English 101

English 101

In his essay “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” (available in Doc Sharing) Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs.” Your task is to find two of these print advertisements in magazines or on a site such as www.adflip.com (Links to an external site.) and apply the Toulmin Model of analysis (as explained in Perspectives on Argument). To broaden your perspective, try to choose two dissimilar advertisements—either in product or intended audience. Think about the following questions:

What is the claim?

What is the support?

What are the warrants?

How universally accepted are they in our culture?

Who is the intended audience?

What types of rebuttal or refutation might be offered (to the claim or the warrants)?

Does the claim need to be qualified?

Your goal is not to answer these questions in a list, but to address them in a coherent, logical, and well-organized essay. Your analysis should deconstruct the print advertisement completely from both a logical perspective (how the argument is structured and presented) and a cultural perspective (what warrants make the advertiser believe the ad will work). As a result of this assignment, you will find yourself becoming more critical of advertisers’ techniques of persuasion, and arrive at a better understanding of arguments.

You may need to reread Perspectives on Argument to review the parts of an argument and the types of claims. As prewriting, you should examine each ad thoroughly and then freewrite to generate ideas. During the next two weeks, we will examine advertising as a form of argument and sharpen our interpretive skills on some sample ads. This essay will be four to five pages, typed and double-spaced.