ABSTRACT

The largest, most pervasive, and most successful rhetorical enterprise on the planet is advertising. If it is possible to think of advertising as becoming even larger, even more pervasive, and even more successful in the future, then in this dawn of the global economy it is reasonable to think that it will become so. Granting even modest truth to these observations, it is perplexing to note that scholars of rhetoric give advertising scant attention. Of the 360 items in the MLA bibliography for the period from 1980 to the present that deal with advertising, the majority are in journals of linguistics, followed by journals of cultural studies, literature, and folklore. Exactly one cites an article in a scholarly journal devoted to rhetoric (see Kehl and Heidt). The best place to read scholarly studies of advertising rhetoric-including some that draw quite ably on the rhetorical tradition-are in journals of consumer research that probably cross the desks of few rhetoricians (e.g., Leigh, McQuarrie and Mick, Scott, and Stern). No book length study of advertising draws in any sustained way on the resources of the rhetorical tradition; few papers delivered at rhetoric conferences concern advertising. Why should this be?