In the
United States, as you
know, we have an all-volunteer military. This means the decision
to be a soldier or not belongs, theoretically anyway, to the
individual. For the time being, we choose to serve rather
than being chosen to serve in a draft. On the other hand, many
countries around the world maintain their armed forces with mandatory
conscription. Most European countries, for example, require their
young men (and sometimes women) to serve in the military for two full
years. During wartime, the U.S. has, of course, drafted young men
into the military, and the government has the power to reinstate the
draft if needed for the defense of our country. In fact, at this
time, there are rumors flying all over the place that after the
election, if reelected, the Bush administration intends to make the
politically unpopular decision to reinstate the draft in order to
expand the numbers of our already thinly stretched troops. None
of these rumors has been confirmed by the administration, yet already
“stop-loss” orders that forcibly extend terms of service and the
dramatically increased use of National Guard units, critics charge,
constitute a “backdoor” draft. Is joining the armed forces a
different
kind of decision in wartime?
In any case, since the highly unpopular draft during the Vietnam War,
the military has had to advertise itself to prospective soldiers, to
sell soldiering as a career choice. If we think of this
multi-pronged advertising campaign rhetorically, perhaps we can learn
how persuasion can operate as well as something important about the
character of our nation,
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Please choose an ad
or a pitch from whichever U.S. military advertising
campaign strikes you--Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, or
Marines. You may
also choose the historical period that interests you the most as long
as it is later than 1900. You may analyze the pitches made on the
Internet, interview a recruiter, visit a recruitment office, or even
review a video game.
Begin your analysis by phrasing the main argument (or even a
subordinate one) the ad makes as an enthymeme. For example, in
the
famous recruitment poster to the right, the argument could be rephrased
in the following manner:
(Thesis claim) You
should join the U.S. army
because,
(Reason claim) if
you don't, you should feel ashamed of yourself.
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An important unstated assumption here--what the
success of the argument
depends upon--is that the audience, in this case, young men during WW I
and WW II, had a sense of duty to their country that could be appealed
to. State the main assumption on which the argument rests:
All young
men have a moral obligation to obey authority.
Your analysis will consist of showing how the poster's visual and
textual elements conspire to convey the argument, an explanation of who
the target audience was, and the description of the historical context
or situation of the ad.
Your conclusion (or thesis) should be the answer to the question of why
the creators of the ad you are analyzing believed the ad would be
effective in persuading the target audience to choose to serve and what
that says about the advertisers as well as their audience.
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A Few Good Links
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