Pragmatic and Argumentative Structures in Written Advertisements

A heuristic matrix is proposed regarding the argumentative strategies deployed in advertisements published in the written media. In order to account for the argumentative strategies used in the data selected, some analytical constructs and principles from such related fields as semiotics, discourse analysis (namely, argumentative discourse), pragmatics, cognitive linguistics (namely, metaphor analysis) and logic will be examined and assessed as to their relevance for the purpose of this study. Most of the argumentative structures in the texts selected are implicit and must therefore be inferred by the reader on the basis of the elements that play some crucial roles in constructing logical implications supported, mainly, by social beliefs. The present study aims at expanding, principally, both the structure of the so-called macro speech act and the discoursal argumentative structure made manifest in the women's magazine advertisements selected for the study. The analysis is intended to be mainly descriptive, mainly from a linguistic, i.e. discoursal-textual, point of view.