The Roy Castle Lung Foundation

         

           This image is one of the many, "Stop Smoking" ads on the market today. This one particularly caught my attention for various reasons. To offer a brief overview, this ad is an image of a little girl with a woman’s hand that is holding a cigarette. This advertisement is using the minor premise of second-hand smoking to assist their claim of the popular ad focus, Stop Smoking. This advertisement was made by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. This foundation is a British medical research charity dedicated to the prevention and cure of lung cancer. It is the only charity in the UK wholly dedicated to the defeat of lung cancer. The charity funds lung cancer research, provides support, helps people to quit smoking, and gives a voice to all those affected by lung cancer through its campaigning work.

            The context of this ad that prompts the author to develop it is the inevitable societal problem of smoking. Regardless of all the advertisements, there were still 46.6 million smokers last year and the number is growing daily. So, this advertisement was another ad made to stop this monstrous number from multiplying yet again. However, the ad is targeting the audience through a different approach. As straightforwardly seen, the purpose of this advertisement is to give smokers a reason, other than their personal health, to stop smoking. The audience of this text is any smoking individual, but specifically one with children or family members that are being affected by their unhealthy addiction. The author writes, “Second hand smoke in the home hospitalizes 17,000 UK children a year". The author addresses the audience in a unique way by focusing on the effects of second hand smoke on others rather than on the smoker themselves. By doing this, the audience is now forced to focus on the effects it is having on their family and friends rather than just their health. 

            There are several rhetorical elements used in this advertisement including appeals to logos, pathos, a syllogism, and cause and effect. The two worth expanding on are cause and effect, which in turn aids the appeal to pathos. The rhetorical device of cause and effect is used in this ad when the author is saying that smoking (the cause) has the effect of hospitalizing thousands of children every year. By setting up this emotionally haunting cause and effect, the audience understands that they are not only hurting themselves, but others as well. This in turn appeals to pathos because it taps into the audience’s emotions in a way that other ads have failed to do. The smokers realize that this is not just about them anymore.

            Overall, I do believe the author accomplished their purpose through this image. By using several rhetorical devices, the author gives smokers another reason, other than their personal health, to stop smoking. The ad makes smokers think beyond themselves and look at how their addiction is affecting the people around them. This new concept directly helps the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation to spread their popular idea of stopping smoking around the globe.