Visual+Rhetoric



This nonsmoking advertisement is using a lot of pathos to emotionally sway the audience to believe what they have to say. The first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about pathos for this advertisement would be the big words saying “Smoking Kills.” When people smoke they don’t sit there and think about how their cigarette might eventually be the cause of their death. So to put that out there so that is the very first thing that you see is definitely pathos.

This ad “hits home” for many people because they might have known somebody who died from some disease that is caused by smoking. Pathos is being used when they list many of the diseases that are connected to people who are heavy smokers. Having a long list like this allows for more people to be affected by it. I say this because the more diseases that are listed means that there is a wider range of people who could be affected by smoking.

Another way that this advertisement is using pathos is by showing the gun using cigarettes as bullets. When people see guns they might connect it with death or pain. This really helps convey the message that people shouldn’t smoke because it could kill you or give you a bad disease.

Finally, I think that when this ad asks the question of why to start smoking in the first place is another example of pathos. The question allows people who do smoke to look back at their past and think about why they actually started smoking. There is no good reason to start smoking so that could possibly bring up some hard times that they have gone through.

Works Cited

Katego. Smoking Kills Ads. Deviant Art. Designs & Interfaces/Advertising. n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. <[|Smoking Kills Advertisement]>