LaRonda Sanders - Gordon State College



Paper One: Contextual Analysis

Purpose

In this paper, you will analyze a current magazine advertisement in order to determine what socio-cultural (historical, economic, etc) assumptions underlie the advertisement and what the advertiser who created it is trying to achieve with it. You will analyze the visual rhetoric of the advertisement, trying to determine how advertisers are attempting to sell their product. Advertisers are essentially social scientists; they make it their business to understand the ways that people interpret pictures, commodities, ideas, moods, attitudes, philosophies, ideologies, and symbols. This assignment will help you to understand how the larger socio-cultural context, shapes communication and how a communicative response, in turn, shapes the context.

Objectives

In this assignment, you will engage the following course objectives:

1. Students will demonstrate the ability to produce written communication that conforms to academic standard English and is organized into a series of coherent, unified paragraphs.

2. Students will demonstrate the ability to assimilate, analyze, and organize information by composing in various formal modes and writing with a clearly developed thesis and effective support.

3. Students will demonstrate the ability to adapt written communication stylistically to suit a variety of circumstances and audiences.

Skills

Among others, you will engage the following skills:

1. Rhetorical Analysis of a Visual text

2. Audience Identification

3. Use of Textual Evidence to Support Claims

4. Effective Paper Structure.

Task

Your job will be to examine how a particular advertiser is influencing a particular demographic group (or multiple ones). This is a formal paper. Assume that you are presenting this paper to a group of professional advertisers at a conference. This paper is worth 15% (20% for the online class) of your grade. Things to consider: what is the advertisement’s effect on the target audience? Whom does it target? What assumption does the advertisement make about its target group and American culture as a whole? What value systems do the advertisers utilize or manipulate? What symbols are used in the advertisement to manipulate consumers? It is not necessary to answer all of these questions nor is this an all-encompassing list. Feel free to ask other questions that explore the form of the advertisement and the intent of its creators. Solomon’s ideas should help, but do not let them limit you.

Introduction

Identify the advertisement you will be analyzing; this includes identifying the periodical from which this advertisement comes. Present your thesis, which should include the specific elements that you will discuss; these elements should include your notion of the values and ideas the advertiser is attempting to manipulate.

Body

You need a body section that identifies the target audience, noting and analyzing everything in the advertisement that reveals who the target audience is. Consider everything: race, class, socio-economic status, interests, profession, and familial relationships. You cannot say anything that you cannot prove from the actual advertisement itself.

In each of the other body sections of this paper, you should pick a specific value, belief, fear, or desire that the advertisers are attempting to manipulate; these elements will be your sub claims. You should consider the advertiser’s goals or intentions in creating this specific advertisement. Keep asking yourself, “what values or ideas are they trying to sell me in addition to their product or service?” Pay attention to color, font, object placement, and size, but remember that while these items are rhetorical features, they will not form sub claims in and of themselves. For example, if I argue that the advertisers write the words “Dare to Excite” in red font in a clothing advertisement, I cannot spend an entire body section discussing why the color red is important. However, I can discuss, in a body section that focuses on their attempt to manipulate women’s desire to be sexy, how the color red helps to promote this desire

If you cannot prove a claim with abundant specific evidence from the text, you cannot make that claim. Be sure to offer analysis of your evidence. Nothing is in the advertisement by accident. Your body sections and analysis should examine both the images and text of the advertisement. Also, remember your critical topic sentences, concluding sentences, and transitions. Again, you have to be able to point to evidence from the advertisement that supports every claim that you make.

Conclusion

Reflect on your thesis. You may reflect on the usefulness of Solomon’s theory as a basis for interpreting and understanding the advertisement. (This depends on the degree to which you use Solomon.) Consider examining the advertisement as reflective of larger trends in American advertising in general. Provide suggestions and questions for further research.

Criteria for Success

Sources:

Use a single advertisement from a recent magazine will serve as our main source. You may not use an advertisement from the internet.

Use Jack Solomon’s “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” as much or as little as needed.

Length/Logistics:

3-4 Pages, Double-Spaced, 1 Inch Margins, Times New Roman Font, Stapled, MLA paper formatting

Formatting and Citation:

Use MLA Paper formatting and MLA Citation

Due Dates:

Peer Review Due

|MW |Online |

|February 14, 2019 |February 11-17, 2019 |

| | |

Final Draft Due

|MW |TR |

|February 19, 2019 |February 22, 2018 |

| | |

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