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Rhetoric of affections: advertising, seduction and truth

Retórica dos afetos: publicidade, sedução e verdade

Retórica de los afectos: publicidad, seducción y verdad

Paulo Barroso
Escola Superior de Viseu
Instituto de Comunicação da NOVA

Advertising frequently provokes pathos and elicits emotional reactions (e.g.
fear, patriotism, guilt, pity, joy, satisfaction, etc.) to get what it wants. Considering
the rhetorical ability and the proliferation of advertisements in the contemporary
Western societies, this article analyzes these omnipresent, seductive and affective
discourses. Following a theoretical and reflexive approach, the objective is to argue
and understand the power of rhetoric developing seduction and provoking affec-
tions in advertising strategies.

advertising; deception; rhetoric; seduction; truth

A publicidade frequentemente provoca o pathos e estimula reações emocionais
(como medo, patriotismo, culpa, pena, alegria, satisfação, etc.) para conseguir o que
quer. Considerando a habilidade retórica e a proliferação de anúncios publicitários
nas sociedades ocidentais contemporâneas, este artigo analisa esses discursos
onipresentes, sedutores e afectivos. Seguindo uma abordagem teórica e reflexiva,
o objetivo é discutir e compreender o poder da retórica em explorar a sedução e
provocar afetos nas estratégias publicitárias.

engano; publicidade; retórica; sedução; verdade

La publicidad a menudo provocan el pathos y estimulan reacciones emocion-
ales (como miedo, patriotismo, culpa, pena, alegría, satisfacción, etc.) para
conseguir lo que quiere. Considerando la habilidad retórica y la proliferación
de anuncios publicitarios en las sociedades occidentales contemporáneas,
este artículo analiza estos discursos omnipresentes, seductores e afectivos.
Siguiendo un enfoque teórico y reflexivo, el objetivo es discutir y comprender el

poder de la retórica en explorar la seducción y provocar afectos en las estrate-
gias publicitarias.

Palabras clave
engaño; publicidad; retórica; seducción; verdad

1. Introduction

“Power derives from knowledge and

also from madness and passionate emotion.”
(Plato, Protagoras)

Rhetoric is a skillful use of language to influence how people think, feel, and act;
it is a set of fixed, regulated, insistent figures (Barthes, 1991, 151) which may ap-
peal to rational (logos) or emotional (pathos) reactions. The focus of this article is
the pathos, i.e. the rhetoric of pathos or rhetoric of affections. In its most general
acceptance, pathos means “something that happens” to bodies (qualities) and to
souls (emotions), notes F. E. Peters (1967, 152). The perspective of this article is
that of pathos as something that happens to bodies and souls indistinctly caused
by the intentional and strategic use of language, like advertising. According to Bar-
thes (1977, 33), “in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly inten-
tional; the signifieds of the advertising message are formed a priori by certain at-
tributes of the product and these signifieds have to be transmitted as clearly as
possible”. If this is so, the use of rhetoric is emphatic to explore the pathos in the
advertising image.
For Aristotle, the pathos is action and response; it is an expression of contin-
gency, a mobile, reversible and susceptible psychological state. The pathos causes
changes in people and differentiates their judgments. The pathos is a set of passions
or emotions of the audience. The second book of Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric is
entirely dedicated to the passions. However, passions left the field of rhetoric about
two thousand years ago (Meyer et. al. 1999). The relevance of pathos is because it
influences with a passional logic. Passions are obsessive, blind, irrational, illusory,
and people only see what they want. The logic of the pathos is a logic of emotional
reactions. Therefore, the rhetoric of affections is based on rhetorical illusions ap-
plied and conveyed as believes by the speaker (Meyer et. al. 1999).
The rhetoric of affections is the appeal to emotions and it is evident in some pub-
lic discourses, like advertising. Advertising aims consumption, but also satisfaction,
pleasure, comfort, happiness, or status and social success (Wharton, 2013, 4). Fac-
ing the increasing profusion of advertising messages in contemporary Western so-
cieties, typical of the industrialized world, this article focuses on a critical analysis of
such public discourses.
The profusion of advertising messages in the public space appealing to every-
thing leads to the mass, unconscious, and conspicuous consumption. This changes
the socio-cultural ecosystem, transforming it into a more and more secular, visual,
and popular culture.

Following a theoretical and reflexive approach, the objectives of this article are: a)
to show the power of rhetoric when developing seduction and provoking affections
in advertising strategies, producing simulacra (collective illusions and social imagi-
naries) and masking reality; b) to argue the complexity of the perception of certain
subliminal (below the liminal, i.e. under the threshold or transitional stage) meanings
in words and images of deception.
In a more and more visual and popular culture, it is relevant to recognize the in-
fluence of advertising’s rhetorical strategies. They are everywhere and affect the way
people think, feel and act.
Argumentation theory covers the whole field of speech that seeks to convince or
persuade (Perelman 1977, 19) and it is useful to understand how affections are used
in public discourses with a large reach of influence.
Consumers are frequently shaped by seduction-appeals. Advertising messages
constantly appeal and conceive an illusory, ideally imagined or fantastic world, i.e. a
virtual dimension that induces the idea or sensation that it is more real than reality it-
self. Today, lie or falsity becomes more staggering and decisive. The masses are more
credulous and distracted, and a rhetorical message is more effective to influence.
For this reason, there is a rhetorical dialectic between the ancient and the modern.
The rhetoric remains active today in the mass discourses like advertising, consist-
ent with Barthes’ (1993, 19) claim that “the world is incredibly full of ancient rhetoric”.

2. Advertising and rhetoric: developing the pathos

Advertising messages reveal much about what we are and what we desire to be.
The power of advertising messages is in its capacity to shape people’s desires and
fuel their dreams. As a rule, dreams and desires are non-rational. Both cannot be re-
duced to a normal rational and conscious thought. Passion is what is beneath logos:
“The irreducibility of expressed passion into logos means that the logic of emotions
(what Meyer calls affective reasoning) is always metaphorical” (Kastely 2004, 228).
The pathos (passions, emotions, affections, desires, feelings) come to us either as a
discourse itself or in the signs (words and images) used by the advertising message.
The rhetoric of affections cannot be accomplished without the power of language. For
this reason, Huxley (1961, 127) remarks that advertisement is “the most exciting, the
most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in cu-
rious possibilities”. A summarized and fulminating meaning presented in a synthetic
image is preferable; it fascinates and seduces more (Sartori 1998, 150); it is more spec-
tacular and sensational in thrilling effects and affections. Fashion is the language of
seduction. Consequently, it is also the language of advertising (Lipovetsky 1996, 165).
How does a given product or brand become an object of desire? Zizek defines
desire by what is always just out of our reach and, for this reason, our search can
continue. Desire is the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state, an inclination
to want things, a strong feeling difficult to self-control or sustain. That is why adver-
tising messages use desire. When they do, consumers sympathize the feeling.
In Western modern industrial societies, brands mean social and symbolic values
and express moral principles like prestige, elegance, honesty, etc. (e.g. fashion brands,

namely the premium and luxury fashion segment like Versace, Armani, or Hugo Boss).
Objects, products and brands are signs expressing certain qualities and meanings. In
almost every culture, “objects are chosen to represent the power of the bearer” (Csik-
szentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton 1999, 26). This power represents different values for
men such as virile virtues, strength, bravery, prowess and endurance; and for women,
seductiveness, fertility, and nurturance.
Thoughts and feelings are connected to the products and brands, according to
the signs used in the advertising strategy. For example, Lancôme’s slogan for the
fragrance Magie Noire says “The source of enchantment”, representing the perfume
with social, cultural, and emotional meanings (Leiss et al. 2005, 221). The aim of this
slogan is to provoke emotions. For this reason, Lipovetsky (1996, 214) argues that
advertising does not seduce the homo psychanalyticus (the intelligent man who re-
flects), but the homo ludens (the superficial man who amuses himself). The effec-
tiveness is due to its amusingness.
Lacan locates the essence of human existence in desire (Wood 2012, 85). Ap-
proaching the Lacanian perspective about desire, Zizek notes the problem of the re-
flexivity of desire: “desire is always a desire of a desire” (2008, 196); it is never simply
desire (2005, 247). “The Real of desire is a lack that cannot be filled; in this sense,
desire is the desire to desire” (Wood 2012, 102). The question is not what one should
desire, since there are a lot of things to desire, states Zizek (2008, 196), but “which
of them is worth being the object of my desire?” or “Which desire should I desire?”.
Zizek examines how desire operates around us with products, goods, services,
brands, ideas, concepts. The Coke advertising, for example, stages this relationship
to desire. For Zizek, Coke promises us the “it” when the advertisement says “Coke is
It!” (the slogan from the early eighties), while Kinder Surprise Chocolate egg actually
materializes this “it” offering a superfluous supplement. Coke and Kinder Surprise
manipulate and deceive consumers’ desires and needs.
The Coke advertising message is paradoxical: the product does not satisfy any
need. On the contrary, notes Zizek, the result is unexpected: the more we drink it, the
thirstier we get. It is the product itself that makes our thirst for it more insatiable (Zizek
2000, 22). Advertising create dreams, desires, needs.
The desire of consumers is fascinated by the need or lack and by what they think
they can do with the object, when they imagine themselves using the object. A fantasy
is an imagined scenario representing the realization of desire, but this usual defini-
tion is, according to Zizek (2008, 132), somewhat misleading or at least ambiguous:
objects, and so on) - through fantasy, we learn ‘how to desire’”.
The famous advertisement for Marlboro uses the picture of “the bronzed cowboy,
the wide prairie plains” connoting “a certain image of America”, “the land of hard, hon-
est people, of limitless horizons” (Zizek 2008, 106). The rhetoric of affections occurs
when “real” Americans start to identify themselves (in their ideological self-experi-
ence) with “the image created by the Marlboro advertisement”, when “America itself
is experienced as ‘Marlboro country’” (Zizek 2008, 106). The Marlboro billboards de-
velop passionate reactions instead of intellectual reactions. A picture of a cowboy on
a horse smoking a cigarette has a patriotic visual influence, which is more powerful
than any possible reasoning offered by words. Seeing the cowboy is feeling America.

Regarding the advertisement for Coca-Cola, like all “mass-media symbols” of
America, the point is not the connotation to a certain ideological experience or vision
of America; the point is that this vision of America achieves its identity by identify-
ing itself with the signifier “Coke”, saying “America, this is Coke!”. The crucial point to
grasp is that the ideological vision of America as a land of diversity is given in the ad-
vertisement by the signifiers “Coke”, “this is it!” and “the real thing”, i.e. the unattain-
able X, “the object-cause of desire” (Zizek 2008, 106).
Marlboro cowboy, Coca-Cola and all mass-media symbols of America exploited
in advertising are Americanisms: peculiar customs of the US or its culture and peo-
ple. This concept operates meanings, social imaginaries and cultural identifications,
like the concept of “Italianness” or “Italianicity”, meaning the Italian character, quality
or state of what belongs to Italy, expressesing what is coded as Italian. E. L. Wyss
(2012, 180) notes that the nationalizing construction of Italianicity “endows the prod-
ucts with an identity, a sort of specific anthropomorphic ontology”, which is affective.
When these concepts are processed in advertising, they provoke exuberant af-
fections, reporting national or patriotic ways of life, fashion styles, and daily cultural
patterns. In these cases, advertising connects the commercial product or brand with
a stereotyped cultural and national identity (Edensor 2002; Wyss 2012). Following
this strategy, advertising creates stereotypes, meanings and affections of patriot-
ism and national culture.
Marlboro cowboy and Coca-Cola are symbolically transformed by the style they
are represented in advertising images of seduction. Advertising show consumers’
habits where these products become traditions, symbols, mass-media symbols of
America. These products and their images become national symbols of good taste,
wellbeing, contentment, status and power. They suggest desire: the desire to live in
a desirable environment or situation as it is represented in the attractive and sugges-
tive images used to advertise these products. Images that have signs of seduction,
social enjoyment and pleasure. These are emotional and visual arguments for con-
suming; they use passionate and seductive associations between the product and
sensuality, pleasure, desire. Advertisements of Swiss chocolate, German cars, Italian
pasta, etc. also seduce developing a cultural and national character of the products.

2.1. Using fallacies of affections

Seductive advertisements have a personal and humanized look, a soul, like the con-
fident Marlboro cowboy or the sensual Dior woman, symbols of fashion and seduction.
Fashion and seduction are ingredients of advertisements; they are associated with physi-
cal aspect, body outside appearance for the Platonian concept of cosmetic in Gorgias
(465b); they are directed to the eye. That’s why “many products are sold by appealing
to sexual attraction and physical beauty” (Fennis & Stroebe 2010, 17). Seduction and
attractiveness often function as a halo or a simple decision rule like “what is beauti-
ful is good” or what is pleasurable, comfortable, elegant, tasty, beautiful, etc. is good.
Some advertisements explore the fallacy named appeal to emotion (viz. appeal to
pity or argumentum ad misericordiam) to persuade, inducing pity and manipulating
people’s affections instead of using valid reasons. For example, the advertisement

of the Portuguese League for Animal Rights and Acção Animal, a close-up shot of a
chimpanzee face-painted of clown behind bars, uses an argument that does not pro-
voke intellectual impact or thought. It follows a simple strategy: the development of
an easier way to make people understand the idea (the animal rights) touching their
emotions. The advertisement’s rhetorical argument is both textual and visual, but affec-
tions are caused particularly by the image. The close-up emphasizes a sad expression.
The argument is emotional; it’s a pathos appeal and it fulfils the meaning struc-
ture. The chimpanzee (signifier) is a sad clown (signified). This is a metaphor of ani-
mal abuse and lack of freedom. A chimpanzee behind bars represents the captivity,
incarceration, which means sadness instead of joy. The clown is the exponent of joy,
fun, amusement and happiness in the circus.
Dark colors prevail, emphasizing sorrow for animal mistreatment; on the other
side, the vivid colors of the clown face-painting are not sufficient to transmit joy, fun,
amusement and happiness (these are the peculiar emotions aroused by clowns in
the circus, always the most hilarious moment of the show).
In the advertisement for Opium perfume, from Yves Saint-Laurent, the mythical
meaning “female beauty” is explored through the representation of a typical scene of
ecstasy, a state in which a woman is carried away by an overwhelming emotion. The
model Sophie Dahl is a stereotype of female beauty in the advertisement. “Clearly the
sign ‘Opium’ has connotations of indulgent pleasure which derive from the codes for
representing drugtaking and sexual abandonment, and the connotations of the ad’s
visual signs supported them” (Bignell 2002, 33). The mythical meaning associates
the product (the perfume) and an exotic sensual pleasure. The same development of
pathos happens with the supermodel Kate Moss. During the famous 1993 campaign
for Calvin Klein’s Obsession perfume, Kate Moss is lying naked on a sofa and it took
about ten days to photograph this scene and get the intended and ideal picture. This
scene is iconic, seductive; it provokes strong emotional reactions, as the name of the
fragrance (Obsession) reveals.
The rhetoric of pathos is a strategical appeal to emotion, namely: a) pity (develop-
ing an argumentum ad misericordiam or appeal to pity); b) fear (using an argumen-
tum ad metum or appeal to fear to provoke concerns or anxious feelings about some
consequence); c) flattery or adulation (to show praise and appeal to self-conviction
and self-presumptuousness of consumers if they use the product or brand adver-
tised); d) joy and enthusiasm (whether real or illusory happiness, people feel satis-
faction and fulfillment); advertisements are typically happy-ending messages and,
therefore, they correspond to the expectations (needs and problems) of consumers
and present an easy and simple solution to them; e) wishful thinking, a rhetorical ex-
ploitation or development of affections, because a wishful thinking, as it suggests,
is a type of appeal to pathos based on a suggestion of a desire and a believe creat-
ing the illusion that what receivers wish for is true or beneficial and that is offered by
the product or brand, and suggested by the advertising message, according to what
consumers want to hear. A wishful thinking is a desire or believe that correspond to
what is pleasing to imagine; it is wished and thought in a consistent way to the ex-
pected affections (not reasons nor facts).
The rhetorical appeal to emotion is often based on logical fallacies; their argu-
ments are made to increase the pathos and manipulate recipient’s emotions. Argu-

ments induce emotional stimulation. The purpose of the rhetorical appeal to emotion,
and rhetoric lato senso, is to provoke passionate reactions. This strategy doesn’t use
factual evidence or reasons. Emotions (viz. pity, fear, flattery, joy, and wishful thinking)
may be provoked by a fallacious appeal; rational arguments with intellectual reaction
are neither used nor necessary.

2.2. Seduction and truth

Persuasion and seduction are two old abilities of communication strategies.

Both aim to influence. We receive advertising’s messages everywhere (including in
our home, brought by the TV screen) and everytime. Whether we like it or not, wheth-
er we are aware of the messages or not, advertising is part of everyone’s daily life.
Seduction is peculiar to human nature and it appeals to strong emotions. Using
seductive strategies to disarm reflection in its quest to persuade and sell, advertis-
ing easily run over ethical-moral values and principles. It suggests a gap, a lack or a
need for the consumers, saying what is convenient (not necessarily the truth) and
that’s why it always tells us a happy-end story. This strategy might be a perverse way
to satisfy people’s needs, but it also shows a persuasive strength.
A way by which advertising is rhetorically effective and unethical is by seeking to
create false needs. False needs “are those which are superimposed upon the individual
by particular social interests in his repression”, with common ones being “to relax, to
have fun, to behave and to consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love
and to hate what others love and hate” (Marcuse 2007, 7). Advertising encourages
consumers to develop false needs and to satisfy those needs in misdirected ways
purchasing non-essential commodities (Leiss et al. 2005, 83).
Advertising lies or deceives when it says what is convenient (false needs), which
is different or the opposite of true needs. Advertising does not lie nor deceive, strictly
speaking, when it says “this car will make you fly”, “this perfume will let you conquer
any women” or “lose 60 pounds in one week eating all you want”. The hyperboles are
tolerated, even when we know that it is not possible to obtain the results and bene-
fits the advertising assures. Advertising lies and deceives if it says literally (nor met-
aphorically) the previous assertions. Exaggeration of benefits and affections given
with the products (and expressed by the messages) is a technique to get influence
and provoke emotions.
When seduction is used in advertising messages, it is always intentional, it is de-
veloped or performed consciously (by the seducer). However, the effects are often
unconscious for the seduced. This happens with the subliminal advertising. Seduc-
tion is never explicitly; otherwise, it would not work effectively. People are not aware
that they are led astray; most of the time people are seduced and yearn to be seduced
(Greene 2003, xxiv).
Seduction is both in the commodities and in the appeals to commodities, i.e.
in the messages intentionally produced with certain meanings to create intended
moods in the public about the acquisition of those commodities. Marx (1982, 163)
uses the expression “fetishism of the commodity” and notes that “a commodity ap-
pears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing”, i.e. it is a product of human la-

bor and it satisfies human needs by its properties; nevertheless “it is a very strange
thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties”. Marx (1982,
164) underlines “the mystical character of the commodity” to mean a fetishistic ef-
fect exerted by the commodity, to describe the regulating social power that objecti-
fied value relations gain under the capitalist system. This power causes a false be-
lief about social properties ascribed (the fetish-induced illusion). The “fetishism” is a
sort of influence or seduction.
In this regard, Baudrillard (1990, 21) characterizes seduction having signs for so-
cial relation based on appearances, artifices, meanings connected; a ritual order with
peculiar rules; and ways of thought. Masses are psychologized and seduced by me-
dia discourses. It is like everything is driven by seduction, ideology, desire, illusion,
etc. widespread by advertising messages.
Meaning something in a hidden way is seducing through appearances, artifices,
semblances, simulations, illusions. Meaning in a hidden way is also the power to im-
ply, i.e. “saying without saying”. Signs don’t mean only what exists, but also appear-
ances, artifices, semblances, simulations, illusions.
Seduction is an ability to cause affections, a strategical process to lead astray or
to reach and lead the seduced to think in a certain way or to take certain actions. Se-
duction lays in affections, not in reasons. Recalling the distinction between persuading
and convincing made clear by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric: A
Treatise on Argumentation (1991, 27), “to someone concerned with the rational charac-
ter of adherence to an argument, convincing is more crucial than persuading”. Persua-
sion is appropriate for emotions (pathos) and convincing for reasons (logos). Persua-
sion uses emotive reasons to buy and consume; convincing uses “rational reasons”.
By the rule, advertising messages evoke passionate reactions instead of intellec-
tual and comprehensive reactions. According to Key (1976, xi), advertising messages
are designed for emotional or passionate reactions and not for intellectual impact, i.e.
for affective and feeling appeals rather than cognitive and thinking appeals, evoking
emotions instead of thought. Using hidden meanings or subliminal messages, the
perception is conscious or subconscious. In both cases, the message produces ef-
fects on people. In the subconscious case, the message produces effects even with-
out people noticing it. The meaning reaches the subconscious without intermedia-
tion of the conscious brain, in an inadvertent way to the reason (Grijelmo (2000, 15).
Some words are more powerful in exciting emotions than others. In advertising,
this difference between the emotive power of words is more noticeable and, therefore,
more decisive and effective in producing persuasive meanings (Ogilvy, 2004, 133)
and making the words extremely effective and subtle instruments to provoke or ma-
nipulate certain attitudes, behaviours, choices/decisions and feelings. The way words
are used or pronounced can further provoke the pathos of the audience. Some words
are emotive when they are used in a rhetorical way, influencing the way we see, think
and feel the reality they represent. According to Macagno & Walton (2014, 5), “emo-
tive words have been regarded as crucial instruments for persuasion and manipn”.
The seductiveness of words is not either in their grammatical function or in the mean-
ing, which must be easily understandable, but in the latent values of their sound and
history (Grijelmo 2000, 33). As such, subliminal advertising is a questionable way to ma-
nipulate and to transform rational and critical reactions into uncritical buying reactions.

The seductiveness of words and images rhetorically used in advertising is not ad-
dressed to rational understanding of the consumers, but to their emotions (Grijelmo
2000, 37). The seduction of signs (words and images) does not need any logic, but
the expressive and the implicit. As Grijelmo (2000, 38) notes: “a mathematical proof
convinces, but a perfume seduces”. The seduction of words and images cause af-
fective reasons, not rational reasons.
In a deductive reasoning (e.g. “It is convenient to buy an economical car”; “The
car model X is economical”; “Therefore, to buy the car model X is convenient”), the
understanding is simple and easy; it is based on culture and it doesn’t cause intellec-
tual efforts. Advertising language follows the logic of predicative statements such as
“This is X”, meaning “This product is good”. The word “good” has a positive cultural
meaning (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 14). The typical use of advertising messages in-
fluence and structures the collective thought as well the shared forms of communi-
cation, behavior, feeling, attitude, and action. The argument “millions of consumers
have already tried the new product X... what about you?...” is simply deductive and
direct mainly due to the fallacy ad populum.
In a rhetorical perspective, the more successful messages are not those we love
or hate (or even those with new or interesting and creative concepts and approach-
es), but those “that are able to effortlessly slip things under our radar and influence
our behavior without us ever really knowing that they have done so” (Heath 2012, 6).
These advertising messages seduce the subconscious with creativity, but the para-
dox is that “the less attention we pay, the more effective the subconscious seduction
becomes” (Heath 2012, 10).
Seduction is more effective at the subconscious level. The way advertising influ-
ence us without our knowledge might be manipulating subconsciously our behavior
and this is a worrying matter, because this way has quite possibly much more influ-
ence than persuasion. For Heath (2012, xi), “even more worrying is that advertising
ability to seduce our subconscious uses elements that are in our full view and easy
for us to discern”.
One of the most subconscious seductive strategies is the product placement.
This practice is frequent and effective in popular TV programs (e.g. soup operas)
and people are not aware about it. For this circumstance, advertisers might prefer
“to compel people to buy a product without even knowing why they’re buying it – as
a visceral response to a stimulus, not as a conscious decision” and “this is best done
through images” (Hill 2008, 37). This situation is more effective in TV commercials
that “invade our private space and time and reach us when we tend not to be alert
and vigilant” (Blair 2008, 56). Seduction proceeds from double-meanings, from mes-
sages between the lines rather than explicit statements.
Advertising is deceptive or malicious when rhetoric is used as a technique to per-
suade based on illogical or fallacious reasoning, which may be intentional or not inten-
tional. If it is intentional, it is a sophism, i.e. a deliberately invalid argument displaying
ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone; if it is not intentional, it is a
paralogism, i.e. an unintentionally invalid or wrong argument.
An example of deception and manipulation is the advertisement for Weather-
proof, showing the former U.S. President Barack Obama wearing a coat of this brand.
The billboard was placed in Times Square, New York, and it is basically a picture of

Obama taken during his visit to the Great Wall of China. The problem is that this im-
age was used without Obama consent or knowledge, remarks The New York Times
(dated January 7th, 2010).
A rhetorical deception happens when someone is persuaded about something
through an opinion based on unreliable reasoning, provoking false beliefs. Consider-
ing that seduction is usually regarded as a deception, manipulation or enticement,
the rhetoric of seduction in advertising messages plays with polysemy and hidden
signs and meanings. The effect is in the strings of words producing intended sublimi-
nal meanings. That is why the word “subliminal” means ideas, images, and concepts
perceived in the brain below the threshold of consciousness.


Advertising messages require a special ethical caution, because they are pub-
lic and influential; their commercial ends do not justify their rhetorical means. They
have responsibilities about what is communicated, and they must be regulated by
codes of ethics and laws.
The function of advertising is not to educate, but to increase the selling of prod-
ucts, goods, services, brands, ideas, concepts. Doing this, advertising may be moral,
immoral or amoral. It may follow or not social values or moral principles, as well as
tell the truth about what is advertised.
Truth must be always a condition for discourses. If not, they may neglect the prin-
ciples and values that lead to the fair and accurate use of language. An unethical way
to use rhetoric in advertising is to lie, omit or exaggerates about the benefits of the
products, goods, services, brands brought by the messages. As Packard (2007, 31)
notes in The Hidden Persuaders, “many of us are being influenced and manipulated,
far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives”. Following sophisticated
and subliminal techniques of persuasion, some advertising messages are impossi-
ble to perceive at the conscious level of awareness and people just get the message
without realize that it will produce further effects in the decision making in the act of
buying the product. There are rational and non-rational or emotional techniques of
persuasion. The latter are imperceptible at the conscious level of awareness.
A persuasion that does not embody an appropriate use of argumentation is un-
ethical. The legitimacy of persuasion and rhetoric is determined by how it is used
(honestly or deceptively) and for what end it is used (for good or for evil). Ethics fol-
lows thoughtfulness and consciousness about what we responsibly do concerning
and caring other people. It is an action guidance.
There are seductive, rhetorical, fallacious, deceptive, immoral, and unethical or
anti-ethical advertisements. Advertising messages chose specific signs to the under-
standing of a large amount of people; they are necessarily open to public view, they are
public discourses and, therefore, must have restrictions, i.e. they must be conceived
by (and show) a careful, virtuous and conscientious use for good purposes and ends.
Advertising explores both rational and emotional arguments, appealing through
reasons (logos) and emotions (pathos). Seduction, for example, is a way to get what
is wanted persuading with affections. Emotional arguments are more effective, be-

cause people don’t resist to them as much as with rational arguments. As the epi-
graph from Plato’s Protagoras (351a) says in the beginning of this article, power de-
rives from passionate emotion, but it is more powerful, and it derives even more from
rhetorical emotion.


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Biographical note

Paulo Barroso is a Assistant professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal (Col-
lege of Education, Department of Communication and Art), teaching Advertising Semiotics, So-
ciology of Communication, and Communication Ethics and Deontology; integrated researcher
(ORCID 0000-0001-7638-5064) at the Investigation Centre in Communication, Information and
Digital Culture (CIC-Digital) of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, New University of
Lisbon; current research interest in Semiotics, Argumentation and Rhetoric, Ethics, Media Lan-
guages, and Theories and Models of Communication; BA and MA in Communication Sciences;
BA, MA and PhD in Philosophy (in the scientific area of Philosophy of Language); post-doctora-
te researcher (6 years) in Communication Sciences, having participated in international confe-
rences and published several articles and books in these fields (e.g. Grammar, Expressiveness,
and Inter-subjective Meanings: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-7638-5064

Email: pbarroso@esev.ipv.pt
Address: College of Education, Rua Maximiano Aragão, 3504-501 Viseu, Portugal

* Submitted: 2018.06.30
* Accepted: 2018.12.20