The Canadian Culture, Rhetoric, and Magazine Advertising: Analysis of Persuasive Devices in Maclean’s

Abstract

This paper looks at Canadian culture as an example of a culture reflected in the advertising content of magazines, within the context of rationalizing a modern style of communication power. Canadian culture can be seen as the Canadians' way of life, shared values, and means of expression. Canadians have successfully attempted to assert Canadian cultural sovereignty and protect their Canadianization policy regarding mass media content. Multiculturalism is also a national policy that has been represented and experienced in Canada. Looking at the rhetorical or persuasive devices used in advertisements helps to determine the role or influence of Canadian culture in the advertising process. Advertising is able to impact and influence through allusions to unity-for example, the term "We Canadians" ascribes to one unified notion of culture. The specific techniques to achieve this universalized view are rhetorical devices. Culture, Magazine Advertising, and Rhetoric Culture is understood both as a way of life-encompassing ideas, attitudes, languages, practices, institutions, and structures of power-and a whole range of cultural practices: artistic forms, texts, canons, architecture, mass-produced commodities, and so forth. [3:51] Culture encompasses the great classical works of literature, philosophy, art, painting, architecture, and music, among others, of a particular cultural epoch. In recent years, the term culture has been used in the social sciences more as a term "to refer to whatever is distinctive about the way of life of a people, community, nation, or social group" [4:2]. From this viewpoint, culture encompasses the shared values and means of expression that are most distinctive of a particular group or community. It is the set of practices that groups identify themselves with and it is the means by which members of a group or society produce and exchange particular cultural meanings among themselves and, broadly speaking, their communities and nations.