The document presents a methodological framework called //rhetor.dixit// for conducting multimodal rhetorical analyses of advertising films using atlas.ti software. This framework provides a systematic approach to dissect ad films segment-by-segment, emphasizing verbo-visual interactions and the generation of brand meaning through rhetorical figures. Key findings from analyzing 87 commercials reveal the predominance of adjunction operations among rhetorical figures, supporting strategic brand communication planning.

1. A methodological framework for conducting multimodal
rhetorical analyses of advertising films with atlas.ti 7
Berlin Technical University
13/9/2013
George Rossolatos
MSc, MBA, PhD Candidate in Marketing Semiotics
University of Kassel
Founder of //disruptiVesemiOtics//
grosolatos123@myway.com
http://uni-kassel.academia.edu/georgerossolatos

2. What is the importance of rhetoric for ad textual
signification?
• The persuasive discourse of advertising is highly figurative,
replete with rhetorical schemes and tropes.
• “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric; and wherever
there is meaning, there is persuasion”
(Kenneth Burke)
• It is impossible to account for how brand meaning is generated
without accounting for modes of ad textual con-figuration.

3. The contribution of the //rhetor.dixit// model to our
understanding and management of ad textual
configuration
//rhetor.dixit//, powered with the content analytic capabilities of
atlas.ti:
• furnishes a novel methodology for conducting rhetorical analysis
of advertising filmic narratives with the aid of content analysis, by
dissecting ad films segment-by-segment, according to uniformly
applicable criteria.
• focuses on verbo-visual interactions within and among rhetorical
figures, rather than resting at the level of pointing out which
figures are operative in ad filmic narratives.
• draws on a filmic grammar rationale, which is most pertinent for
gauging multimodal interactions.

4. The contribution of the //rhetor.dixit// model to our
understanding and management of ad textual
configuration
//rhetor.dixit//, powered with the content analytic capabilities of
atlas.ti:
• extends the descriptive outlook on the occurrence and co-
occurrence of verbo-visual rhetorical figures by examining the
relationship between rhetorical configuration modes and the
variable argumentation strategies that are pursued by advertisers,
thus putting rhetorical figures and argumentation strategies into a
coherent perspective.
• furnishes a string of useful statistics, including “the rhetorical
figures co-occurrence index” that emphasizes the strength of co-
occurrence of one or more figures in the same filmic syntagm(s).

5. The contribution of the //rhetor.dixit// model to our
understanding and management of ad textual
configuration
//rhetor.dixit//, powered with the content analytic capabilities of
atlas.ti:
• expands the definitional scope of traditional figures in the light of
a largely visio-centric mode of discourse, by highlighting how
traditional figures (over and above the four master tropes of
metaphor, metonymy, irony, synecdoche) may be applied
effectively to other than verbal modes, but also in interactions
among modes.
• incorporates three novel rhetorical figures (accolorance,
reshaption, pareikonopoeia) in an effort to account for the
bespoke configuration modes of ad filmic narratives.

6. The methodological framework of //rhetor.dixit//
• Leveraging film grammar for the derivation of the segmentation
rationale and interpretive guidelines
• Drawing on Groupe μ’s first rhetorical treatise (1970) for the
derivation of an a priori list of 39 rhetorical figures that make up
the code-list
– Also informed by various rhetorical treatises, such as
Fontanier’s (1977), Aristotle’s, Quintilian’s, Perelman and
Olbrecht-Tyteca’s (1971)
– Enriching and expanding the definitions of the employed
taxonomy in order to account for
• the visual mode
• interactions among verbal and visual modes
• Individual codes were grouped into families, by positing rhetorical
operations as hyper-variables

7. //rhetor.dixit//: List of rhetorical operations
• Suppression: Two expressive units (verbal/visual) are completely
substitutable at the same place of the sequence/syntagm.
• Adjunction: Two expressive units (verbal/visual) occupy the same
place in a filmic sequence/syntagm, but are either not
substitutable or are partially substitutable.
• Substitution: An expressive unit completely substitutes another in
a filmic sequence/syntagm, either morphologically or syntactically
or at a semantic level.
• Permutation: Two expressive units are included in a different
order than expected in a filmic sequence/syntagm.

8. //rhetor.dixit//: Classification of figures based on
modality and textual level
Dimensions
Individual filmic
syntagm
Between two filmic
syntagms
‘Global semantic’
filmic context
Units of analysis
Figures/operations
occurring only in
verbal modality
Figures/operations
occurring only in
visual modality
Figures/operations
occurring in verbo /
visual modality

9. //rhetor.dixit//: Codelist with rhetorical figures
(atlas.ti ‘Export Codes’ output)

10. //rhetor.dixit//: Three methodological focal areas
• how to demarcate miminal units of analysis in the form of ad
filmic segments
• how to code minimal units of analysis with rhetorical figures
• how to produce descriptive statistics by using Atlas.ti’s
embedded functionalities.

11. The analytical corpus
• A representative commercial from the key brands making up the
BrandZ 2012 list was selected, yielding a sample of 87
effective TV commercials.
• Each film was segmented into filmic segments, which resulted in
561 segments.
• The 561 filmic segments were coded with one or more figures,
based on whether the corresponding figure occurred in the
syntagm itself as relatively autonomous thematic unit or by
reference to the directly preceding/ensuing sequence or
retrospectively, by taking into account the global
semantic/thematic context of the film.
• 545 incidences of rhetorical figures were discerned in the entire
corpus.

12. Indicative file with some of the ad films that were
included in the corpus and additional coding by
argumentation strategy, narration mode and music style

13. //rhetor.dixit//: Demarcation of ad filmic segments (i)
• As Metz has shown, there is no such thing in the moving
image as a priori clear-cut boundaries for their
determination.
The filmic 'sequence', which is one of the types of syntagms to
play an important role in the cinema […] is not 'present' in any
part of any film, and there is no textual place where it can be
attested. Films simply offer us particular sequences, individual
tokens of the sequence-type: the 'observation' of the text reduced
to itself will never tell us which are the distinctive features which
make a sequence a sequence.
(Metz, 1974, p.165)

14. //rhetor.dixit//: Demarcation of ad filmic segments (iv)
• The key principle for segmenting ad films into salient segments (or syntagms, in
Metz’s [1974] terms) consists in the possibility of making sense of a segment as a
standalone semantic unit.
• Ad filmic segments correspond to quotations in Atlas.ti.
• The filmic segment/syntagm, then, must be described/transcribed as objectively as
possible with regard to its contents, against the background of its relative autonomy,
that is irrespective of its actual ‘meaning’ in the context of the film’s ‘global semantic
context’ (Van Dijk 1980).

15. Excel file with film segments and transcriptions
(© //rhetor.dixit//).

16. //rhetor.dixit//: Examples ad filmic segments’ coding (US
Bank ad film)
Big blue box
with red arrow
pointing to
quotation bar,
while small
blue box with
red arrow
pointing to
quotation’s
coding with a
rhetorical
figure.

17. //rhetor.dixit//: Accounting for modes of ad textual con-
figuration with atlas.ti
//rhetor.dixit//, powered with the content analytic capabilities of atlas.ti, allows
us to :
• address the relative incidence of rhetorical operations and figures in a
selected corpus
• gauge the co-occurrence of figures in the corpus
• produce network views on individual filmic and corpus-wide levels
• determine the Incidence of figures by
– argumentation strategy
– product/service sector
– music style
– narration style

18. //rhetor.dixit//: Key findings from the world’s most
valuable brands corpus (i)
• In total 545 incidences of rhetorical figures were encountered in the 561
segments that make up the selected corpus of 87 advertising films from the
most valuable brandst he co-occurrence of figures in the corpus
• The majority of figures partake of the operation of adjunction(67%), followed
by substitution (17%), permutation (11%) and suppression (6%).
count %
adjunction 364 67%
permutation 60 11%
substitution 91 17%
suppresison 30 6%
ttl 545 100%

19. //rhetor.dixit//: Key findings from the world’s most
valuable brands corpus (ii)
• The most often recurring figures in the ‘Most valuable brands’ corpus were
anaphora, pareikonopoeia, accolorance, metaphor, inversion,
antanaclasis, epiphora, rhyme , metonymy, alliteration and reshaption.
Rhetorical figure
% of
each operation
% of
ttl sample
Anaphora 30% 20%
Pereikonopoeia 13% 9%
Accolorance 11% 7%
Antanaclasis 7% 5%
Epiphora 7% 5%
Alliteration 5% 4%
Rhyme 6% 4%
Reshaption 5% 4%
Antithesis 5% 3%
Personification 3% 2%
Expletion 2% 1%
Hyperbole 2% 1%
Parenthesis 1% 1%
Assonance 1% 0%
Epenthesis 0% 0%
Neologism 0% 0%
Paronomasia 0% 0%
Polysyndeton 0% 0%
adjunction total 100% 67%
Inversion 50% 6%
Antimetabole 25% 3%
Anacolouthon 8% 1%
Tmesis 13% 1%
Anagram 3% 0%
permutation total 100% 11%
Metaphor 36% 6%
Metonymy 23% 4%
Irony 11% 2%
Oxymoron 12% 2%
Pun 12% 2%
Synecdoche 4% 1%
Onomatopoeia 0% 0%
Paradox 1% 0%
substitution total 100% 17%
Ellipsis 40% 2%
Asyndeton 13% 1%
Litotes 13% 1%
rhetorical
question 17% 1%
Apheresis 0% 0%
Apocope 3% 0%
suspension/
silence
7% 0%
Zeugma 7% 0%
suppression total 100% 6%
Note: 0 percentages denote either the
non-incidence of the concerned figures in
the selected corpus or are attributed to
rounding.

20. //rhetor.dixit//: Key findings from the world’s most
valuable brands corpus (iii)
• Particular figures that may not be occurring as frequently as others, yet when they
occur, they tend to co-occur largely with others within the same segments.
• Figures which do not occur as frequently in the total sample, such as
epenthesis, apocope, rhyme, antithesis, rhetorical question, when they occur they
tend to co-occur highly with other figures.
% of
ttl
sample
Cooccurrence
strength
Index
epenthesis 0% 265
apocope 0% 265
rhyme 4% 239
metonymy 4% 226
epiphora 5% 198
pun 2% 198
irony 2% 181
antithesis 3% 165
accolorance 7% 137
rhetorical
question 1% 132
reshaption 4% 114
Note: 0 percentages are attributed to
rounding.

21. //rhetor.dixit//: Key findings from the world’s most
valuable brands corpus (iv)- US Bank rhetorical
structure network view
• A most useful functionality of Atlas.ti 7 is the production of network views (maps) that
incorporate either all or some of the key aspects of a coded ad film (that is codes, memos,
even comments)- with the added functionality in the program’s new version of also
portraying each filmic segment on a map in visual mode.
• The US Bank network view tells you in a snapshot that antanaclasis (of the adjunction
operation) is the dominant rhetorical figure in this ad film, as it links to the majority of ad
filmic segments.

22. //rhetor.dixit//: Indicative examples- intra-segment level
of analysis
• Alliterations abound within individual syntagms, as in
– the repetition of the morpheme ‘ma-‘ in the payoff line of the HP ad filmic text
(‘make it matter’)
– of the consonant ‘p’ in the Pampers payoff line (‘Peaceful nights, playful
days’), which also alliterates with the visual of the brand’s logo)
• the same pattern is repeated in the Toyota Prius commercial (‘More
Prius, more possibilities’)
– Alliterations also occurred in the corpus through the repetition of consonants
‘b’ and ‘d’ in the Starbucks double espresso payoff line (‘Starbucks double
espresso premium drink- Bring on the day’)
– of the consonant ‘h’ in the Disneyland commercial (‘happiest homecoming’)
– of the consonant ‘b’ in a mid-filmic syntagm of the State Farm text (‘bungling,
bustling, bundle benders’)
…and the alliteration list can continue

23. //rhetor.dixit//: Indicative examples- intra-segment level
of analysis
• Hyperbolically accentuated verbal statements are noted in
incidences such as the Orange ad film, where the key semic
component of /proximity/ in the modal proposition ‘you can stay close
to those that matter to you’ is hyperbolically enhanced with the
employment of visuals portraying significant others literally emerging
from within oneself.

24. //rhetor.dixit//: Indicative examples- interaction between
succeeding segments level of analysis
• Antanaclases are no longer merely the province of verbal statements.
• The verbo-visual repetition of the same visuals/words with different meaning
affords to invest brand discourses with ever ramifying semantic twists and turns.
• For example, the SAP text repeats the word ‘run’ in two predominant senses
both within and between filmic segments, in the sense of speeding up, as well
as in the sense of executing or operating a program.

25. //rhetor.dixit//: Indicative examples- interaction between
succeeding segments level of analysis
• A remarkable example of how an entire ad filmic text is configured around antanaclases that are
operative both within individual and across segments, but also in constant interaction between
verbal and visual modes, is the ad film of U.S. bank.
• The text oscillates constantly between the logo, the brand name and the very meaning of the
personal pronoun ‘us’, thus creating a verbo-visual osmosis that attests to how a first mover
figurative rhetorical advantage may be yielded not only by the employment of less frequently
recurring figures, but, moreover, by different combinations of highly recurring figures in dynamic
verbo-visual interactions.

26. //rhetor.dixit//: Indicative examples- global filmic
thematic context
• Verbo-visual anaphoras, which constitute the most often recurring
rhetorical figure (of the adjunction operation) function as markers
in the multimodal rhetoric pursued by the majority of the most
valued brands.
• Indicative examples consist of
• (i) recurrent product shots, embedded in slice-of-life, experiential
moments that feature the advertised brand (e.g., Budweiser bottle
and/or logo)

27. Benefits of using atlas.ti for multimodal rhetorical
analyses of ad filmic texts
• Atlas.ti 7 is particularly suited to multimodal discourse analyses
• By combining traditional rhetorical analysis of multimodal ad texts
with a quantified view in the context of a selected corpus, we are
capable of determining not only individual films’ rhetorical structures,
but, even more importantly, dominant modes of rhetorical
configuration.
• In this manner, we are capable of discerning directions whereby
‘differential figurative advantages’ may be furnished to brand
discourses, by comparing and contrasting the relative incidence of
individual figures and operations among brands.
• Atlas.ti 7 is an indispensable facilitator for strategic, but also tactical
brand communications planning, as well as for keeping detailed track
of brands’ figurative discourse, on a micro-level, that is segment-by-
segment, rather than on an entire filmic one.

28. Industry benefits from integrating multimodal rhetorical
analyses of ad filmic texts in strategic and tactical
planning
• An account planning team may keep track in a minutely
detailed manner of how competitive brand communication
strategies were fleshed out throughout time by producing
aggregate reports about the relative incidence of distinctive
profilmic elements and/or rhetorical figures/operations.
• Making informed decisions about which elements to avoid
repeating, as well as about which profilmic elements may be
used for truly standout/disruptive communications.
• A brand management team may monitor through statistical
analyses the relative impact of the employment of different
creative elements and rhetorical strategies on market share
and soft metrics, such as brand image, brand familiarity and
brand involvement.

29. Thank you
George Rossolatos
grosolatos123@myway.com
http://uni-kassel.academia.edu/georgerossolatos
A methodological framework for conducting multimodal rhetorical
analyses of advertising films with Atlas.ti
available @ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2315566