Edited by Chris Jenks - carlosmoreno.info

ADVERTISING: THE RHETORICAL IMPERATIVE
particular forms of success, appear to have been abandoned for ads which
are seemingly purely informative in the face of these guidelines and the
concerns which give rise to them.
This essay will be concerned with the understanding of advertising as
either persuasive or informative. First, it will look at the etymology of the
word ‘advertising’, charting its development from the supposedly ‘innocent’
sense of informing (in Latin and in Shakespeare, for example), to the more
suspicious and potentially morally questionable sense it has acquired of
‘persuading’ and ‘influencing’. Second, it will show how the supposedly
innocent sense has never existed and can never have existed apart from the
sense of influencing. Third, the essay will assess the implications of this
argument for the work of certain influential, if not canonical, texts on
advertising. The work of Galbraith, Williamson and Williams will be
examined here. And, fourth, the implications of this debate for advertising
in general, and cigarette advertising in particular, will be drawn out.
ETYMOLOGY
The word ‘advertising’ comes from the Latin adverto and advertere; ad
meaning ‘to’ and vertere meaning ‘to turn’. Our word has the root sense
of turning to, of turning to something. It includes the idea of turning one’s
attention to something, of drawing or calling attention to something. This
idea may be developed to give the sense of giving notice of something, of
telling someone about something. All may be subsumed in the general
sense of informing. It could be claimed that this is an ‘innocent’ sense.
Without in the least wishing to suggest that the past is some honeytoned
liberal idyll in which advertising itself is innocent, a gentle tap on
the shoulder that draws attention to something, this innocent sense may be
found in literature. As is presumably well known, Shakespeare uses the
word ‘advertisement’ in Henry IV, Part I, written around 1590. In Act
three, scene two, line 172, Sir Walter Blunt tells the King that Douglas and
the English rebels have met at Shrewsbury. The King replies by saying that
‘this advertisement is five days old’. Clearly, he means that this,
information is five days old: the word ‘advertisement’ is being used in the
sense of ‘information’. Shakespeare also uses the word ‘advertisement’ in
All’s Well That Ends Well, written a few years later, and in the same sense.
In Act four, scene three, line 197, there is a reference to an ‘advertisement
to a proper maid’: the ‘advertisement’ is a letter which informs someone
about someone else—the letter is drawing the woman’s attention to some
piece of information about somebody else.
Early forms of what would be recognised as advertising conform to this
sense of the word. At the end of the fifteenth century, the first posted
advertisements began to appear. These were handwritten announcements
and they were posted up on church and cathedral doors by clergymen
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