According to Grant-Davie, exigence is the matter and motivation of discourse. He suggests that when talking about exigence, we ask three questions. They are what the discourse is about, why is it needed, and what should we accomplish. When talking about the picture above, I want to answer what the discourse is about. The ad is about how smoking Marlboro cigarettes will lead to your death. The second question can then be answered, why is it needed? I feel that this ad is needed now because we are much more aware of health effects that different products can cause. I think that many people understand how unhealthy cigarettes are and that these companies may portray them to be better than they are. This ad is obviously showing a drastic change from the normal ads. Then lastly we can answer what should we accomplish? This is when exigence is revealed. In the picture, the goal is to scare people away from buying Marlboro cigarettes. It is trying to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking. Grant-Davie then describes what a rhetor is. In his opinion, it is the people responsible for the discourse and its authorial voice. In this case with the picture above, I would guess that the rhetor is both a corporation and an advertising company. Both of these had a part in producing this image. When it comes to audience, Grant-Davie defines it as those people with whom rhetors negotiate through discourse to achieve the rhetoric objectives. This means that anyone who reads or see the writing is the audience. When it comes to this ad, the audience is those who see this picture and is really aimed at those who smoke and are consumers of Marlboro cigarettes. In this case, the people who work for the corporation and ad company may be their own audience if any of them smoke. Grant-Davie then describes constraints as factors in the situations context that may affect the achievement of the rhetorical objectives. With this picture, the constraints may be that Marlboro may be claiming their cigarettes are not that dangerous. Another constraint may be that people who smoke may not get a chance to see this ad before considering buying another pack. After reading Grant-Davie's article, I feel that he gave a better in depth understanding of what each of these terms mean. I really was able to get views from different people on what each term meant since he talked about other people's ideas.
I would definitely try and figure out who made this ad campaign. This will help you when you are writing about the rhetor. Who is producing this ad is a very important thing to include in your paper. A constraint that you could possibly look into would be the constraint of smokers who have no intention of quitting. Also, this could seem preachy and make smokers feel more rebellious to the cause, making them want to ignore this ad. Another constraint is people who think that they are not going to be smokers forever or that they have the hero complex and think they are invincible. Until your brain is fully developed, you are more prone to making decisions without thinking of the consequences. Another constraint is the fact that other things cause cancer, so on cigarettes, they only say may cause cancer. Since so many other things cause cancer, people could think that "well its hard to pinpoint exactly what killed these people". This is a great ad campaign. The actual ad is down to the point and depicts what could happen if you smoke cigarettes. Love it!
ReplyDeleteObviously, the target audience is the smoking population. I also think that because of the scare tactic the advertisement would be aimed towards the same audience that cigarette companies aim towards: The younger audience. Cigarette companies target a young audience to make sure that they get addicted younger, making them customers for a longer amount of time. This advertisement will hopefully scare the younger audience to not smoke. Other audiences might be to those families of those who smoke to scare them into helping their family member or friend quit smoking. Other constraints may be those who just don't care what smoking will do them, the scare tactic won't work on them. Some people might be too ignorant to understand what this means or that cigarettes are bad for you, making this advertisement not worth while for them.
ReplyDeleteOne definite constraint of this advertisement would be the fact that there are no cigarette advertisements on television. There are 'Above the Influence' commercials that this ad could relate to. But I believe many smokers won't see this ad because it is not on television. Having this particular ad on an 'Above the Influence' commercial would be great for young audiences. Many of their advertisements show the way people interact on drugs or alcohol but this advertisement shows the actual outcome of smoking cigarettes.
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