition of narrative studies (de-
veloped by Jameson, 2004a and 2004b within composition and business
communication) defined as the implied author and the narrator; there-
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 373
This happens quite easily when speaker/writer and audience have the
same perception and evaluation of the factual condition and the interest
composing the exigency.
It is likely that speaker and audience disagree on one of these two as-
pects or even on both. However, “to the extent that apprehension of fac-
tual conditions and the experience of interests can be shared” (1980: 30)
an exigency can be communicated: “the rhetor, if he knows his audience
is capable of experiencing the exigency, will awaken it to the reality of
the exigency by providing a representation of the factual condition that
evokes or engages the required interest.” (Bitzer, 1980: 31)
This is what happens in advertising (1980: 31), where the speaker/
writer sees a factual condition (he offers either a product or a service to
clients), perceives an interest in relation to it (he wants to sell it), and de-
cides to produce an utterance in order to awaken the addressees’ inter-
est for the same factual condition. Once the addressees’ interest is awak-
ened the next step is to produce an audience’s action (to buy the product
or service) that modifies the audience’s exigency (the product or service
satisfies a need or a desire) and, as a consequence, a positive modification
of their exigency to sell the product.
This is the pivotal exigency at the basis of any promotional texts and
it identifies the purpose of the text, what the text aims at. It identifies a
basic task of promotional genres, their officium (i.e., the officium of a text
consists in positively modifying the exigency for which the text comes
into existence) and it is the central constituent of the related rhetorical
situation.
The speaker/writer of the ad is the person who first perceives the ex-
igency and decides to speak/write in order to positively change it. This
provides us with a first indication for the identification of the addresser
of advertising messages. The speaker/writer is the company that wants to
sell the advertised product, independently of the fact that they produce
the messages themselves or that they charge someone else with produc-
ing it. These latter are also actors in the production process of the mes-
sage, but they participate in it with a different role, which we will more
precisely identify in the following section. It is not even the “voice which
speaks in the ad”; as Cook (2001: 4) observes, the sender of the advertis-
ing message can differ from the person who actually speaks it. The lat-
ter can correspond both to what the tradition of narrative studies (de-
veloped by Jameson, 2004a and 2004b within composition and business
communication) defined as the implied author and the narrator; there-
