Uses of Persuasive Language in Journalism

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Print media targeted at specific audiences make use of rhetorical strategies in order to influence and persuade its specific audience. Newspapers, especially letters to the editor, opinion articles, editorials and advertisements illustrate classic examples of the use of main rhetoric devices listed in Communication Studies. Catherine Deveny’s opinion article Easter? Oh wake me when it’s over exemplifies the effects of some devices including metaphors, metonymies, similes, alliterations and sarcasm to persuade her religious audience that the religious celebration of Easter should be just as important as Christmas. Metaphors are described as rhetoric devices that compare two objects (abstract or physical) to show the similarity between one object to the other by creating a new idea using each of the objects elements (Britannica, 1990, p. 61). Structural and ontological metaphors are used within the article. The metaphor, ‘…the B team of religious celebrations’ (Deveny, 2008) indicates that it is a structural metaphor of which is one concept made in the condition of the other concept, as expressed by Marsden (2006, pg. 41). It is seen that in this metaphor there are two concepts, ‘B team’ and ‘religious celebrations’; one is inclined to process the meaning of ‘B team’ and then correlate it with another concept ‘religious celebrations’. The audience would therefore interoperate Deveny’s message as ‘people assume Easter is second rate (B team) to important religious celebrations’. Ontological metaphors, for example ‘…bulging sack of love’ or ‘Big Kahuna of Christian Holidays’ (Deveny, 2008) illustrates a type of metaphor which ‘associate activities, emotions and ideas with entities and substances’(Marsden, 2006). Emotions or ideas being ‘Big Kahuna’ and ‘love’ associates with entities such as ‘bulging sack’ and ‘Christian holidays’. Hence the usage of metaphors tells
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