Avoid redundant transitions. You don’t need a transitional device in the last sentence of the previous paragraph if you’ve got one in the first sentence of the new paragraph. If you’ve got transitional devices in both sentences, you’ll run the risk of sounding like you’re repeating yourself.
Example 1:
The camera shifting onto the women’s tears contribute to the emotions of the audience, evoking the listeners’ sentiment towards the piece. Along with the auditory and visual components to the ad, the Aristotelian appeal pathos aids in persuading the audience to be less critical of themselves.
One of the essential techniques the Dove Real Beauty campaign uses to persuade its listeners is pathos. The advertisement first elicits the feeling of sadness from the audience, as the women describing themselves in a severely negative light is disheartening both because of their low self esteem, and because of the ability to relate to these females. Due to the audience being mainly composed of women, they begin to become even more conscious of their low self-confidence as the video continues on. However, at the conclusion of the ad, the audience is left feeling more satisfied and determined, as they’re now educated and aware that the negative way they perceive themselves is typically not the way others will perceive them. The music also plays an essential role here, as the shift in volume of the piece allows the audience to feel more content than they did at the beginning of the ad.
How to revise? Rework the first sentence of the new paragraph that it actually builds on the concluding sentence of the previous paragraph. Something like: More precisely, the ad’s goal is to produce a palpable shift in pathos, from negative emotions to uplifting ones–a shift tied to the ad’s core message of positive self-image.
Example 2:
It is shown like this to get a sense of time moving fast, to keep you engaged in what is happening in Jim’s life and how quickly time goes by in his life. These audiovisual features really help sell the story of Jim and they also appeal to the rhetorical concept of pathos.
The main way the advertisement tries to persuade its audience is through the use of pathos. Sadness is the main emotion this ad was trying to bring out and it did a really good job at doing so. As Jim’s life was rewound for us we see the attempts that he had made to better his life. We also saw him fail those attempts. When Jim would fail he would fall right back into the same bad nutrition habits that he was doing previously. This could hit home to much of the audience because people try to exercise and fail all the time. Who this ad is really for is the parents. No parent would ever want to put their kid through the hardships that Jim has to deal with. The ad is placed in the year 2030 because in present time Jim would still be a child. Their goal is to get the parents to get their kids into healthy habits rather than bad ones. They want to parents to know there is still time to do so before it is too late
How to revise? Get more specific in the first sentence of the new paragraph about what kinds of pathos. Something like: More specifically, the main way the advertisement tries to persuade parents is through sadness.
Another thing to look out for: work toward a stronger articulation of exigence and constraints.
Which is to say, above all, be more cynical–not so much in the tone or voice of your writing, but rather in the substance of your analysis.
Here’s an example we can work with (an intro paragraph from one of your drafts):
Procter & Gamble, or P&G, are famously known throughout the United States for selling household brands such as: Pamper baby diapers, Dawn dish detergent, Charmin toilet paper, Tide laundry detergent, and Always feminine products, and many more. The Always brand in particular sells a wide variety of feminine products for women and girls. In the last three years, Always have used their brand to promote and inform others about women’s rights and how important women are to our society. They encourage girls through their “Like a Girl” commercials to be more than a statistic and become more than the typical stereotypes of women. The Always “Like a Girl” ad campaigns uses strong emotional appeals like pathos through , ethos through showing non-actors in the commercial and true ideas of women in society, and finally logos through the statistics demonstrating women stereotypes.
In response to the bolded sentences, I found myself asking: “Why would Always do this, though–what’s in it for them?”
This is what I mean by “be more cynical.” The ad wants you to think that they’re promoting body positivity out of the goodness of their hearts–that the Always people are just good people. But there is an ulterior motive, one related to their primary exigence: the need to sell their Always products. If you don’t uncover what this ulterior motive is through analysis, your paper ends up sounding like an Always advertisement in its own right, rather than an analysis of the ad’s ulterior motive.
So how, more precisely, does this relate to exigence and constraints? Let’s look at another example paragraph, from a student paper about a very similar ad:
Along with these two appeals is the integration of exigence and constraint. The essential simple exigence in the piece is that both the media need to put an end to solely incorporating one type of beauty to their advertisements, as well as that women need to critique themselves less and accept their flaws and imperfections. The constraint on the ad is that although the majority of the audience did react positively towards the video, there were some members that disagreed with the message of the campaign. Overall, more companies need to attempt and make more advertisements similar to Dove’s in order to increase women’s self esteem and redefine beauty.
My response to this student is as follows: The simple exigence is even simpler than you’re making it out to be: it’s that Dove (like Always) needs first and foremost to sell its product. What you’re identifying as the exigence in this current draft is actually related to a constraint: the fact that many potential Dove customers feel that the media (and beauty companies, of which Dove is an example) present harmful beauty stereotypes is a constraint on Dove’s ability to persuade its customer base to buy its product (why would a woman want to buy a product from a company that damages other women’s self-image?). Dove’s ability to solve its main exigence—to persuade customers to buy its products—is constrained by some people’s belief that Dove is complicit in fostering negative beauty stereotypes. So Dove has to prove that they’re not complicit.
Another point: “follow-through” sentences
However, the audience of this ad isn’t limited to the parties that it aims to market towards. This ad runs on TV, is displayed before YouTube videos, and is widely circulated on the Internet. Because of its popularity on social media, its message has reached thousands more people than if it had solely been shown on television. Always incorporated children and young adults of both genders to make their message relatable to a broad audience. They also never mention what product exactly they are selling but instead try to send out a message to empower girls. In today’s society where girls’ bodies and minds are derived by the media and their peers, it is important that someone take a stand and put out an empowering and positive message about what girls can do. In a way, this was an important role for Always, because they knew that sending out a female-positive message at a time like this would produce a lot of media hype, and make sure that their brand visibility rose above that of their competitors.
versus:
One of the most obvious stereotypes present in this ad relates to the social construct, is that “boys are better than girls.” Women are looked as being inferior to men in many aspects of life, including work performance, athletic ability, and intelligence. Always challenges these stereotypes by highlighting a different, more realistic picture, one in which girls are just as capable and strong as their male peers. In the scene at the end of the ad where the older girls are shown playing their sports, Always shows that girls have the potential to do anything no matter what negative ideas are put into young girl’s minds.
And this was important for Always because….
Final thing: the first-person (“I argue that,” “By this I mean,” etc.) is perfectly fine, but avoid the second person (“you” and “your”)
Example:
Another rhetorical appeal this ad uses to persuade the audience is with ethos. This is seen through the first person aspect of the ad. To build a sense of credibility they show Jim in the third person at the beginning of the ad, as stated before, to show you that he is indeed an obese man. With that in mind you see him struggle to do his everyday tasks. You know that his struggles are real because you know he is obese. Showing this ad in first person is a very good way of persuading the audience. You see Jim have these hardships the day to day tasks, and you see them all the way back to his childhood. Even though the overweight actor in the ad may not be having a heart attack. You know that in his real life he possibly could have some of the hardships that the character he portrays is dealing with.
In a paper like this one, second-person pronouns are a bad idea for a couple reasons. First, whereas first-person pronouns are actually really useful and a standard convention of academic writing, second-person pronouns are not–they sound too informal. If that’s the only problem in your case, just say “one” instead of “you.” But also: saying “you” is often a crutch to avoid saying who the target audience for the ad is. It’s a lot than easier than specifying who “you” refers to, especially when the student hasn’t actually figured the target audience out yet.
Rhetoric & Writing I 