Arguments in Advertising - Or, What Yoghurt can Teach us about Sustainable Transport

1.! INTRODUCTION In this paper I present some considerations regarding how we ought to use the tools of argumentation theory in the analysis of persuasive communication material, with implications for the way such material can be modelled for use with persuasive technology or artificial deliberative intelligences. I focus here on how a refined understanding of the underlying argumentative structure of a traditional TV commercial (in particular, the Danone Yoghurt commercial In Soviet Georgia, previously discussed by Douglas Walton (2010)), reveals some limitations on how far an argumentative analysis can take us in understanding the persuasive power of advertisements like this. Specifically, I will argue that understanding advertisements as arguments using standard analytical tools fails to capture their motivational force, and hence will fail to predict their effectiveness in achieving behaviour change in their audience. The issues raised, concerned with the way adverts of various kinds engage the desires of their audience, turn out to be especially relevant for understanding how advertisements and marketing material function effectively in achieving behaviour change in domains such as encouraging the use of sustainable transport, where persuading people to cut down on personal car use rests largely on making certain altruistic desires more relevant for their decision-making than other desires to, for instance, use the most convenient and efficient means of getting from A to B. If computational models of advertisements as instances of natural argument are to be used as a means of generating arguments to effect behaviour change in domains such as personal transport, it is necessary that they are able to correctly predict behavioural effects. As such, I argue in this paper that there is a need to develop a means to model the non-argumentative features of communication material that make certain desires more or less relevant to individuals’ motivational frameworks.