"You're a Guaranteed Winner": Composing "You" in a Consumer Culture

Abstract

This article explores the functional elegance of direct mail as it constructs its target audience. More specifically, it examines direct mailings included in a nationally publicized court case involving Publishers' Clearing House and articulates how the use of particular genre-based, rhetorical and linguistic strategies in these mailings construct reader identity. It argues that the documents use you-attitude to construct the identity of the reader as winner, implied reader devices to reinforce the reader's identity as winner and to establish the reader's identity as the writer's friend, and linguistic politeness strategies to build feelings of solidarity of the reader toward the writer. It concludes with the observation that the direct mail in our study, rather than being "junk," is really a skillfully written set of documents, successfully interweaving various discourse strategies and raising both ethical and professional issues in the process.Within the discourse of enterprise/excellence, an active, 'enterprising' consumer is placed at the center of the market-based universe. What counts as 'good', or 'virtuous', in this universe is judged by reference to the apparent needs, desires and projected preferences of the 'sovereign consumer.'Paul du Gay [Features of the consumer culture] spill over all other aspects of contemporary life .... All perceptions and expectations, as well as life-rhythm, qualities of memory, attention, motivational and topical relevances are moulded inside the new 'foundational' institution-that of the market. Zygmunt Bauman &dquo;News from the gods,&dquo; LuLing murmured. &dquo;I won ten million dollars.&dquo; Amy Tan

Leading by Tweeting

“…Brown & Gilman, 1960). Subsequently, a number of studies began to call into question the unbridled advocacy of “second” person pronouns (Brockman & Belanger, 1993; Campbell, Riley, & Parker, 1990; Shelby & Reinsch, 2003), which eventually led to reframing the discussion into writer-reader relationships in business prose (Ewald & Vann, 2003; Jameson, 2004a, 2004b) along with aforementioned power relationships measured by position (Shelby & Reinsch, 2003; Rogers & Lee-Wong, 2003; Rogers, Ho, Thomas, Wong, & Cheng, 2004).…”

Strengthening the Ethics and Visual Rhetoric of Sales Letters

“…For example, Ewald and Vann (2003) discussed the use of implied reader strategies in PCH mailings to construct the reader's identity as a "loyal friend": "Because you are a loyal friend of Publishers Clearing House, we are sending you this advance communication" (p. 109). Also, these authors identified ways in which a you-attitude is created in PCH mailings, a persuasive attitude that results from the use of second-person pronouns, a "preference for positive wording, and emphasis on reader benefit" (p. 104).…”

“…For example, using various font styles and sizes can call attention to information that the writer wants to make sure that the reader does not overlook: the names of the department store and the sale being promoted, the specific dates for the sale, the "Preferred Customer Pass," and so forth. Also, highlighting techniques can be used to call attention to language that creates a you-attitude, builds friendly connections between the reader and writer, and identifies reader benefits (Ewald & Vann, 2003). One possible revision of this letter can be seen in Appendix B.…”

The Vlaams Belang: The Rhetoric of Organizational Identity

“…Rhetorical and discursive analyses have contributed greatly to research in the field of management communication (e.g. Cheney, 1983;Heath, 1994;Kinsella, 1999;Livesey, 2002), business studies (Amernic & Craig, 2004;Hyland, 1998), marketing (Ewald & Vann, 2003;Martin, 2007), organizational discourse (Heracleous, 2006) and individual identity and organizations (Linstead, 2005).…”